Cody Jinks' 'Change The Game' showcases shrewdly focused country defined by outlaw desires
For most of his country music career, Fort Worth suburbs-native Cody Jinks has leaned six feet deep into being a lighting-riding cowboy from hell as heavy metal albums by Metallica and Pantera heavily guided his aesthetic and art.
However, on his March 22 album "Change The Game," he has evolved, over a dozen releases into his career, into a soulful artist and progressive-minded independent label chief carrying the weight of his music, friends, and extended family on his shoulders.
'A lucky blessing'
Via his partnership with record distributor The Orchard, Jinks' half-decade-old indie label, Late August Records, is now a nationally and globally-reaching imprint.
About having unprecedented control over owning and operating his destiny, Jinks tells The Tennessean that he's more confident about every aspect of his work, with its expansion falling more into his hands than ever before.
He's also, for the first time in many years, able to embrace psychological therapy and freedom from alcoholic and chemical dependency. Thus, he's living as much in pursuing mainstream country acclaim as he is for his wife and children.
"At present, my career is a lucky blessing," Jinks continues. "Being [more fully] present in all aspects of my life feels [amazing]."
Album tracks like "Sober Thing" and "The Working Man" arrive as the most fully fleshed-out reflections on the "hard and fast" life he's lived for two decades at the intersection of country's neon-glowing outlaw highways and rock 'n roll's spot-lit underbelly.
"My band and I were ready to leave the music business and return to driving forklifts and working in oil fields. At the time, it felt like turning wrenches on a rig sucked less than music did."
Finesse and power-driven countrified rock
For Jinks, "Change The Game" required him to strip his music back to writing songs meant for honky-tonk stages but promoted to the heights of the industry.
These aren't honky-tonks of the brightly lit and Western swing dancing variety, though.
The gospel and soul-inspired song "Outlaws & Mustangs" arrived after watching the Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson film "The Highwaymen" during COVID's quarantine. Tracks like the previously-mentioned "The Working Man," plus "I Can't Complain" and "A Few More Ghosts" arrived while briefly living and recording 15 minutes northwest of the Grand Ole Opry at multi-instrumentalist and producer Jordan Hamlin's woodland and secluded MOXE studios.
The album was formed via late-night conversations in the woods about using ghosts to exorcise demons and the gambles that artists make for success. Life and death are the values that the metaphorical house places against them (and of course, the house always wins).
"I went from driving around in a van with a dozen stinky guys and doing acoustic shows to sitting on a giant tour bus alone with my equipment in a semi-trailer truck. [Revisiting] the basics of where my career began required compartmentalizing where I am as an artist-turned-business from where I am as a guy singing onstage," Jinks continues.
"This record is a fun one because I'm no longer blaming myself for how hard my career choice is, and the mix of finesse and power in the music reflects that," he said. "If you were to blend Black Label Society with George Strait, that's where my band and I [currently exist]. We're proud to use the same styles we used to defend ourselves [barnstorming in blues bars and honkytonks] to attract bigger and broader crowds."
A prideful legacy
About those crowds, Jinks notes that in the modern music industry, having a band of road-ready musicians playing sounds spanning old-time folk and radio-ready country and rock is more important than ever.
"Hearing a snippet of a song on TikTok isn't the same as playing for four hours in the middle of nowhere. Playing anywhere from 70-200 tour dates a year is how we're all going to be earning our incomes moving forward," Jinks notes.
When asked what "Change The Game" means in the context of both the perception of his music and his life in general, Jinks offers a broad but pointed statement.
"I'm in a good place where I've taken control of everything and can be personally responsible not just for my life but for my longtime friends and [colleagues] on the road. Achieving a focused balance in all aspects of my life has allowed the culture my music and tours have created to become an even greater source of pride for myself and everyone else."
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Cody Jinks' 'Change The Game' showcases shrewdly focused country defined by outlaw desires