Cody Johnson has made a major name for himself in country music over the past few years, but the 36-year-old Texas native knows he wouldn’t have gotten there alone. One person Johnson credits for his success is fellow country star Luke Combs, who he recently supported on tour in Australia and New Zealand.
Johnson Showcases Appreciation For Luke Combs, Graciously Thanks Him
Speaking to PopCulture.com, Johnson shared his appreciation for Combs giving him that chance and the fans he met while there who knew all the words to some of his songs that were over a decade old.
“A big moment was getting to go to Australia and New Zealand with Luke Combs to open up,” Johnson reflected. “And the biggest moment of that is while we were there, not only did we figure out that people all over the world, on a completely different continent — I could have gotten to Asia or to Antarctica quicker than America — people knew every word to every song. They were mad because I didn’t play certain songs that were songs that I wrote 10, 12 years ago when I had a publishing company or a publishing deal here in Nashville. And that was a big eye-opener, man.”
“So big thank you to Luke for that, friend-to-friend, he’s done a lot for me,” he added.
The Texas Singer Acknowledges Luke Combs Helped Take His Career To The Next Level
Johnson, who Combs previously dubbed “The Baddest Dude In Country Music”, is thinking big for next year and 2025, revealing that he has touring plans he’s modeling after his friend. “We’re going to Canada, we’re going to Brazil, which is going to kind of tee up ’25, going to the U.K., going to Australia, and doing these things that, kind of following in the Luke Combs footsteps, honestly, for the doors that I just mentioned that he had opened for us,” he said. “Really taking this career, that I’ve worked so hard for, to the next level.”
His touring abilities were also aided by the release of his recent single “The Painter,” the first single from his recently-released album, Leather. The singer explained that the success of “The Painter” helped him in “starting to get out of venues that we’d been playing here in the United States that we are starting to outgrow that I thought we’d never outgrow. And that’s really a model of growth right there, that every country artist wants to have.”
He credited the album and his label, Warner Music Nashville, for helping to propel his career to the new level he’s hoping to see this year. “There’s going to be a lot of new music, a lot of streaming, a lot of new fans,” Johnson revealed. “We have a lot of new opportunities because of that record and because of Warner Nashville’s hard work that they’ve put into it.”
Johnson Recalls Not Being Accept In Nashville
While he has plans to travel around the world, Johnson shared that he particularly loves performing in Nashville, which he did on New Year’s Eve during New Year’s Eve Live: Nashville’s Big Bash on CBS, because of the path his career took from Texas to Music City.
“I love playing here because, forever, I wasn’t accepted here,” he explained. “Being the independent artist or being a guy from Texas, there was always this stigma about, ‘You’re not ever going to make it in Nashville.’ And here we are, with so many friends, so many business relationships and such a growing career, in the town that everybody told me I’d never thrive in.
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Johnson self-released six albums before his major label debut, Ain’t Nothin’ to It, in 2019. The project included “On My Way to You,” which became his first Top 40 hit on country radio.
“Things like this, getting to sit and play on Broadway, I wasn’t the guy that moved from Kentucky to Nashville and played on Broadway until I got a record deal,” he continued. “I was the guy that was playing Texas honky tonks.”
