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There's few, if any, current country music stars that have "walked the walk" more than Cody Johnson. The Huntsville, Texas native just won the 3rd CMA of his career last week, taking home Album of the Year for Leather, his 8th studio album. While he'd been a major piece of the Texas music scene for nearly a decade and a half, he didn't begin to get recognition from the industry at large until "Til You Can't" from his Human album exploded, growing into a song that will be looked back on as a defining moment of the mid-2020's. But before he was lighting up stadiums, Cody Johnson squeezed a whole lot of experience into the early part of his life, with two major steps serving as a springboard for the artist we all know and love. You're probably well aware that Cojo was a rodeo star before fully pursing country music. Bull riding was his passion throughout high school and he hoped to make a career out of it until a string of nasty injuries took it all away before he really had a chance. In recent year's he's picked up Team Roping, even qualifying for the World Series of Team Roping Finale taking place in Vegas in just a few weeks, but the urge to be a career rodeo man has never fully left him, inspiring a number of his songs but most notably "Dear Rodeo". Reba, a former barrel racer herself, later joined him on a duet version which is truly incredible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlwREmok31o Going from rodeo to country music is an apt pivot if you've got the talent (and Cojo's got more than enough) but he made another stop in his life which gave him a perspective that few else can claim. Prison, The Johnson Family Business Huntsville, Texas doesn't have a whole lot when it comes to industry. The city of around 46,000 (28 thousand in 1990 when Cojo was 3) is home to Sam Houston State University, a bunch of prisons, and not much else. With a median household income of just over $41,000 (about half the national average), there aren't many choices for employment outside of the prison system, which is by far the largest employer in the city, boasting nearly three times as many employees as Sam Houston State, the second largest employer. Cody Johnson spoke about growing up in this environment, following in his father's footsteps (who worked over 30 years for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice), and how it influenced his songwriting during an interview with Bud Light Texas back in 2014: "There's seven prisons in Huntsville's greater area and in my family you either go to prison or you work for the prison. So I just went to work because that's what my dad did... It's kind of shaped my songwriting in some songs, we have a song called "Guilty As Can Be" about a guy who goes to prison for shooting his cheating wife and the whole nine yards. Those were stories that I'd heard, you know, so it wasn't a first hand account but it felt personal, so I could sing it like it was personal." While getting crazy stories straight from the mouth of the people who partook in them certainly helps when trying to create mini worlds for your music to live in, Cody may not have ever taken the leap of faith to try country music as a career without some encouragement from an unlikely source. Cody was already playing bar gigs when he took a prison guard job at age 18 but after a year or so working at the penitentiary, the warden pulled him aside and gave him a talking to: "The warden that I was working for actually encouraged me to go quit. They said "You know, you can always come back. There's never going to be a shortage of people going to prison, there's never going to be a shortage of the need for people to guard them, so go chase your dream." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrsKaXFzeX0&t=56s Safe to say, that was advice well given and received. Cody quickly worked his way to the upper echelons of Texas country music, becoming something of an open secret for a scene that somehow remained hidden from the public at large until very recently. Today there's few country fans that don't get excited when a Cody Johnson song comes on, and those that don't, well I'm sure producer Trent Willmon would say their taste in music is "Shaboozey" cheeks... I guess the moral of this story is to follow through if your boss ever tells you to quit and pursue something you love. Hell, quit on your own and do something cool if you want. Life is short and we only get one, so like a wise man once sang, if you've got a chance, take it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2LixP7n_hM

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