Country stars have done a lot of things to make ends meet. Some of it is as traditional as it gets, others had to survive through more unsavory means. For Cody Johnson, he's lived a couple different lives in route to winning Album of the Year at the CMA Awards. Obviously, he was a rodeo star before making it big. However, what goes under the radar is how he worked as a prison guard.
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Back in 2014, Johnson spoke with Bud Light Texas about his time in Huntsville, Texas. Apparently, working in the prison industry with his father was more of an inevitability than anything. "There's seven prisons in Huntsville's greater area and in my family you either go to prison or you work for the prison. So I just went to work because that's what my dad did," Cody explains.
Cody Johnson Works at a Prison Before Making It Big in Country
Still, the stories he picked up gave him an abundance of inspiration when he would write his songs. "It's kind of shaped my songwriting in some songs, we have a song called "Guilty As Can Be" about a guy who goes to prison for shooting his cheating wife and the whole nine yards. Those were stories that I'd heard, you know, so it wasn't a first hand account but it felt personal, so I could sing it like it was personal."
The inspiration unlocks plenty of opportunities for Cody, nailing bar gigs and his dream becoming more and more tangible. Consequently, the warden saw his strides in trying to make it. Moreover, he wanted him to cut the balancing act out and pursue his passion full time. "The warden that I was working for actually encouraged me to go quit," Cody reveals. "They said 'You know, you can always come back. There's never going to be a shortage of people going to prison, there's never going to be a shortage of the need for people to guard them, so go chase your dream.'"
