Saenger Theatre: Cody Jinks with Special Guest Nikki Lane
Date/Time
Date(s) - January 13, 2022
7:00 pm - 10:00 pm
Location
The Saenger Theatre
Categories
Cody Jinks is the kind of artist who thrives being on the road, traveling from city to city playing shows night after night. In a typical year, the singer-songwriter isn’t at home longer than five or six weeks at a time. That road-heavy approach, when coupled with a ferocious live show, has helped Jinks amass a loyal fanbase and carve out a successful career on his own terms as an independent artist.
In fact, he won “Independent Artist of The Year” at the 2020 MusicRow Country Breakout Awards and earned the most radio spins for an independent artist last year with songs such as “Ain’t A Train” and “Same Kind Of Crazy As Me.” These honors are just the latest in a long list of accolades Jinks has received since the release of his gold-certified 2015 breakthrough album, Adobe Sessions, which featured the platinum-certified, fan-favorite single, “Loud and Heavy.”
His 2016 full-length I’m Not the Devil also reached No. 4 on the Billboard Country Albums chart, while 2018’s Lifers and a pair of 2019 albums (The Wanting and After the Fire) reached No. 2 on the same chart. On top of this, Jinks has nearly 2 billion streams to date across platforms, to go along with his 2.18 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
Much of this success is due to Jinks’ songwriting, which is refreshingly raw and honest about life’s ecstatic ups and agonizing downs. And so, in early 2020, when faced with being off the road for an indefinite period due to the pandemic, Jinks decided to hunker down, stay busy and work on his craft. “My wife and I were sitting on the front porch and I said, ‘You know what I’m going to do with this time? I’m going to become a better songwriter. I don’t know how long the lockdown is going to be, but I need to reach out to songwriters I haven’t written with before and pick their brains. I need to get better at my craft. I need to learn from some other people.’”
Jinks ended up connecting with old friends, frequent collaborators and even some of his heroes for virtual writing sessions. The result was a productive time: In May 2021, he simultaneously recorded two full-length albums in two different styles: a solo country record, Mercy—written entirely during the pandemic—and a metal record, None The Wiser, under the band name Caned By Nod.
“It was very different recording them at the same time,” Jinks says. “Literally, it was being in one studio and walking next door and going from this beautiful country song that we’re doing to just this really angry metal song, flipping a switch.” However, he is uniquely suited for this switch. Although he sometimes found the process taxing, Jinks came to view the experience as an opportunity to fully translate his brain for the first time, simultaneously exploring the multiple facets of his artistry.