or a few years now, some country fans have been describing Cody
Johnson—a former amateur bull rider who began releasing albums
while working as a prison guard in Huntsville—with four words
that border on blasphemous: the new George Strait. There’s no
debating, though, that the 32-year-old Sebastopol, Texas, native is
the new king of the Houston Rodeo, where, in 2017, he made his debut as a
last-minute replacement, just as Strait did in 1983. At the rodeo the follow-
ing year, he became the fi rst unsigned artist to sell out NRG Stadium. By
then, thanks to ten years of touring and a sturdy, nineties-leaning country
sound, Johnson had landed two self-released albums on the charts. He
sold out the rodeo this March too, soon after Ain’t Nothin’ to It—his fi rst
album with Warner Music Nashville—debuted at the top of the Billboard
country albums chart. In August he will play Houston’s Toyota Center as
well as Gillette Stadium, near Boston, where he’ll open for Strait himself.F
TEXAS MONTHLY: You’ve ended
all three Houston Rodeo shows
by mounting a horse to take a
victory lap around the stadium.
What’s going through your head
on those rides?
CODY JOHNSON: The first year, it
felt like we didn’t know if we’d ever
have a chance to do this again, so I
wanted to have as much fun as we
could. Then the next year, when
we sold it out on our own, it felt
like the culmination of ten years’
worth of hard work paying off. This
year, considering the new record
debuting at number one, the new
record deal, and all the notoriety, it
felt like the beginning of a chapter
rather than the end of it.
TM: Earlier in the night you per-
formed “Doubt Me Now,” a song
from the new album, which reads
like a middle fi nger to those who
probably couldn’t imagine a
time you’d be singing it in front
of 74,000 people.
CJ: It’s a very diplomatic middle
fi nger. For me, the doubters would
be the ones who told me that to get
a record deal or be successful out-
side of Texas, I’d need to cut my
hair, take my cowboy hat off , and
change my sound. It isn’t really
any one person that I’m singing
that song to. It’s more directed at
the circumstances I’ve overcome.
TM: Can you pinpoint a real turn-
ing point in your career?
CJ: It was gradual, but I started see-
ing success when I got out of the
way of myself and said, “All right,
God, I’m going to mention your
name every night onstage, and I’m
going to try to do things in my life
that better myself as a husband, as
a father, as a leader, as a business
owner, as a musician, as a singer, a
songwriter.” The moment I started
thinking like that, it all changed.
TM: From a business perspective,
the turning point looks like the
deal [signed in 2018] with War-
ner Nashville. You were able toCody Johnson at
the Whitewater
Amphitheater, in
New Braunfels, on
May 26, 2019.Strait Talk
Comparisons to the King of Country aside,
Cody Johnson has done it all his way.44 TEXAS MONTHLY
CHATTHE
CULTURE
interview by Andy Langer (^) • photograph by Bill Sallans