Celebrating the new album a little too hard, eh?
Jamey Johnson recently dropped his first new album in 14 years with Midnight Gasoline, his sixth studio album of his career and his first since signing with Warner Music Nashville.
But over the weekend, Johnson found himself in trouble just outside of Nashville.
According to Newschannel 5, the country superstar was arrested in Williamson County on charges of drug possession and speeding. The Williamson County District Attorney’s Office reportedly confirmed the arrest, but would not confirmed the charges.
The Tennessee Highway Patrol released a statement on the singer’s arrest:
“We can confirm that Jamey Johnson was arrested on Sunday, Nov. 17 in Williamson County. The incident is still under investigation.”
The court set his bond at $500,000, which is a pretty high bond for a drug possession charge, so we’ll have to wait and see what he was alleged to be in possession of – and how much.
(Update: After publication, Newschannel 5 updated their report to state that the bond was $5,000. Whiskey Riff has submitted a request to the Williamson County Sheriff and is working to obtain the correct figure).
The singer recently discussed his previous battle with alcohol addiction, telling Billboard that it nearly took his life:
“I barely survived. Alcohol was an incendiary way of destroying myself. Everything just went up in flames and you couldn’t put the fire out, you just had to wait for it all to come to ashes and then try to rebuild when you get done. And it seemed to me like I owed myself a better way to live than that.”
He also recently released a single called “Sober” that discussed his previous struggles with drugs and alcohol, after revealing that he hadn’t had a drop of alcohol since 2011 and had stopped smoking weed in 2015:
“If the body is a temple
I worked hard to keep the steeple
Spinning around
Then one day I heard the preacher say,
“Lord, it’s hard staying
Sober in this town…”
Johnson has credited the late, great Toby Keith with inspiring him to release new music for the first time in 14 years, revealing that the two were working on a song together towards the end of Toby’s life:
“We were working on a song toward the end. I called him up one night and shared a few lines with him, and he added a few lines and we turned around and wrote this whole verse. We laughed a bunch, and it was one of those that I thought, ‘This is great. There’s gonna come a time I’ll get out to Oklahoma or maybe he and I will meet up somewhere at a golf tournament, but we’ll have some time sit down and finish this thing up.’”
Well obviously they never had time to finish it, and that served as a wakeup call to Johnson that he still had the passion to release new music of his own:
“The writing was already coming back to me, piece by piece, but I still didn’t have any ambitions on making a record. 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.”
Amen. Country music needs more Jamey Johnson – and maybe his latest run-in with the law will serve as an inspiration for even more new music.
Of course we’ll have updates for you as more comes out about the arrest.
