Backstage Country

Cody Johnson’s Deluxe ‘Leather’ Drops Tomorrow

Cody Johnson‘s Deluxe version of his Leather album comes out tomorrow (11/1). When Cody first recorded Leather, he had so many songs, and he didn’t want to waste a single…

Cody Johnson is performing live playing guitar in a cowboy hat and a blue shirt with white pinstripes.
Photo - Schmidt PR

Cody Johnson‘s Deluxe version of his Leather album comes out tomorrow (11/1). When Cody first recorded Leather, he had so many songs, and he didn’t want to waste a single one, but his previous album was a double album, and he didn’t want to go that route again.

Johnson told us that the solution was to release the Leather album and then a year later the Deluxe version. He said, "So, Leather was supposed to be an album to follow up Human, the double album, but by the time I got through looking at all these songs that I just could not give up, that I had to have, there was like 24-25 of them. I’m going, ‘Well, I don’t want to do another double album. Like, how do we do this?’"

He continued, "I’ll credit Cris Lacy from Warner Music Nashville. It was her idea, she said, ‘What if we release half, come back later with the deluxe edition, with the rest of it?’ and I was like ‘Man, I really don’t want to break this body of work up because I feel like all these songs complement each other.’ But after sitting down with a pen and a paper and really looking at separating… like, this one’s kind of the same tempo, OK, let’s separate those. This one’s kind of the same key, let’s separate these. That one’s kind of almost the same subject matter, let’s separate these."

Cody concluded, "I looked, and I was like, wow, we have two albums here. So, it was by accident. It was not a planned thing, and I really appreciate it."

The project includes 13 new songs as well as all 12 tracks from Leather released last November for a total of 25 songs. Produced by Trent Willmon, the album will be available in stores, including vinyl, and at all digital retailers and streaming platforms.

Johnson recently sold out back-to-back nights in Houston over the weekend at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. Up next, Cody will headline Globe Life Field on November 9. The “Leather Tour” 2024 is set to wrap in Las Vegas on December 13.

Cody has five nominations for the upcoming The 58th Annual CMA Awards, including Male Vocalist of the Year, Album of the Year for Leather, Single of the Year for “Dirt Cheap,” and two nominations in Music Video of the Year for both “The Painter” and “Dirt Cheap.” The CMA Awards will be broadcast live from Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on Wednesday, November 20, on ABC and the next day on Hulu.

Nancy Brooks has been working in the country music industry for almost 30 years. She has interviewed pretty much any country star you can think of. In the late 1990s, she started working with Dolly Parton. And yes, Nancy reports that Parton is as sweet as you would think. She loves her life in country music and has been backstage at every CMA Awards show since the late 1990s. Many of her stories are from her one-on-one interviews. She was there at the beginning of the incredible careers of many music superstars today, including Taylor Swift, Shania Twain, and Blake Shelton, and has interviewed them multiple times throughout the years.