Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Cody Ellen's podcast. This is Cody Cast. Can
you hear me? I got you? How you doing I
mean laying after the mic a little bit. How's it
going good man? How you doing good? I'm glad we're
keeping our social distance. Like I'm right outside of downtown.
I know you're over on music Row, so we're like
two miles away. We're keeping more than six feet We're covered.
(00:21):
So congratulations man on the brand new album. It's so good.
You know, I'm a fan. So I've been waiting for
like so many fans for a little while here to
get the new music. So what did the break sort
of how did that help in a positive way to
influence the music? I think it helped me refocus um
(00:42):
and think about and set out with some direction and
conviction in terms of what I wanted to say and
how I wanted to go about making the record instead
of just you know, rushing out something that halfheartedly made
just because I didn't want to want the momentum to
slow down. Know, Um, I wasn't quite in the same
(01:03):
place that I was three years prior, after two years
uh of of touring. UM, not quite in the right
head space to make a record. I guess you could
say so, Um, I needed to. I needed to be
thinking clearly before I started putting words on paper and
singing and singing the songs and putting it out into
the world. It's been worth the weight because, um, there's
(01:23):
so many great songs on this album. Um, south side
is the title of it, So why call it south side? Yes?
South side is reflects the curb and the country and
urban influences in my music. And I guess in my
and who I am, you know the side of town
where typically there's you'll find a cultural melting pot, people,
(01:45):
different places and all kind of um mixed up in
one in the same neighborhood. And uh, and that's I
feel I'm from that place. Let's talk about the single
right now, Hard to Forget It. H's so interesting because
you go back and pick up a hook from a
ninety three song from Webb Pierce um, and you sample
(02:06):
that in the song. So first, why I go back
to that song and the fifties. I've wanted to sample
an old country song for a while. I've I've experimented
with songs from the eighties and nineties, UM and never
quite found the right fit. And I walked into a
co write about eight months ago and uh Luke Laird,
as a songwriter in town, had made this sample with
(02:29):
with the Web, a pier song, and he played it
for me, um, and he and I both have similar
tastes in music. Um, and it just it just hit
me as being the perfect song, uh to to sample
and I was inspired by it and knew I wanted
to write a song to that track immediately. And uh,
I had to wait to find the right idea because
(02:50):
I didn't have until like we had the right idea
that that day, but it all sort of came together
over the next couple of months. It's such a great
play on words. I think to playing Hard to Forget. Um,
where did the idea of that sort of playing words
come from? And in the writing, yeah, that came from.
The idea came from a co write from a while back,
like maybe a year and a half ago or so,
(03:13):
and um with Shane, Josh and I and we we
were we were we were working on this idea hard
Hard to Forget and um it um it it never
really turned into anything. So you know, there's lots of
songs that will start that never really turned into anything.
And they sort of get pushed into a pile of
(03:34):
unfinished songs, and this was one of those songs that
was just sitting around unfinished. I just needed, we needed
to completely start over. I wanted to be honest, because
it was a good idea. We just didn't we just
didn't nail it. So essentially, that's what I did. I
kind of went back and plucked this idea out of
that pile um got rid of everything else other than
the idea, and where we started fresh on it. And
(03:56):
when it comes to forgetting, how good is your memory?
Because I I'm really ill remember your face forever, but
I'm I'm not really good with names. Uh so how
about you, Like, Yeah, I can remember faces forever. I'll
know if I've met you before, if I've seen you somewhere,
But I'm bad with names. I mean, even with people
in the business. Sometimes I'm like, there's some people will
come up, Yeah, and you get this all the time too.
(04:16):
They'll come up and say hi, and you know that
you know them from the business or whatever, but I
couldn't tell you their name to save my life. You're right,
you mean so many people, but you don't really have
a chance to have more than just a quick conversation.
So you know them because you met, but you don't
really know do you remember like random factoids like random
pop culture things, or you you have a great member
(04:37):
because I've sent with what you do. I've seen you
remember remember like just the way that you do your show,
like for you to remember kind of what we were
talking about, what we are talking about sometimes when you
have to start over, you have to remember the intros.
Like that's impressive. But I my memory is about like that.
I don't know if you've seen that movie, uh, fifty
first Dates. Um, yeah, they called ten second Tom. I
(04:58):
think it's by after about ten say it is, it's gone.
Um some of it sticks and in stays in my memory.
My long term memories a lot better than my short
term memory. Accused of being a little, a little flighty
since I was young. Um, I remember remember going I'd
go hunting with buddies, back with go duck hunt when
I was you know, fifteen, six, ten years old, and
(05:20):
two out of five times we'd go, I'd leave my
gun in the truck or my bakeball glove and baseball
practice I'd leave it, saying I would just leaving stuff
everywhere all the time, So my memory has always been bad.
But you remember your anniversary for Hannah's sake, I hope right. Uh. Fortunately,
my um good buddy, my tour manager, got married the
(05:42):
day after I got married, not the same year, but
same date. Uh. So uh he hits me up and
reminded me every year back to kin folks for at
because I wanted to. It's six number one, by the way,
for you, So congratulations on that huge uh. And it
was the first song I you know, obviously you've trickled
(06:03):
out a few songs from the album over the past
couple of years, but um, it was the first real
um slugger to go to to the top of the charts.
So were you a little nervous about sort of the
comeback of that one at first? A little bit? Um,
you know, I worried, you know that people expect me
to do something different or unique every time, and um,
that one was pretty down in the middle. So um,
(06:26):
you know, I obviously didn't want people to be disappointed
in it, but it was fun and lighthearted and and
not too much of a strife from too far off
a straight from what I've done in the past, So um, yeah,
I hope people like it. Well. People love Body Like
a Back Road, And um, I think because that was
such a you know, insane crossover smash. And by the way,
what did it like to think of that song is
(06:47):
sort of being like an instant classic now like it's
gonna be around forever. It's wild, It's it's definitely wild.
Um did you expect that or I mean, I obviously
don't know. You don't always know where music is gonna go.
But did you expect it was to be so gigantic?
I didn't know. Um, I hoped it would do well.
It was. You're now looking back, I've done similar songs,
(07:08):
and it's I think it's familiar for our fans to
hear me singing from that perspective or singing a song
like that because kin folks are similar to that even
hard to forget. But at the time I had not
really done I mean, House Party was fun and lighthearted,
but I had not really done a song like Body
Like a Back Road. Um. And it was really simple
and straightforward, um and playful. But uh yeah, it was
(07:29):
just the perfect time to put that song out. Another
track on the album is called breaking Up What's Easy
in the nineties, which I mean obviously without social media.
Let's just say that certainly is the case. Um, but
tell me about this song and sort of where you
wanted to go with it. Yeah, I'm I mean, I'm
I'm just old enough. I grew up with the internet,
but I'm kind of the first interation to do that.
(07:49):
So I'm just old enough to remember, you know, telephone
hanging on the wall. Um. And uh, but also came up,
you know, in my my teenage years, in my twenties,
at a time when social media, social media was getting popular. So, um,
I think there's a for folks, my agres a. We
have a unique vantage point and um, you know it
(08:10):
allows for allowed for me to speak on a song
like that, an idea like that. Talk to me real
quick about boundaries when you're making, um, any music, because
you're a guy who is known to color outside the
lines and try new sounds, and you certainly you get
a lot of that on the new album. Well, at
the same time, also keeping to what we know that
(08:31):
you do best, um, being yourself, are there moments where
you go Okay, that's too far? Um Yeah, not necessarily
on the record, but in the last I don't know,
three years I've written songs and experimented with different writers
and producers, even um where I did feel that way,
like I, you know, start working on something and say, okay,
(08:53):
this is this is just getting too far outside of
my lane. But you know, you poke around outside of
the box hoping to land on And that's how the
first album work worked out. If you went back and
listened to some of those songs that we wrote back
before really honing in on Monavallo, um, they were certainly
more experimental and a little too far, I would say. Uh.
The tour has obviously been postponed because of the coronavirus stuff. Um,
(09:16):
so I'm excited to see it because it's gonna happen.
You know, all this is nuts right now, but um,
once we get back to some normalcy. So what can
you tell us about sort of what you're working on
When it comes to the live show that's coming. Well,
we're not able to rehearse it obviously because we can't
even get in small groups. But um, you know I've
started to just map out set list and think about
(09:40):
the show a little bit, you know, working on the
lights and the production already already been making decisions on that.
Tour manager and production manager, they've really been working hard
on just putting all the pieces together, because man, it's
it's coming. When you putting on a show at at
the level we're hoping to be putting on these shows,
this summer gets complicated, and it takes a lot of
(10:01):
brain power, It takes a lot of hands. It takes
a lot of a lot of hard work to make
it happen. So a lot of work has been done
behind the scenes. But I've started also put put my
head and wrap my head around the set and uh,
you know what what we wanted to look like and
how we wanted to feel. So it's toubaly coming together,
even though I can't get together to rehearse it yet.
What track are you most proud of on the new project?
(10:23):
Probably hard to forget because it that song is what
I was trying to do with this record for a
little while, and and and I go too far one
way or too far the other way, and I couldn't
quite pull it all together. And that song does it,
I think better than any of the song on the record.
When it comes to this show again, we're talking about
the coronavirus crisis a little bit. Um, what have you
been doing to fill the time? Obviously you can do
(10:46):
a lot of promotion over the next week by phone
and by these you know, video conferencing or whatever. Um,
what else have you been doing? Like, how are you
coping with it? Well, my wife, Hannah, she was in
Israel for two weeks before, right before um things got
really crazy, so um, you know we were. I was
worried for a minute there she might not they might
(11:07):
not let her back in the country. But she made
it back and and uh, and then I was riding
for a few days, uh, working with a new artist.
Um before you know, they kind of put the kabash
on us getting together, even small groups. And then Uh,
so we hadn't had a chance really to catch up.
So I've been been spending some time with her at
(11:27):
the house. I've got these Uh he's a little puppy,
this bird dog that I've been working with, trying him
a little bit. And uh was going from some walks,
getting out in the woods, enjoying the weather, get finally
warming up, rain, going away. Yeah, um, copper copper, I
just got a golden myself, who's oh cool? Yeah, a
(11:48):
little teddy he's awesome, but he's also in that puppy stage,
so it's like every days. Yeah, eventually he's gonna be like,
you know, fat and lazy and um, which I look
forward to that. Just a dog that sits around a
little bit more round. He'll be like me when I'm
fat and lazy. He'll be fat and lazy. So I'm
okay with it. Um, are you guys watching movies at all?
(12:10):
A lot of people are binge watching TV right now?
Are you guys like movie or TV people not generally? Um,
have my phone and a little iPad, so I'll pull
up YouTube. I really watched YouTube more than anything else.
Nowadays you can kind of cover everything on there. But uh,
I've definitely gone down a rabbit hole with with some
with all my you know, with a few c I
(12:31):
A conspiracies, uh like some Um, I did The Tiger
King and this new show called The Outsider. Uh, Ozark's
about to come my house. I'll probably watching that. Are
you I'm finding myself doing like a lot of chores
around the house, vacuuming, I'm doing more laundry than I
feel like I've ever done before. So, um, are you
finding yourself also? Just sort of like focusing on the
house or doing any chores there. Yeah, I've probably helped
(12:54):
out around the house more than a half of months,
and I'm sure hand I appreciates it. I think she does.
What chore are you actually good at? I mean, you know,
the simple ones like tech trash, I'm here to there,
um uh just cleaning up, picking up. I can pick
up things on the floor easy. You know. I'm not
good with the vacuum cleaner or the uh the mop
(13:17):
of those kinds of things. Yeah, you don't strike me
as a guy who does dishes. You're right. I've been
trying to help though. Let a lot of people watching
this show the masked singer, and there's been some speculation
Sam about you being the rhino. Uh have you heard this?
And what's about it? What's your reaction? What can you say? No? Um,
(13:40):
I don't want to ruin it for the uh for
the mystery uh, but um for the producers of the show.
But now that's not me. All right, So there you
have it, folks. Um, all right, thanks Sam for the time.
South Side of the album out on Friday, April three
day safe same to you and wash your hands. Yeah, Well,
Dave Brother and good luck to next week. We'll let's
(14:01):
spread the word. Thank you, man, I appreciate you. Thanks
for listening to Cody Cast. Follow Cody right now at
Cody Allen on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Care Cody on
hundreds of radio stations every day, and watch Cody on
twenty this weekend Saturday and Sunday at n a m.
Eight Central on CMT. Bye for now,