Jamey Johnson has been slowly releasing songs off his first new solo studio album in 14 years, Midnight Gasoline, dropping Nov. 8. While reflecting on the journey of creating this project during an interview with Billboard, the musical icon opened up about battling his addiction to alcohol and how he “barely survived.”
“I had my last drink in September 2011. Then I quit smoking pot in 2015. I think that lasted about eight years. Nine years. In that time period, it was all about sobriety. And with a sober mind, I’m able to do things like get a pilot’s license, manage a business, start a product line,” he shared proudly.
Currently, Johnson has been able to maintain his sobriety “for the most part.” He goes on to say that while he will indulge in a joint every so often if he’s trying to propel his creativity in the writing room, alcohol is no longer part of his life in any way.
“But I don’t play games with the alcohol. That’s what led me down a dark path of self-destruction back then and I barely survived. Alcohol was an incendiary way of destructing myself. Everything just went up in in flames and you couldn’t put the fire out, you just had to wait for it to all come to ashes and then try to rebuild when you got done. And it seemed to me like I owed myself a better way to live than that.”
Reclaiming his life has been no easy feat for Johnson, which he details further in his previously released tune, “Sober.” Through the instrumentals sounding off like an afternoon drawl, the Alabama native illustrates the regretful decisions he made while under the influence and the struggle of trying to overcome this great obstacle.
He sings, “I’d take a paycheck and I’d turn it to a sack of weed/ And I’d burn it straight to hell/ I’d drink a beer joint dry and then the next day/ I’m right back at the well/ If the body is a temple/ I worked hard to keep that steeple spinning ’round/ Then one day I heard the preacher say/ Lord it’s hard staying sober in this town.”
“Sober” is one of the 30 songs that Johnson recorded over the course of three weeks earlier this year. He had hunkered down at Cash Cabin, Johnny and June Cash’s former studio which is now run by their son, musician/producer John Carter Cash, and dedicated all his time to creating a record.
Although the 10-time Grammy nominee has certainly been busy touring, he admits it’s taken some time for him to rekindle his love for the craft of songwriting. He hasn’t completely stopped putting pen to paper since his last solo album, 2010’s The Guitar Song, but his creativity was at an all-time low. Then, he and the rest of the world suffered a great loss with Toby Keith’s passing and suddenly, Johnson felt determined to get back to making the music that would one day serve as his legacy.
“The writing was already coming back to me, piece by piece, but I still didn’t have any ambitions on making a record,” he told the outlet. “When Toby passed away, it moved everything into high gear because I realized that that was the end of his discography, that we weren’t getting another Toby Keith record. And that’s what drove me to wanting to finish my own discography. It’s what made me understand that I’m nowhere near done, and so it’s time to get busy. After he passed away, I immediately started talking about this session and started trying to get all the particulars in order. It was time for me to get in the studio again.”
Midnight Gasoline will be the first of an unannounced number of albums called the Cash Cabin Series that are set to be released through Warner Music Nashville in conjunction with his own Big Gassed Records. As for when we will get to hear the remaining projects, Jamey Johnson said that there’s no specific timeline and that he’s “happy” with whatever plans the label has in store. “We’re gonna keep them coming.”
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