It doesn’t get much better than Cody Canada talking about how they got the band back together.
Ahead of their sold-out reunion shows in Oklahoma and Texas, the Cross Canadian Ragweed frontman stopped by the Whiskey Riff Raff podcast to talk about what led them to the reunion and how that all came to be, being a huge part of the rise of the Red Dirt scene, his career in music after Ragweed ended, raising kids who have the music bug and much more.
It was a wonderful conversation with a man who is quite literally a Red Dirt Legend. He’s too humble to say it himself (that was mentioned in the podcast), but Cody Canada truly played a role in popularizing and spreading the sub-genre of Red Dirt all throughout the country music world and beyond.
One could argue that Cross Canadian Ragweed, the band that Cody acts as the frontman for, helped pioneer the Red Dirt movement more than anyone or anything else. That’s why it felt like such a loss when the group disbanded back in 2010. That being said, country music fans rejoiced when – after over a decade of no signs of CCR getting back together – the band announced their reunion in September of 2024.
How did that all play out though? Well that’s exactly what we asked Cody Canada, and as he described it, there were a couple of things that happened in his life that sparked a desire to get back together with his friends and bring Cross Canadian Ragweed back to life:
“There was a building process. 2020 was pretty devastating for most everybody. But it was a lot of thinking time for me… reflecting, missing my friends, and I know they missed us too. We lost my wife’s dad in 2021-2022, and we went to New York.
We went to see a metal show: Ice Nine Kills. We were in the Hulu Theater underneath Madison Square Garden. And I thought… I Googled it. How many people does Madison Square Garden hold? Eddie Vedder said you’re nobody until you play Madison Square Garden.”
Thinking about the capacity of “The Mecca” evidently got Canada reminiscing about the old days, when Cross Canadian Ragweed would play in front of thousands and thousands of people. Could a reunion show sell out a 19,000 seat arena like Madison Square Garden? That’s exactly what started bouncing around in Cody Canada’s head:
“I thought, ‘What if? What if we did a destination, one show?’ And I think we could do 19,000 people. So we got back to the hotel bar that night and my wife was like, ‘Goals, who’s got goals?’ That’s how she works. And she came to me and I was teary-eyed. She goes, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I said, ‘I think I’m ready (to get the band back together).'”
After years of separation, the idea to get the band back together was born out of a couple of moments… just like that.
As Canada explained, it felt like the stars were aligning and the time was right to set aside differences and past squabbles and come together as a group. And as he tells the story, it didn’t take a whole lot of convincing when it came to getting everyone on board. It was more just a matter of keeping things a secret until the time was right to reveal to the world that Cross Canadian Ragweed was BACK:
“I was ready to put down that discomfort. It wasn’t a great breakup, but nobody died… nobody killed anybody. We were just overworked at 30 years old with brand new babies on the ground. We should have said nicer things, and I’m a very stubborn person, and so are the rest of the guys. So we just didn’t talk for 15 years.
We started the ball rolling very secretively. Our booking agent and our accountant got together with the other two guys and said, ‘What do you all think?’ And one of the other guys said, ‘I’ve been sober for 10 years waiting for this.’ That’s a green light. So we all signed NDA’s.. I 100% admit that I can’t keep my mouth shut when I’m excited about something. So we signed NDA’s and made it a surprise, and we slowly started unveiling it.”
And when they started slowly peeling back the curtain, fans went nuts.
Their reunion was one of the biggest stories of 2024, and Canada admitted that he even underestimated the demand of their loyal fanbase. Remember, as he stood inside Madison Square Garden, he was just hoping for one show with around 19,000 to 20,000 people in the stands.
Their initial reunion shows were announced to be played in Oklahoma State’s Boone Pickens Stadium, which has a capacity over 53,000. The demand was so feverishly high, they had to add three additional nights of shows (and another encore concert in Texas):
“To our surprise, I thought we were going to sell half of that stadium out and we ended up selling out four nights… I don’t think if we did this five years ago, it would have worked the way it did. Everyone is just in a better headspace now and everybody’s grown up and missing each other. Honestly, it took one text as a group and it really felt like, ‘Okay, we’re good.'”
Needless to say, it’s great that Cross Canadian Ragweed is back together again in 2025. You can hear Cody Canada talk all about it in the latest episode of the Whiskey Riff Raff podcast:
