Selling out a concert on one of the hottest, stickiest nights of the summer is old hat for Whiskey Myers. Still, when the band hit the stage in front of 7,000 sweat-soaked fans at Nashville’s Ascend Amphitheater in late July, the moment felt historic This is the city where Whiskey Myers recorded their seventh studio album — Whomp, Whack, Thunder — only months earlier, and the city where the band eschewed record label deals for nearly 20 years.
A blowout night a few blocks from Broadway and Music Row would serve as a reminder to fans and industry alike that Whiskey Myers have never been more high-proof. So, when Cody Cannon and his bandmates stepped into the spotlight and launched straight into “Gasoline” and “Frogman,” they did so aiming to throw the party of the year in Music City.
“How we fucking doing?” Cannon implored the crowd a few songs into the set, amid a steady pulse of production lights and backup dancers.
By the end of the two-hour, 19-song set, Cannon’s energy had not wavered, but his questions did. “Are ya happy? I know you’re fuckin’ sweaty!” he asked before “Stone,” a song that only made thousands of sweat-soaked shirts sweatier.
The gig was part of a run that Whiskey Myers is calling the What We Were Born to Do Tour. When Whomp, Whack, Thunder drops on Friday, the tour name will make sense to fans. “Born to Do” is one of 11 tracks on the record — all written by Cannon — that sounds on the whole like an invigorated, freewheeling rock band in its prime.
Cannon says that’s simply because he’s an invigorated, freewheeling songwriter in his prime.
“It’s better if I don’t think,” Cannon tells Rolling Stone. “I’ve never come up with, like, a preconceived sound or an idea. That doesn’t work for me. It has to be, purely, like coming through, out of the sky. I have buddies that can write like that — ‘I got this idea for so-and-so!’ — but I can’t do that at all.”
Whiskey Myers has had a long runup to Whomp, Whack, Thunder. The first single, “Time Bomb,” has been out since April, but Cannon’s rock-edged vocals are in such a groove with his band that it’s easy to think it’s been in the group’s catalog for years. The very first line, “It’s all a fever dream,” could be a tagline for Whiskey Myers’ last decade, were it not for the pesky issue of Cannon neither thinking nor writing in such terms.
“You’re gonna hate all this stuff,” Cannon says when I ask about that song. “I have no inspiration behind the songs. I’m just in there workin’ and writin’ a bunch of songs. The ones that are better, the ones that make the album, they usually come up fast. When I work on a song for a long time, they usually don’t end up being very good. The ones that make it, that people like, are just like a lightning bolt.”
Whiskey Myers is Cannon, guitarist Cody Tate, slide and steel player John Jeffers, bassist Jamey Gleaves, drummer Jeff Hogg, and Tony Kent on percussion and piano. They are longtime friends from East Texas. Even before their 2018 appearance on Taylor Sheridan’s series Yellowstone lifted them from theaters to arena headliners, the band was an independent success. Their 2011 album Firewater hit the top 30 on Billboard’s country albums chart. Their next four all reached at least the top 10, with their self-titled 2019 record topping both the country and indie charts.
That album, along with 2022’s Tornillo were self-produced efforts — which is mostly why the band turned to Jay Joyce for Whomp, Whack, Thunder.
“We did the last two records ourselves,” Cannon says. “Doing it yourself is cool, but it is so much work. You’re wearing two hats. You finish recording and you go right behind the board. There’s no breaks. It was always just a headache. After a couple of records, we all went, ‘Let’s get a producer, man, and take a break from this.’ It’s a lot less stressful to have someone there helping you — another mind, outside of the band.”
In late February, the band invited me to Neon Cross Studio in East Nashville. It’s Joyce’s own space, and it’s converted from what was, at one time, a church. There’s still a stage where a pulpit once stood. The pews are mostly gone, replaced with the heart of the studio. There are amps, instruments, microphones, but notably, no control room. Joyce’s console and computers are set up in the recording space. His senior Great Dane, Monroe, sprawls out on the floor between the music and the old pulpit. It may not have been exactly what Tom Waits meant when he wrote “God’s Away on Business,” but the metaphor still works. The spiritual experience here, these days, happens when Joyce clocks in.
“There’s no control room. He sits in there, and his whole workstation is with him. There’s no yelling through the glass,” Cannon says. “He’s right there with you. And we’re all together, too, as a band. That’s a game-changer.”
They intended for me to catch the height of the recording process, but the time had gone so smoothly with Joyce that the band was wrapping up when I walked in. They had four days left of studio time booked but had already laid down what became Whomp, Whack, Thunder. I ended up there for cleanup, fine-tuning, and brainstorming.
Before I can say hello, Jeffers greets me with, “You just missed a cool one. Right before you showed up, we did some cool shit.” Meanwhile, Joyce asks Cannon to sing the chorus of “Born to Do” roughly a dozen times — in part because Joyce wanted to take a series of Cannon’s vocals and layer them in lieu of adding an electronic echo. Cannon plays along, hitting the refrain of “Can you hear them engines rumblin’ through the night?/The truth is most of the time we spend ridin’ or dreamin’ of back home/and all the folks we left behind,” until the producer gets his takes.
