Album: Adobe Sessions by Cody Jinks (2015)
Genre: Country | Mood: Happy
Format: Album

Description: Adobe Sessions—Cody’s 4th release overall—starts off in a way that will get some listeners’ blood pumping, while others will wonder if its worth their effort to listen further. Whatever commercial aspects this album has, they’re front loaded at or near the the beginning, while the deepest and most creative expressions bring up the caboose.

Artist Background: Cody Jinks - Plays Country Music That Defines Credibility! The Fort Worth Native is Packing Rooms all over the United States. Get on Board Now and Find out for Yourself. Emerged in the classic era. Associated with Country movement.

Music Scene: Emerged in the classic era. Associated with Country movement.

Tags: Country, Happy, 2010s, Album

Additional Context: Based on 2 votes


Adobe Sessions—Cody’s 4th release overall—starts off in a way that will get some listeners’ blood pumping, while others will wonder if its worth their effort to listen further. Whatever commercial aspects this album has, they’re front loaded at or near the the beginning, while the deepest and most creative expressions bring up the caboose.

Album: After the Fire by Cody Jinks (2019)
Genre: Country | Mood: Happy
Format: Album

Description: Cody Jinks follows up his 2018 album Lifers with the new independent LP After the Fire. Due October 11th, the album is the first to be released via the Texas songwriter’s own label, Late August Records.

A former thrash-metal singer, Jinks has become one of outlaw country’s most popular new stars, amassing a passionate base of fans who gravitate to his blue-collar brand of lived-in country music and his fierce DIY aesthetic. “I tried to play the game a long time ago, I tried to do the clean-cut thing,” Jinks told Rolling Stone last year of his indie approach. “I talked to some people who wanted to shelve me for a developmental deal, but it just wasn’t a route I could see myself going down. Too much hand tying.”

Jinks cut 10 new songs for After the Fire, including an updated version of “Think Like You Think,” which originally appeared on his 2008 debut Collector’s Item. On the day of the album’s release, he’s set to perform a show in Corpus Christi, Texas, and will also open concerts for Lynyrd Skynyrd in September.

Artist Background: Cody Jinks - Plays Country Music That Defines Credibility! The Fort Worth Native is Packing Rooms all over the United States. Get on Board Now and Find out for Yourself. Emerged in the classic era. Associated with Country movement.

Music Scene: Emerged in the classic era. Associated with Country movement.

Tags: Country, Happy, 2010s, Album


Cody Jinks follows up his 2018 album Lifers with the new independent LP After the Fire. Due October 11th, the album is the first to be released via the Texas songwriter’s own label, Late August Records.

A former thrash-metal singer, Jinks has become one of outlaw country’s most popular new stars, amassing a passionate base of fans who gravitate to his blue-collar brand of lived-in country music and his fierce DIY aesthetic. “I tried to play the game a long time ago, I tried to do the clean-cut thing,” Jinks told Rolling Stone last year of his indie approach. “I talked to some people who wanted to shelve me for a developmental deal, but it just wasn’t a route I could see myself going down. Too much hand tying.”

Jinks cut 10 new songs for After the Fire, including an updated version of “Think Like You Think,” which originally appeared on his 2008 debut Collector’s Item. On the day of the album’s release, he’s set to perform a show in Corpus Christi, Texas, and will also open concerts for Lynyrd Skynyrd in September.

Album: Lifers by Cody Jinks (2018)
Format: Album

Artist Background: Cody Jinks - Plays Country Music That Defines Credibility! The Fort Worth Native is Packing Rooms all over the United States. Get on Board Now and Find out for Yourself. Emerged in the classic era. Associated with Country movement.

Music Scene: Emerged in the classic era. Associated with Country movement.

Tags: 2010s, Album


Cody Jinks’ burly Texas twang, DIY metal past and deep-seated reverence for the burlier, bar-brawlin’ side of country music shine through on his eighth album, Lifers—his first foray into working with a label. As such, there’s a lot riding on this one, but the former singer of Texas thrashers Unchecked Aggression rises to the challenge with a grizzled baritone and a devilish wink. The gospel-tinged opener “Holy Water” sets the pace for an album full of booze, sin and self-reflection. “Must Be the Whiskey” is a vampy nod to Jinks’ outlaw forebears, and “Big Last Name” heads straight for the honky-tonk. But it’s on the acoustic “Stranger” where Jinks gets the most introspective, staring himself down in the mirror and thinking hard about what he sees.

Album: Change The Game by Cody Jinks (2024)
Format: Album

Artist Background: Cody Jinks - Plays Country Music That Defines Credibility! The Fort Worth Native is Packing Rooms all over the United States. Get on Board Now and Find out for Yourself. Emerged in the classic era. Associated with Country movement.

Music Scene: Emerged in the classic era. Associated with Country movement.

Tags: 2020s, Album


If there’s been a recent country artist who has undeniably changed the genre’s game, it’s Cody Jinks. A cult favourite with a diehard following, Jinks makes no-frills country music with rough-hewn edges—as influenced by genre giants like Waylon Jennings as he is by heavy metal. For his 12th album, Jinks takes an unreleased live favourite, the arena-rocker “Change the Game”, and builds around it, pushing himself both lyrically and vocally to level up his artistry. Highlights include the emotional substance-abuse confrontation of “Sober Thing”, which opens the record and boasts one of Jinks’ finest vocals to date, and “Take This Bottle”, a vulnerable collaboration with Pearl Aday. Naturally, Jinks made Change the Game according to his independent spirit, releasing the record on his own Late August Records label. Jinks’ bassist Joshua Thompson co-produced the LP with Ryan Hewitt, known for his work with a diverse array of artists including Molly Tuttle and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Album: The Wanting by Cody Jinks (2019)
Format: Album

Artist Background: Cody Jinks - Plays Country Music That Defines Credibility! The Fort Worth Native is Packing Rooms all over the United States. Get on Board Now and Find out for Yourself. Emerged in the classic era. Associated with Country movement.

Music Scene: Emerged in the classic era. Associated with Country movement.

Tags: 2010s, Album


Cody Jinks has built a doggedly self-sufficient, independent-minded operation over the years. “We're basically doing everything that everybody tells you not to do,” he says. So the idea of releasing two albums just a week apart was an appealingly mischievous way of flaunting his indifference to industry norms. “It's really weird, which is why I changed my mind from just a double record. Because it makes everybody scratch their head and go, ‘What the hell are they doing?’” 
Jinks holed up in the studio hermit-style with his long-time band and a batch of unvarnished, emotionally torn songs he’d written with like-minded members of his musical circle, like Ward Davis, Josh Morningstar and Tennessee Jet (“They know me; they know how I'm geared”). Without an outside producer steering the sessions, they hurtled towards sinewy, scrappy, hard country arrangements. He laid down vocal performances that reflect his background as a former thrash metal frontman who’s also spent a lifetime learning from the great stoic country singers. 
“When we first went in to start recording this record, I told the guys, ‘Play some Randy Travis and play some Vern Gosdin,’” he says. “We tracked most of this live and we wanted that kind of feel—more of a Waylon-Jennings-in-the-’70s type of thing, basic instrumentation. And a lot of that shit on there is just flat-out country. Some of it's rock ’n’ roll. Whenever we felt like we could push the envelope and ramp this one up, we weren’t afraid to do that.” Jinks kept adding new songs to the pile on the fly, and ultimately decided not to cull any finished tracks. “The material that's on The Wanting is your sadder, hurting, emotional type of things,” he explains. Here Jinks calls out a few standout tracks. 
The Raven and the Dove 
“That was one of the ones that Tennessee Jet and I wrote at the studio during the recording process. I have a dove tattooed on my right hand and I have a raven tattooed on my left hand. And it's talking about how everybody's got a flip side to their personal coin." 
The Wanting
“It’s about knowing what you're doing to the people that love you the most. It's like, ‘I wish I could start it over/But wishing don’t mean much/If only the wanting was enough.’ I'm gone. I'm on the road. I can't start over. I can't be anything that I'm not. I wish that I could be, but I can't." 
Wounded Mind
“That song came out of Ward seeing my body language around a lot of people in a crowded bar. People have this idea that an artist—somebody that's onstage, that plays in front of thousands of people—that they're larger than life. They're superpeople. And the content of the song is like, 'Tell them all I'm really not that special. I hate it that I have to try to be cool all the time. I'm just a guy with a wounded mind.'” 
Never Alone Always Lonely 
“I started writing that one about three years ago, and my wife was the missing piece in that song. She helped out with a couple of the really good lines. I came home and I said, ‘I'm on a tour bus, I'm constantly around people. I get off the tour bus, there's constantly people around me. I go to dinner in the town I'm playing in and people pick up that I'm there. There's constantly people around me there. So everywhere I go, I'm never alone but I always feel lonely.’ And she came up with the line ‘Easy to find, seldom seen.’ There's stuff on depression and anxiety, being on the back side of a stage scared to death, wondering what's next. Some people aren't nervous at all when they go up; I happen not to be one of those people. I happen to be one of those people that is the antithesis of being cool, calm and collected. I'm scared to death every night I walk up onstage. That's just how I'm geared, and I would rather be by myself the majority of the time, but I can't do that.” 
Which One I Feed 
“It's actually one of only two or three that I didn't write on that record—that was Morningstar and Jaida Dreyer. We were down to only having two days left [to record], we were doing polish-up stuff. Josh sent it to me over the phone. I was like, 'It's too damn good not to do it.' So I walked back into the studio and I was like, 'Guys, there's another one.' So we set back up. And that song came out so quick. I showed it to them and we were tracking.”

