Cody Johnson has a knack for recording songs that tend to strike listeners right in the heart and he does that once again throughout the 13 new tracks on his just-released, Leather Deluxe Edition. He carefully chose songs for this collection that moved him in some way or related closely to his life and one in particular, titled “C’mon Cowgirl,” hit him so deeply he was moved to tears.
The reason he had such a heartfelt response to the tune penned by Aby Gutierrez, Adam James, and Jonathan Stark, was because it made him reflect on his life as a father to two young girls.
“I came home and I was sitting in my barn office in my horse barn. I had a guitar in there and I was playing it and my girls came in and I was like, ‘y’all sit down, I want to play you this song.’ About halfway through it and they’re just sitting there and I’m trying not to look at ’em. I’m reading my stuff on my phone and my wife walks in and I was like, ‘Hey, sit down. I want to play you this.’ I started it over and I’m reading the lyrics, and I’ve got tears just pouring down my cheeks,” he recalled during a recent conversation with Country Now and other outlets.
It didn’t take long for his wife and kids to chime in with tears of their own while listening to him sing about wanting to hold onto his kids forever and noting how they will “never meet a cowboy that loves you likе I do.”
“I’m trying not to cry and I look up and they’re all crying and smiling at me. I was like, I stopped the song and I came over and I gave ’em a big old hug and it was like this moment. How do you not cut that song?”
Reflecting On The Project’s Final Track, ‘The Mustang’
Johnson’s reaction to the deeply moving “C’mon Cowgirl” is a true testament to the song’s powerful lyrics and his own connection to the heartfelt themes that are woven throughout the album. This song is a beautiful tribute to the “I’m Gonna Love You” singer’s life as a father, but there are plenty more emotional moments throughout this record. The very last track, “The Mustang,” is likely to evoke the same teary-eyed reaction from listeners as it captures an incredibly low point in Johnson’s life and the lessons he learned once he came out on the other side.
“That song came to me at a point in my life and career where, and I’ll be honest in my marriage too, where I felt like I hit a really low point… I looked in the mirror and was like, I really don’t like what I see, there’s a lot going on up here that I need to change. What triggers me to think this way? Why do I behave in this way? Why am I still dragging around baggage from whenever I was a young man? The mistakes I’d made and regrets that I have, which we all have, and at that point, I was questioning, am I even worthy to pray? Does God even hear me when I pray like this?” he asked himself.
Coming To Terms With The Power Of Faith
The lyrics center around a man who used to run as free and wild as a mustang all alone in the open land until one day, he realized there was more purpose to his life. So he decided to surrender his freedom in order to allow himself to be led down the path he was destined to take. Especially being a cowboy, Johnson admitted that this story hit close to home for him and offers a look into to the strength he finds in his faith.
“I’ve got horses, one in particular, that every now and then he just likes to run off. And as the guy with the reins, I’ve got certain bits that I can put in his mouth and it’ll stop him. And when you apply that to your relationship with God, it’s like, sometimes he allows us to run off and he let me in my younger days run off like, ‘okay, fine, go ahead. You’re going to come back anyway because when you get hungry, you’ll know I’m the one who’s going to feed you.’ And that metaphor kind of stuck,” he shared.
“Sometimes in my life, it’s difficult and it hurts when he says, ‘Hey.’ I said, ‘whoa.’ And it’s difficult. You’re going, ‘Hey, that hurt. Why did you do that?’ But it’s because [when] the Mustang runs free, but he has to worry about everything…He has to worry about his own health, he has to worry about his own livelihood. But my horses, inside that fence, eat the best feed they have the cleanest water, they have the cleanest stalls, they have the best healthcare and they’re taken care of in their discipline, in the correct manner so that they can be free within those boundaries.”
Johnson admits that when this song landed in his hands, it quickly became one of his favorites.
“It did something for me and I chose to record it just because of that. It wasn’t about radio or playlists or any of that stuff. It was just like this one was for me.”
Deluxe Edition VS Double Album
Leather Deluxe Edition unveils 13 new songs and also includes all 12 tracks from CMA’s Album of the Year nominated Leather, which was released last November, making for a total of 25 songs. This follows the Texas native’s double Human album of 2021. Johnson explained that at first, he didn’t want to create another double album so soon because he felt that it would be too much for fans to consume at once. But he already had 25 songs recorded and ready to be shared with the world, so he needed to find a way to release them without fatiguing his listeners.
“I went to Cris Lacy, here at Warner and said, ‘what do we do? Do we do a part one, part two? Do we just say, Hey, this is a separate album?’ And she came up with, I’m going to give her the credit, she came up with the deluxe edition and I asked the same thing, ‘aren’t Deluxe editions usually one or two more songs that don’t make the album?’ She’s like, ‘yeah, but you could do something really special here,’” Johnson explained.
Releasing a deluxe edition allowed him to continue his usual process of putting records together, which involves sorting the tracks in a way that is meant to be listened to from top to bottom.
“I write it like a set list I would my live show. The difficulty in this was to separate ’em and create two different set lists. So I had to dive into each song and go, ‘which ones are kind of similar in tempo? Let’s separate them. Alright, now subject matter. Let’s kind of separate them. Maybe in the same key or close to the same melodic structure? Let’s separate them. Now let’s make two separate set lists.’”
Cody Johnson’s ability to create the perfect setlist is shown during each of his life shows. He is currently in the midst of The Leather Tour, which includes a few more dates through November. In the new year, he will embark on the Leather Deluxe Tour, with stops in the US, the UK and Australia.
The post Cody Johnson Reveals The Heartfelt Song From ‘Leather Deluxe Edition’ That Left Him In Tears appeared first on Country Now.