“That’s killer. We got it,” Joyce tells Cannon.
It’s a snapshot of Joyce’s appeal to the band. Yes, Joyce’s studio is in Nashville, and he has a catalog of top-tier country albums to his name from the likes of Eric Church, Little Big Town, and Lainey Wilson. But he has also worked extensively with the Wallflowers, Cage the Elephant, and Halestorm. For a group like Whiskey Myers that has eschewed genres or labels but skews far more rock than country, Joyce’s eclectic background seemed a perfect fit. He confirmed this with his studio demeanor.
“The way he records is really free,” Cannon says. “I expected him to be heavy-handed, and he’s not. He brings it out of you naturally, which is definitely a gift. And then, he puts his special sauce on it. Little things here or there. It’s magical.”
If Cannon is describing Joyce in his element, he’s also describing his bandmates in theirs. Whiskey Myers is steeped in Texas and Red Dirt influences — the Randy Rogers Band was instrumental in showcasing Whiskey Myers in its early days, and Red Dirt torchbearer Mike McClure produced the group’s very first record in 2008 — but has let its twangy rock stylings carve out a sound that is distinctly separate from its Texas country roots and its East Texas home.
Moreover, the band’s lineup has remained nearly unchanged since the beginning.
“We’ve talked about a documentary, but our documentary would suck,” Cannon says. “There’s no drama!”
Cannon and the rest of the group are all pushing 40 now, with most members having families and kids. Cannon, an avid outdoorsman, also has a line of fishing lures he launched during the pandemic.
For most independent bands, making the kind of living that supports families and outside interests would entail upwards of 100 shows a year. For its first decade, Whiskey Myers was that band. But a 2018 appearance on Yellowstone changed that. Within hours of being featured, Whiskey Myers saw three of their albums resurface on the country charts, and they saw their crowd size double.
“It changed our lives,” Cannon recalls. “It was like just putting nitrous on it. It was throwing gasoline on a fire. We just ignited.”
This is also the point where Whiskey Myers became something bigger than their own shows or album sales can quantify alone. Since that Yellowstone bump, they’ve become kingmakers in their own right, with a series of Whiskey Myers support acts blasting off. Shane Smith and the Saints and Southall both saw significant rises in prominence afterward, and both of the band’s Nashville openers, Josh Meloy and the Droptines, look poised for breakthroughs.
Cannon recognizes the phenomenon, but chalks it up to the fortune of a willing fan base.
“Our fans are really open,” he says. “They’re gonna listen. If the artist is good, and they have good songs, they’re gonna like ’em. There’s something about our fans that just wanna say, ‘Hell yeah.’ They get there, they listen, and they like it. Plus, the artists are obviously good. That helps, too.
“When we were young, people took us out and helped us tremendously. Back in Texas, starting out, Stoney LaRue and Randy Rogers and them,” he continues, “those people took us out and helped us. It’s cool that as you get older and you’ve been successful, that you can pay that forward.”
Read Southall agrees with the assessment from a status standpoint. But after a steady run of shows with Whiskey Myers — including an arena show in late 2024 at Tulsa’s BOK Center in which Southall played a direct support set — he says the bands on Whiskey Myers’ bill are getting lessons in touring and performing from the top down, which leave lasting benefits beyond bumps in attendance.
“What I saw was consistency,” Southall tells Rolling Stone. “They really know how to set the tone and ride a groove. I think we learned from everyone involved. Their crew is top notch. The band’s tight and down to earth. It showed me that ordinary people can be rock stars, whether behind the microphone or front-of-house. I don’t believe you can pay for the lessons we learned.”
Whiskey Myers is picking up the What We Were Born to Do Tour this week. Thursday at Austin’s Moody Center, Wade Bowen will open. Friday at Oklahoma City’s Paycom Center, Charles Wesley Godwin will do the same. Kashus Culpepper and Dylan Marlowe are both on upcoming shows.
In November, the band will host its now-annual festival in Miramar Beach, Florida. Whiskey Moon at Moon Crush will feature the band playing two headlining sets, plus a third by Charley Crockett. Shane Smith and the Saints are on the bill, as are Meloy and the Droptines, plus Stephen Wilson Jr. and St. Paul and the Broken Bones. In December, the band will play an all-acoustic run dubbed “Whiskey Myers and Friends,” which will also feature Bones Owens and Rob Leines.
It sounds like a lot, but it represents the sweet spot Whiskey Myers occupies in music at the moment — big enough that selling out the Ascend Amphitheater counts as a flex but not big enough to take long stretches away from the road. Even as Cannon declares his songs don’t have any points of inspiration, it sure seems like Whiskey Myers are doing what it was born to do.
When Cannon lets his guard down just enough to ponder the future, he reveals one goal he’s been keeping under wraps.
“We always wanted to be the first band to play on the moon,” he deadpans. “It’s never happened, so we always try to put that out there.”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose latest books, Never Say Never and Red Dirt Unplugged are available via Back Lounge Publishing.