Album: Less Wise by Cody Jinks (2010)
Format: Album

Artist Background: Cody Jinks - Plays Country Music That Defines Credibility! The Fort Worth Native is Packing Rooms all over the United States. Get on Board Now and Find out for Yourself. Emerged in the classic era. Associated with Country movement.

Music Scene: Emerged in the classic era. Associated with Country movement.

Tags: 2010s, Album


Album: Mercy by Cody Jinks (2021)
Format: Album

Artist Background: Cody Jinks - Plays Country Music That Defines Credibility! The Fort Worth Native is Packing Rooms all over the United States. Get on Board Now and Find out for Yourself. Emerged in the classic era. Associated with Country movement.

Music Scene: Emerged in the classic era. Associated with Country movement.

Tags: 2020s, Album


Album: In My Blood by Cody Jinks (2025)
Format: Album

Artist Background: Cody Jinks - Plays Country Music That Defines Credibility! The Fort Worth Native is Packing Rooms all over the United States. Get on Board Now and Find out for Yourself. Emerged in the classic era. Associated with Country movement.

Music Scene: Emerged in the classic era. Associated with Country movement.

Tags: 2020s, Album


Cody Jinks is proving to be one of outsider country music’s more prolific artists, releasing this LP just a year after dropping a trio of projects in 2024: the studio album Change the Game, a remastered re-release of 2012’s 30 called Backside of 30 and the tribute album Cody Jinks Sings Lefty Frizzell. This is no collection of cutting-room-floor material, though, and it shows the grizzled Texan at the top of his game as a vocalist and a bandleader. As he has for most of his albums, Jinks recorded In My Blood at the famed Texas studio complex Sonic Ranch, with Joshua Thompson and Charles Godfrey producing. Jinks and his band the Tonedeaf Hippies don’t reinvent the wheel here, instead leaning into the hard-rock-informed Texas country that put him on the map. Highlights include “Lost Highway”, a dark and brooding meditation on life’s mysteries, and “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, a harmony-rich midtempo rocker that plays off the Ray Bradbury horror novel of the same name. Jinks closes the project with “When Time Didn’t Fly”, a raw and nostalgic ballad that shows the emotional depths of his singular voice.

Cody Jinks

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