For Texas country star Cody Jinks, his latest album – the fiery and rough-around-the-edges, yet poignant and sorrowful In My Blood – is a liberation of sorts. Not of sound or scope, but of self.
It comes from the eternal quest to find balance within the body, mind, heart, and soul of a singer-songwriter, one trying to understand just what it means to be human in the modern, chaotic world – which is why “Better Than the Bottle” was purposely placed as the opening track on the record.
“Been layin’ things down one habit at a time/ Never thought we’d get old…” Jinks rumbles through the melancholic number. “Now we’re damn sure tryin’/ And makin’ the most of the time that we have left.”
With his sobriety in recent years, Jinks has been taking a hard look at what he sees in the mirror. It’s not about having regrets or cringing at one’s past. Instead, it’s taking personal accountability and professional inventory of the wisdom gained from your existence in real time, all while the calendar on the wall seemingly changes faster and faster each year.
Now 44, Jinks is more focused on what’s just around the corner than continually looking back over his shoulder at the ups and downs along his life’s journey. It’s about a clear head, a keen focus on what matters most – family, friends, fellowship, the freedom to create and perform.
It sounds like you’re in a really good place right now.
Cody Jinks: Yeah. Well, whenever you’re a late bloomer like me, it takes you [til] later in life to figure things out. It’s a practice. I mean, obviously the last couple years I’ve been trying to work on myself, work on my family. I think it’s helped a lot creatively, as well. None of it’s been easy. It’s not like anything’s ever peaches and cream or roses or whatever. The music business is tough, and if it was easy, everybody would do it. I spent much of my marriage while I was on the road. Having been off the road the last four or five years, [not touring] as much as I used to be, I’ve learned that being a great husband and father is even harder than being in the music business.
And it all ties into everything though, because that creative side is also a big balancing act, where you need that outlet in your life.
Well, not only the creative outlet, it’s that I used to think that I was writing songs that are being vulnerable and they actually came across as being angry. There was an edge to [the older songs], where this new record really sounds like a guy that’s 45 years old that got tired of the fighting system. You get tired of just fighting everything. And I’ve obviously been fighting the music business my entire career. It’s kind of what I built my thing on.
And, at the same time, I had started bringing the guy in the music business home – that’s who my wife and kids had to live with, as well. So, we’ve been correcting some stuff like that. I’ve been getting some really vulnerable songs out of it. You never stop coming of age. No matter how old you get – when you’re in your teenage years, when you get in your forties – life is a continual movement, man. And if you are not moving forward, you’re going backwards. So, vulnerability is a strength to an extent.
I was actually going to speak to that track specifically, because that was the second-to-last song written for this record. I wrote it with a friend, Tom McElvain. We both quit smoking cigarettes. We quit doing recreational drugs. We’ve written together a lot over the years. I’ve got several songs with his name on it, but [“Better Than the Bottle”] was a real conversation.
He came over one morning, and in 20-plus years of friendship, it was the first time we had ever been around each other stone cold sober. We were talking about how we used to live versus how we’re trying to do things now and who we’re trying to be now for ourselves and for the people that we love, the friends that we lost along the way that didn’t pull out of it. We’re old enough to have friends that have died from it now. That song made its way to the first slot because it was everywhere – that song’s true. Tom was over here that morning in January and you talk about two grown men in their 40s and 50s just laying all out, teary eyes. Dude, we fucked a bunch of shit up in our lives and there’s a lot. At this point, we’re trying to atone for a lot of things.
That’s one of the beauties about getting older – perspective. There’s this kind of weird intrinsic value to hitting this age, where you still have mobility and your wits about you, but you also got some road miles on the tread.
[Laughs]. Yeah. At 40, I tell people the “check engine” light comes on. It’s not usually that serious, but you gotta change some things. It might be time to trade in the Lamborghini and get an F-150, slow down a little bit.
You have a family, as well, with these personal responsibilities and people that want you around for a long time.
