Cody Jinks photo by Joshua Black Wilkins
Cody Jinks Emerges From Challenging Times with In My Blood
Cody Jinks will be releasing his 11th album, In My Blood, on July 25th, 2025, and will be out on the road this summer for the Hippies and Cowboys tour. His first original album since Change The Game, almost all the songs on In My Blood are written by Jinks, and he’s joined by Charlie Starr of Blackberry Smoke on the writing and performance of the moving title track.
The songs on the album have a little bit “extra” when it comes to personal grit, determination, and reflection, and their overall flavor is of truths hard won. Unsurprisingly, this corresponds to a period of change for Jinks, both in balancing his personal and professional life, and in terms of running his own business as an independent musician. From this period of challenge and growth come the certainties behind In My Blood in a world where things often seem so uncertain. I spoke with Cody Jinks about the decisive feeling behind many of the songs on the album and about the personal work he’s undertaken in building this new era for his life and music.
Americana Highways: I see you’ve been out playing before now. Are you playing songs from the new album yet? You have some singles out, so people may know them.
Cody Jinks: Yes. It’s always fun to look out when you’ve just dropped a new song and see people who are already singing along. Not everyone will, but some do. “Found” is one of those songs. That’s fun to watch.
AH: That song seems really important to the album, and I think we hear it in the performance, too. It has a lot of weight and gravity to it. What led to it being included on the album?
CJ: Ward Davis was one of the masterminds behind that song. I hate giving him credit, because we’re best buds, and we just rag on each other as much as we can. I heard Ward doing that song when we were on an acoustic tour together last year, up in Canada. It was one of those songs that I had never heard him play, and I looked over, and even though he was playing acoustic, everyone was standing up by the end of that song, trying to sing along. It was one of those songs. After the show, I asked him about it, and it was one he had done with a couple of other writers.
We went in and cut it, and I ended up changing a couple of words and phrases, but not much, and he liked how I did it. Ward and I have been on kind of parallel paths to peace in our own lives. Ward and I have written about being our own worst enemies. I think that song is one that I just love singing, I’ll tell you that.
AH: I know that you must have strong feelings about it, since you even recorded and released an acoustic version. It’s powerful to hear it that way, as well.
CJ: People always love to hear things acoustic, and that song is one that I think is so relatable. Everybody’s searching. Everybody’s on a path. You might not know what it is you want, or what you need, but everybody’s looking.
AH: It’s kind of a delicate thing that I appreciate about the song, that it’s a fine line between realizing that no one else can really help you, and falling into despair. There’s an honesty in there, listing the people that society tells you should be able to help you, and concludes that they can’t.
CJ: The doctor, the preacher, yeah! All of the above: the bartender, the hairstylist, anyone who has ever been in the line of work where people dump their guts out at you. That’s the beautiful thing about being able to write a song, people get to grab that song and say, “That’s what I’m seeing.”
I think, content-wise, the song fit in seamlessly with the record. It’s the only song on the record that doesn’t have my name on it, but I knew it was going to be a great song for the record. I knew that I could sing that song, and I can’t sing a song I don’t believe. There’s a difference between going in and recording a song, and going in and singing it. I knew that I could sing that.
AH: With the proper amount of authenticity.
CJ: Right. I’ve been there. I’ve been on my knees with a bible and a bottle. That’s real fucking life, man.
AH: I see a lot of different related directions on the album, and for me, there’s an extra mile the songs seems to go towards being direct and expresses. I know that’s typical of you, but it feels like it’s a little extra.
CJ: I like that. I think there’s a little extra “personal” sauce dumped on this concoction of what we’ve managed to produce. My records have always been a reflection of my life. I’ve always used my records as a canvas, and I think that’s why I’ve developed such a personal relationship with our fanbase. They think I’m singing for them, and I am. I’m singing our songs together with them.
The album Change The Game was the end of how I was. That was the last record I did with the old version of myself. This new record, In My Blood, is me saying, “I’m not as bad as I thought I was. I’m human. And life will bitch-slap you when you need one.”
AH: It sounds like you’ve faced some significant changes in life, and turned a corner, between the last original record and this one. I know you also did the tribute to Lefty Frizzell in between the two, which might have been kind of cathartic for you.
CJ: Yeah! The Lefty record was completely different, and was a cathartic thing. We actually had recorded that one during Covid, so we already had that one on the shelf. Change the Game was the end of “the drinking era.” I’ve been working on things the past couple years, but that guy who was the hard ass in the music business, I was that way at home, too. That worked for a while whenever I was gone all the time, but when I started being home more, I realized that guy couldn’t live here. I’ve had to make some really important changes for myself and for my family. Cody Jinks became a character that I couldn’t put down, and I got to the point where I didn’t even like him.
AH: I know in music you’ve had to be very proactive and have pushed yourself forward, so that’s been a lot of pressure.
