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 think my brand of country music is that's been influenced by not just the rough-stock rodeo side or Ted Nugent's "let's get crazy style", but also the stand-up and sing style's like George Strait and Merle Haggard, and also the wild side of Chris Ledoux

The people that have looked out for me and helped to steer me in the right direction, I just can't thank them enough. So, the drive, a lot of times it just comes down to looking around at the people who love and believe in you and realizing that you owe it to them. Even if I have a bad attitude on a certain occasion, I owe it to all these people around me to just come out and drive, push, and try to make this thing the best that I can

Obviously the way that I talk and the way that I dress all has to do with the way that I was raised. As far as the drive, when I was 18 or 21 years old, everything I did was because I wanted to go play music simply because that's what I wanted to do.

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 think that no matter what you do, whether you rodeo, whether you work in an office, you work in the oilfield or you play music for a living, eventually if you do enough of it, the devil in the back of your head tries to turn it into work. You have to find new ways to make it new and make it exciting to keep that drive there.

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.