For the past two years, unless you have been living under a rock, or you just don’t care for Country Music you have heard the name Cody Jinks And The Tone Deaf Hippies. For the last ten years this man Mr. Cody Jinks has been tirelessly traveling the country playing his Country Music for the masses totally off the radar of MOST of the mainstream media sources.
I have been covering him for years as well as a few of the websites out there, and this past weekend one of them wrote a pretty nice piece on him….but I didn’t see him there? I’m also not aware of any of his representatives were there. I went to the Saturday show, the only reason I didn’t attend the Friday show was because of my job situation at the time, I was previously on second shift and couldn’t have Friday off. I now work third shift and Friday night is my Saturday night now. For another take on the weekend I’m sure you can find a good review of this show on Country Music Armadillo.
According to my studies I am Flocker member number 2751..so I heard many people asking this weekend, WHAT IS A Flocker? And WHAT significance does this term have with Cody Jinks playing at the Ryman? Well I’ll be completely honest with you as a music website, I endorse MANY groups and scenes from so many genres of music it’s uncanny. Also pretty much to HELL with genres, it’s just a term I use to keep up with things. I feature music I love and ignore music I don’t.
The Flockers are a fan group of THOUSANDS of like minded people that belong to a group called the Flockers. It was started by a man named Mr. William Higgins and if you click on the name it will take you to my interview with him. I had the chance to feature him during my side article features for the Kansas City based festival Tumbleweed.
Now the original name for the fans of Mr. Cody Jinks And The Tone Deaf Hippies are called Black Sheep taken from one of his earlier albums, however the Flocker nation rose to surpass everything and become more prominent of a fan club than ANY artist I could possibly name besides Jimmy Buffet’s Parrotheads. I’m telling you I WATCH things in the music realms, I SEE EVERYTHING, I’m WELL trained to notice things. This group has raised over Sixty Thousand Dollars for charity and self admitted by Cody Jinks last night ‘He Couldn’t Do It By Himself”.
During Saturday night’s show he said ” You know for many years there were a large number of suits and ties that wanted nothing to do with me. Well, I darn sure bet they are watching me now”. It was absolutely heartwarming to witness him introduce his family to his other family of fans.
Mr. Cody and the many artists that you could construe as his ilk are the prime examples of the American Dream…hard work and determination can very well lead to success. I mean it’s TRUE Mr. Cody didn’t achieve all this by himself because WE made him this big, but without his hard work and music there would be nothing for us to love. He damn sure didn’t get to this pinnacle he is currently at from radio play and CMT features, he got here from YOU buying HIS music….and YOU THERE that is wearing his shirts, and YOU there reading THIS article..THANK YOU for your support. However on the other side of the coin you have Mr. Cody himself that has kept it real for all these years, and stood behind the music he plays. He’s NEVER stooped or bowed to any power that is or trend, and he’s not acting like he is anything special or better than anyone else. He’s pretty much just a Country Music and Heavy Metal nut like me that happened to have real music that a LOT of adult people relate to…and is on his way to surpass the fake, packaged people that do not.
Right now I shall be writing MY account of this weekend, now I want to point out at this juncture that I wasn’t in the auditorium during the Ward Davis set, my constituent Mr. Joshua Wallace was. I’ll be adding this later on to this article, if you don’t mind. I covered Mr. Ward Davis last weekend and you can read that HERE from Bowling Green, I also covered Mr. Cody YEARS AGO from that same venue and you can read that HERE.
You know the LAST TIME I went to see Mr. Cody Jinks in Nashville it was at 3rd And Lindsley and I covered that show too, you can read about that HERE. He was featured on Music City Roots and many other places. The ONLY mainstream source I can mention that has featured Mr. Cody was the Conan O Brien show on late night television.
So Friday night Mr. Joshua Wallace and I hung out at Layla’s on Lower Broadway to catch up with Miss Sarah Gayle Meechwho was playing with a championship lineup tonight. Miss Sarah has always been one of my personal favorites down here and pretty much LIVES in the Honky Tonks of town playing her songs from her two albums, produced by the powerful Mr. Andy Gibson.
Her set included covers like “Little Sister” and the some “Luckenbach Texas” that was made famous by Waylon. However the original songs are what I truly love to come down and see Miss Sarah perform. She commands audiences from all over with songs like “old White Boots” and “All I Want Is A Honky Tonk”. I just had a wonderful time being the DD as she played songs like “Watermelon And Root Beer” from her latest album “Tennessee Love Song” and the song called ‘Get It Over”.
I attended the Saturday show at the Ryman and first up was the Texas gal herself Sunny Sweeney. I have had the blessed opportunity to become friends with her over the years, and to be honest I’d do anything for her. She’s been out there busting her ass for just as long as Mr. Cody, battled personal demons and overcame HUGE obstacles to get to where she is now. Mr. Cody has five albums to her four, however I myself have been following her longer since 2007.
