Cody Johnson: What He Did Before Photo Shoot Is Shocking
Cody Johsnon’s upcoming album Leather features a closeup photo of his dirty hands holding a saddle horn with a rope tied around them. According to Cody, the picture is as authentic as you can get.
He told us of the morning the photo was taken at his Texas ranch, “I wanted it to be gritty. I wanted it to be real. So I had Chris Douglas, my photographer, come down. All we did was, we worked cows. He got up with us at five o’clock in the morning, we went and pinned cows, and when you see the hands on that saddle horn in that picture, that’s literally because I just got through castrating twenty bulls.”
He added, “It was real. We branded forty cows, and that’s what my hands look like after a hard day’s work on the ranch. Leather is just not a saddle; it’s not just chaps or a cover seat on a car. Leather is a part of a soul. I think the picture of my hands is a good representation of that.”
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Johnson said the album’s title song, “Leather,” he did not write, but he related to it. He said, “When you hear those words, ‘You can bend him, but you can’t break him. It took years of work and dirt to make him, and when your whole world falls apart leather,’ You know my wife said that second verse is as autobiographical as you can get.”
He concluded, “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; we’re rough and tough, and there’s grit. There’s a line of morality that’s very hard to stand up for sometimes and stay in society. Where I come from, yes, still means yes, and it’s black and white. There is no gray area. That’s hard for a lot of people in this world to swallow these days.”
Cody’s album Leather will be released on November 3, just days before the CMA Awards in Nashville, where he is nominated for Male Vocalist of the Year.
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Cody Johnson
Jason Kempin x2/Getty ImagesCody told us of Jelly in June, “Jelly’s one of my favorite people to hang out with. You may not look at me and know this, but I have a pretty jaded past as well.” He added, “I’ve always said there was a time in my life when I had to make a decision, and that decision was to chase this dream professionally with a good mindset. There are a few mistakes I’ve made in my life and decisions in my life where I could have wound up here, or I very well could have wound up in jail.” He concluded, “It’s almost like a blessing and a curse because we put so much on ourselves. And I relate to him, and he relates to me, and we’re so opposite; you’ve got the cowboy hat and the face tattoos… I think it’s a very opposite attraction kind of thing. The respect is mutual and real recognizes real.”
