Cody Johnson Ropes And Rides In Australian Rodeo

When Cody Johnson came backstage to chat with us at June's CMA Fest in Nashville, he talked about having a dream of riding and roping an Australian Rodeo when he was there in August. According to Cody's Instagram, he made that dream a reality.

Johnson was asked backstage in June by a couple of local Australian reporters for the event about his then-future trip to play with Luke Combs in Australia. He said, "Yeah, I wanna go team rope. Anybody that you know that has horses and is gonna be roping somewhere, I'd like to go enter a rodeo or enter a team roping while I'm there."

He continued, "I used to be a big Troy Dunn fan growing up, so I know that bull-riding is pretty big in Australia. I'm not sure how much team roping or any of that is a part of it, but everybody thinks about New Zealand because they want to go red-stage hunting."

In 2005, Dunn became the only Australian ever to win the PBR World Champions and was a two-time PBR World Finals event winner.

Cody wasn't up for the hunting; he just wanted to mount a horse. He noted, "Man, I wanna go get on a horse at some point. I highly doubt that I will be able to, but if anybody's watching or if you have any connections, you send them all my way. If I won a buckle in Australia, I'd probably never take it off, just throwing that out there."

Johnson posted to his Instagram that his Australian dream came true as he did, in fact, rope at an Australian rodeo along with country music singer Wade Foster. He posted a video clip of Wade's invite to him and the two cowboys roping a steer in the rodeo. Cody captioned the post, "Y'all on TikTok made this happen! Roping video - @kjewelz." Johnson wrote over the video clip, "Australia, Ya'll surpassed my expectations!"

Cody Johnson has been making waves in country music in the last few years and has been taking home some awards including winning the Single of the Year award at the 2022 CMA Awards for his 'Till You Can't." He also won a 2023 CMT Music Award for Performance of the Year.

Cody recently announced during a CMT nominations special earlier this month, that he will be releasing a 24-track double album, titled Cody Johnson: Leather. And the new project will feature a duet with Carrie Underwood. He revealed this when he was asked what it was like to compete with Underwood for a CMT Award. "I actually just recorded a duet with her yesterday for my new album coming out. And getting to know her — man, she's such a pro and everybody that she surrounds herself with are all very professional, as well. I don't mean this to sound bad, but it's kind of hard to compete with that."

The new album will be Johnson's second consecutive double album, as his October 2021 project, Human, was also a two-disc project with 18 tracks.

As Cody continues his climb in country music, heading for superstar status, we take a look at the last couple of years of this Texas country star's life in Nashville and beyond.