I'd love to do a live record, I'd love to do an acoustic record, I'm already thinking about what I may want to do with the next studio record.

I just continue to be myself and give this thing over to the good lord, just do my best every night and pretend like it's just any other job.

It wasn't just Willie and Waylon, there were a lot of influences there. The coolest thing about this, is after getting to listen back to all these mixes is realizing that this record is like a bag of Skittles; every time you pull something out, it's a different flavor. But they're all Skittles. They're all Cody Johnson.

I try to make sure that, when I'm writing, I don't put too much Cody in it. But I don't want to lose it either.

I really think it's just the people you put around you. For instance, you mentioned "Kiss Goodbye," that was a song that was brought to me by Dan Couch and Dale Oliver. They had already started writing it without. They had put together this whole demo of music with no lyrics.

As far as the persona, I'm true to myself. Not because I'm arrogant, but I'm true to myself because I believe that you have to stand for something. When you start sacrificing that, even if it's just a line in a song or something you say on the mic at a show, or the way you treat someone when you see them out in public, that all reflects on who you are.

I think everything moving forward will just be instinctual, like we'll know exactly which doors to walk through when they open.