Cody Jinks

Cody Jinks has always built his career on his own terms. Growing up near Fort Worth, Texas, he  cut his teeth in bars and honky-tonks, where he learned to disrupt the status quo with an  industrious, do-it-yourself approach. To date he’s released ten full-length albums that regularly  chart near the top of Billboard Country and Independent albums charts and have staying power,  to the tune of 3.5 billion streams across platforms and eight songs certified Platinum or Gold.

His 2024 album  Change The Game  marked a new chapter  driven by personal and professional  growth—but reflected the notion that the rewards from working hard are great when you’re  staying true to your beliefs and vision. “I’d say this is the most vulnerable record I’ve ever  written,” Jinks said. “Kind of a shedding of the skin for me.” Accordingly,  Change The Game ’s  themes looked inward: The narrators held themselves accountable for their flaws and bad  behaviors—and took responsibility for their actions with humility—to illustrate the idea that  redemption is possible.

It’s fitting that later in the year, Jinks revisited and reissued another album that marked a turning  point in his career, 2012’s fan-favorite  30 . “I was  coming into my own as a songwriter with that  record,” he says now, “and I felt like I really turned a page.” Titled  Backside of 30 , the remixed  and remastered record made its debut on vinyl, and also included a new song, “When the New  Wears Off.” Jinks wrote the heartfelt anthem about everlasting and unconditional love 20 years  ago, right after he got married.

“Out of anything I’ve accomplished, keeping my marriage together, with a lot of hard work from  my wife and myself, is probably the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done,” he says. “What was in  that song is what I wanted to see. When you stick things out like that for all those years, you do  make those things possible.”

 Backside of 30  wasn’t the only way Jinks nodded to  his formative inspirations. In fall 2024, he  reissued “Same Kind of Crazy As Me,” originally on 2019’s  Wanting , as a duet with the song’s  co-writer and artist, Ward Davis. And in December, he released  Cody Jinks Sings Lefty Frizzell,  a  reverent collection of covers popularized by the Country Music Hall of Famer.

The collection holds special meaning to Jinks: At age 15, the first song he ever learned to play  was Frizzell’s 1959 hit “Long Black Veil,” taught to him by his dad. “If I trace my lineage in  terms of the people that I love the most,” Jinks says, “the singers are cut out of the Lefty Frizzell  cloth.” Fittingly, the laid-back recording process was faithful to the way Frizzell would have  recorded the songs, both in instrumentation and approach. “The recording technology that we  used was current, but everything else was period-appropriate equipment, doing it the way that  they did,” Jinks says. “We used all antique stuff for the most part.”

This sets Jinks up for the future, which in the short term includes spending early 2025 recording  a studio album of brand-new material that’s slated for release in the summer. “People hate when  guys in their 40s start saying, ‘I’m starting to write like an older person,’” he says. “Well, guess  what’s happening to me? I’m lucky; I’m getting older. My writing is more reflective of my  upbringing than it ever has been. I’ve found more of a voice in what I’m trying to say now.”

The clarity of thought he demonstrated  Change The  Game  is also even sharper, he adds.  “Looking at the world going on a year-and-a-half sober, you start seeing things differently when  you’re my age. And at this point, there’s some deep subject matter that I’m probably going to  have to really pull forward.”