You can always count on CoJo to bring some actual country music to country radio.
Revealed today by country radio insider Chris Owen, Cody Johnson will be sending “Dear Rodeo” to country radio as his next single, the second off his phenomenal Ain’t Nothin’ To It album.
And as it turns out, writing this song wasn’t even Cody’s idea. It was pitched to him by Scott Gunter, a member of Cody’s publishing and A&R camp, who brought it up to Cody, calling his attention to the fact that he has never written about retiring from the rodeo.
“I had never addressed the fact that I don’t ride bulls no more. I still get to cowboy enough, that my schedule allows, riding, cuttin’ horses and doing ranch rodeo type events, a little team ropin’ but it’s still not the same as it was for me in the portion of my life to where I was a kid, and I hate to quote Chris LeDoux, but some gold buckle dreams… and it was heartbreaking and once I really started thinking about it, I think the reason I never wrote about it was because it felt like divorce.”
And although Cody avoided the topic for so many years, when he finally sat down with Dan Couch to write “Dear Rodeo,” it came out in less than an hour.
“I was hard to address, it was was hard to address that I had failed, I felt like I had failed at something. Even though I think we all know that God kinda directs your life how he wants to and I think I’m here for a reason, it was still hard to write about. but whenever myself and Dan Cough sat down to write this song, it literally was written in 45 minutes. It was the easiest thing to do because all I had to do was talk about my life and the love that I had lost.”
Back in 2018, Cody shared a live performance video from his sold-out show in front of nearly 75,000 at NRG Stadium during the Houston Rodeo.
Cody has also released this killer acoustic version.