That was really the big player. I quit smoking for my kids. I’d still probably be smoking cigarettes if it weren’t for my kids. I quit drinking for myself and for everybody around me. But, the cigarettes, I finally got that licked about five, six years ago. That was the one my doctor said, “Your kids are gonna thank you.”
This year also marks the 10th anniversary of your breakout album [Adobe Sessions]. I don’t know if you’ve been thinking a lot about the last 10 years, who that person was when you broke into the national scene and then who you are right now.
[I’m] a lot more patient [these days]. It’s been 10 years, [and back then] we’d been [playing for] 10 years by the time that breakout record came out. [I] still have hunger in this business, I just put in a smarter, more calculated manner these days.
I also found it interesting that you’ve mentioned Ray Bradbury as an inspiration for In My Blood. Can you speak to why that is and what he represents for you?
Yeah, absolutely. The focal point of the record, it’s a travel life, right? That’s where the record takes you, on this up-and-down journey of life. And, in that life, in everyone’s life, every fork you come to in the road, you take one way or the other, which leads you to another fork in the road. By the time you’re done, you’ve taken a bunch of forks, you’ve taken a bunch of different roads, and hopefully you took more good forks than you did the bad.
We planted a Ray Bradbury-inspired song (“Something Wicked This Way Comes”) right smack dab in the middle of this damn record, because it was the perfect frickin’ spot for it. It’s the only song that was snuck in the record that wasn’t really based on my life. If you’ve read the [Bradbury] book Something Wicked This Way Comes, it’s part of a series called the Green Town Trilogy. They’re all really good [books], but that one stands out. It’s my favorite. It’s a brilliant book. It’s good and evil.
We all have the same wants, needs, desires. What’s good for us? What’s not good for us? Is it good for me if I try to do this to obtain this or achieve this or to be this or to look like this? And those are the decisions that we make every single day. I had just read the book and I came up with this really badass little blues riff. It feels like a carnival ride.
That also plays into one of the things about getting older, which is that you choose to keep moving forward. When you’re younger, you might feel the pressure. And as you get older you realize there’s a lot of things you don’t need to worry about.
Yes. My parents had told me, “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” And then, when you’re at the age we’re at, the big stuff you thought when you were 20, 25 years old, you’re [now] like, “Well, that’s small stuff.” And then, by the time you get to our parents’ age, they’re looking at stuff we’re worried about in our 40s and they’re thinking, “Oh, that’s small stuff.” We’re gonna get to the point, hopefully, where we’re looking at [things] going, “Ah, man, why was I worried about that?”
Case in point, the other night we had a very mild water leak in the upstairs [of our house]. My daughter came downstairs at two o’clock in the morning and there was dripping on a custom turntable in our living room. This was nobody’s fault. And I got upset about it. We stopped the leak. We dried the water up. I woke up the next morning and there’s flooding in Central Texas and there’s like a hundred families who have lost their children. Let’s not sweat the small stuff, man. Some people got real problems.
There’s probably a lot of weight that’s come off your shoulders in the last couple years, whether it’s personal or professional. Obviously life’s a continued journey. Whether you want to participate in it or not, that’s up to everybody on their own. But, it feels like you’re kind of leaning into life in a really good way right now.
Yeah, I’m living it more, as opposed to getting up and butting heads with [life] every day.
How do you square that with the outlaw image that the media puts on you? Because there’s stereotypes that get equated into that. At your core, you’re a singer-songwriter, you’re a country musician.
You know, my whole career, they’ve been calling me [an “outlaw”]. Look, I know they need an “outlaw,” whatever. I’ve never called myself an outlaw. That was something the media called me, and I just agreed. I’ve kind of gone with it. It’s okay. It’s easy to call me that. I’m not an outlaw, dude. I’m a punk.
And underneath all of that is still your punk rock and metal blood.
Yeah. It’s too big a piece of me. It’s just who I am. It’s the way I run my organization. It’s a family. It’s us against the world. We don’t belong with anybody, so we belong to everybody.
Photo courtesy of The Oriel.