I watched her every step of the way, and stuck with her no matter what she’s done. This past August she played her 50th Opry performance, and she holds dear the Opry traditions. In fact I’d go so far as to say she holds them dear to her heart more passionately than many of it’s current members. MANY of it’s current members could care less about playing it unless they need to promote a new album or such.
The Opry management is TIRED of hearing from me and others regarding inducting her as an Opry memeber IF YOU ARE READING THIS CALL OR EMAIL AND MAKE THIS HAPPEN. I mean don’t YOU WANT your kids to be able to grow up to call her a Country Music Legend? Is she NOT filling their shoes?
She focused a LOT off her new album “Trophy” tonight (Look for that on my 2017 Top 50….um…look on the TOP 5)…oh did I leak that out already? She opened up the show tonight with “Better Bad Idea”. You know I could easily ascertain the influence of Stevie Nicks on her lately. Just little things I notice about her demeanor on stage, Miss Sunny has a magnetic stage presence. I’ll be honest, I’d pay to see her play over many of the women acts associated with her when I’m in the mood for Country Music.
“Pills” was next followed by a 1974 cover of Waylon Jenning’s “Rainy Day Woman”. this was the second single from the album “Ramblin Man” of Waylon’s RCA tenure. She also played another song off Trophy called “Pass The Pain”, before reverting back to her third album “Provoked” by including “Everybody Else Can Kiss My Ass”.
Honestly if you ask me I REALLY LIKE her first album “Heart Breaker’s Hall Of Fame”, of which she included “If I Could”. I’ll be honest this song is one of her finest she does, it’s upbeat and fun to watch her play it. She also played “Why People Change” and closed her set with “Bad Girl Phase”.
I will be including more about Mr. Ward Davis later when Mr. Joshua writes it from his set list, as I mentioned earlier I recently saw him perform in Bowling Green so I was spending time catching up with Miss Sunny at her merchandise booth while he was playing.
Mr. Cody Jinks entered the stage under the intro music of “Ecstasy Of Gold”, which has been the intro music for the metal band Metallica for 25 years. Thusly he wore a Master Of Puppets shirt on the Friday show, and the set lists didn’t vary between nights accept for two songs. I might have someone write the Friday night show up soon.
He opened with two songs off his new album “I’m not The Devil” from last year, one of those were “No Guarantees” and he followed that up with “She’s All Mine”. The next song was “David” from the Adobe Sessions album, he really didn’t focus on his first three albums as much as I had hoped he would, but make NO mistake this show was absolutely phenomenal in every way!
“Wake Up Becki” was off his 2010 album “less Wise” which was his first album, and I was really pleased he included that song in this show. I also wanted to point out the fact he wore his 5 Shots With Fairbanks shirt on the stage tonight. If you aren’t familiar with his interviews you MUST GO check them out.
He played the song “No Words” and then played a song off the “30” album called “We Get By”. This show included many opportunities for Mr. Cody to include the audience in participating with singing many of the songs and responding to them. He paid TONS of homage to his mentors and heroes tonight by playing “Whiskey Bent And Hell Bound” and often referencing people like Merle Haggard. However they did a REALLY GOOD version of an old Clint Black song called “Nothing’s News”, which included a TRULY GOOD steel guitar solo intro from Mr. Austin Tripp. That song appeared on the 1990 debut album “Killin Time”, and was a VASTLY overlooked song.
“Birds” was next followed by one of my favorite songs called “Vampires”. I would like to currently say that this was truly a good lengthy show, and you got your TOTAL money’s worth out of all three artists. PLUS there were MANY guest appearances by people like Jamey Johnson on Friday night and Whitey Morgan on Saturday nights. MANY people coming out to join him on various songs throughout the whole weekend.
“Been Around” and “Give All you Can” were next, and continued on into the second portion of the show with a song called “What Else Is New”. Another song he played was one of my favorites called “Last Call For The Blues” from the Less Wise album. One of the highlights of the show was the intro story to the title track of his new album called “I’m Not The Devil”. He told us all the story of how he and Mr. Ward Davis got acquainted which was really fun to listen to.
After he played ‘Chase That Song” as I mentioned earlier he payed homage to Merle Haggard by including us in singing the 1980 Working Man’s anthem ‘The Way I Am” as he was joined by Mr. ward Davis and Mr. Whitey Morgan. Then they played their version of the Pink Floyd hit “Wish you Were Here”, before going into “Momma” and going into older songs like “Fast Hand”. Fast Hand is a really good song that is always included in many of his sets, and always sounds good live.
As he got to the closing songs and encores he played the epic juggernaut song he does called “Cast No Stones”. Every artist pretty much has that song everybody likes and can relate to easily, and I believe this was it. It had HUGE crowd participation from a very willing Mr. Cody, as well as “Loud And Heavy”.
The two encore songs were “Rock And Roll” and finally his anthem that he usually always closes with called “Hippies And Cowboys”. They are his two favorite groups of people to raise hell with, by all means. It’s one of his older songs from 2010 and one of the first songs I remember that turned me onto his music.