In my opinion, if you buy a ticket to see me you're buying experience. People don't want to see me stand there and play guitar, they want to party with us.

It's something that Cory Morrow said to me a long time ago - "Don't ever forget why Nashville is Nashville. The Opry is there for a reason. Country music lives there. Don't be bitter. And don't ever treat Texas or Nashville like either one isn't important."

My publishing deal is out of Nashville, my management is split between Nashville and Texas, but we are also getting to play eight other states as well as Canada and Europe this year. I don't want to pigeon-hole myself. When people ask me if I'm Texas or Nashville, I tell them I am just Cody Johnson.

All I can focus on right now is playing that record as best we can each night on stage, and that every article or radio spot that I do gives the best depiction of what we're trying to say with this record. The next door will open when it's time to open, and hopefully I'll be lead into the right one.

I absolutely believe that what you sing and how you act when you're in this position, should be the definition of who you are and where your heart and character stands.

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.

It's really helped a ton in the sense that we get to reach people who don't normally know our music. At least once a night at a show someone will come up to the merch table after the show and say they've never heard of me but they saw me on Troubadour, TX, and it reminds me that I'm not Elvis and anything I can do to get my name out there is beneficial in every way.