Cody Johnson‘s highly anticipated new album, Leather, has arrived.
Naming his record after the title track was something Cody decided serendipitously after a chat with Ian Munsick, who co-wrote the song.
“Ian Munsick had just started being on tour with us and we’re still on the bus. We were just getting to know each other, picking songs and this and that,” Cody recalls. “He plays me the song called ‘Leather,’ and I said, ‘Buddy, what the hell was that?’ And he’s like, ‘I just wrote it. I wrote it about my brothers, they’re cowboys.’ And I said, ‘What are you going to do with it?’ He’s like, ‘Well, I’m not really a cowboy, you know?'”
Because Cody loved the song so much, he immediately made a promise.
“I was like, ‘Give it to me. I’ll cut it.’ He goes, ‘Really?’ I said, ‘Not only will I cut it, I’ll name my album after it.’ And he said, ‘I didn’t know you were cutting a record.’ And I said, ‘Well, I didn’t either till right now,'” he recounts.
“Leather” encapsulates who Cody is to a T.
“My wife said that [the] second verse is as autobiographical of me as it possibly gets. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but being a cowboy is not easy. If it was easy, everybody would do it,” he says.
“There’s a rough and tough and there’s a grit and there’s a line of morality that’s very hard to stand up for a lot of times in today’s society,” Cody explains. “Where I come from, yes still means yes and no means no. It’s black and white, there’s no gray area. And that’s hard for a lot of people in this world to swallow nowadays.”
Leather is out wherever you enjoy music.
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