CJ: A lot of people in this business go through an identity crisis, or what’s called “imposter syndrome.” I didn’t even know that I went through those things until I’d already gone through them. It’s a weird life.
AH: Some of these songs feel hard-won. They present a perspective that could only really be there after going through stuff. “Snake Bit” is a big example. Also “In My Blood” has that kind of soul to it of something discovered, something gained on the other side.
CJ: Charlie Starr and I wrote “In My Blood” together, and I am so proud of that one. That one is from a couple of guys who have been doing this a long time. We’re coming from the point of view of, “We didn’t choose music, music chose us.” We’ve been out there, and we’ve taken the licks, and we will continue. Because you don’t stay in the business without the continual side of that. It’s a tough business. I’ve always viewed Blackberry Smoke as a band who did it the right way, who really did it their way. Charlie and I have become really good friends, and I appreciate him and Blackberry Smoke. I love touring with those guys, and they are kind of in the same category as we are.
We feel almost like we’re the last of the true road dogs. You don’t really have young bands doing it the way that we did anymore. We stayed on the road for five, ten, fifteen years straight. We were just gone. Now we sound like a couple of old guys saying, “The young guys have gotten soft.” But it’s just that the music business has changed. Most record companies operate tours at a loss now. We’re not old, but we’re not young, and we’re old enough to know what not to do!
AH: I’ve always loved the fact that Blackberry Smoke are still out there, and still touring.
CJ: They are so much fun. They are so consistent. They are a consistent, great band.
AH: As someone who’s at the head of your own business, is touring your livelihood?
CJ: Honestly, I’d make more money if I just played acoustic. I stopped worrying about how much money I made a long time ago. We’ve been fortunate in that as long as we do and maintain a schedule of 30 to 50 shows a year, we are profitable. We can spend time at home.
Touring now is something that we still do because we love to pay live. I sit on a tour bus twenty-two hours a day. I tell people that I don’t get paid for the two hours that I’m on stage, which people pay to go see. I’d be sitting on my front porch playing the guitar, if nothing else, so that I do for free. I get paid for the twenty-two hours I sit on the bus. I work on music, and I’m working on a couple books right now. I have things that occupy me, work-wise, and I have a big hand in running my company.
I hired new management at the beginning of this year, and after I parted ways with my former management, I spent about a year and a half refamiliarizing myself with my business, and learning a lot of things. I was sorting things out, taking things over, and trying to get them the way I needed them before I sought another manager. I feel like me and my team were able to do that, and right the ship internally and externally. Going on with new management this year has been really good, and taken a lot off of my plate, but I’m still heavy-handed. There are 30 people who work for me, and I get up every day, and I think about all of them.
AH: Their work fate and livelihood is in your hands. That’s a lot.
CJ: Yes, and mine is in theirs! I’m propped up on the shoulders of some really fantastic individuals who have helped me get here.
AH: It makes sense that you have to update and get an up-close look at how music is operating every so often given how fast things keep changing.
CJ: It would have made sense for me to retire at that point, or at least have taken a hiatus or a long break. But, I didn’t. I really thought about it, about taking a substantial amount of time off. But we kept recording songs, and kept playing shows. As an organization, we pulled out of a very difficult time. I’ve had great people who have been a motivating factor to keep me going when I was struggling, for sure.
AH: That’s even more intense that the reorganization coincided with this period of personal changes in your life, as you’ve mentioned. There are a lot of things that you’ve come out of in order to make this album.
CJ: That was the shedding of a skin, for sure. I learned this thing recently that I didn’t know. My wife was a biology major, so she knows all the sciency things. I just learned this fun fact that lobster’s exo-skeletons don’t grow. They go hide under a rock, and they shed their old exo-skeleton, and they grow a new, harder one. They do it during adverse times. It’s kind of like this record!
AH: That’s a great image. You could’ve called the album “The Lobster.” I haven’t yet asked you about the sound on this record. Were there things on your mind when you were going in to record in terms of directions for this one?
CJ: There’s one song that really sticks out. The record itself sounds like me. I think is sounds like us. I think Josh Thompson, our bass player and long-term producer, knows where I’m going to go before I go there. We’ve been working together almost twenty years. We know how the other one things. As my Producer, and my bandmate, and my bandleader, I know that he’s going to ask for certain things.
So I’ll do things one way, then I’ll do things another way that I know he’s going to ask for. [Laughs] We know how we work! He knows how to pull things out of me in the studio that nobody else does, I guess. So I think the record sounds uniquely like us.
The one song that Josh really took and knocked out of the park was “Something Wicked This Way Comes.” On that song, I said, “There are no rules.” That song, just musically, is one where you can take the words out. Just listen to that music. It is a carnival ride itself. It’s crazy! That one, in particularly, people are either going to hear and go, “Gosh, that’s incredible!” Or they are going to go, “I don’t get it.” [Laughs]
AH: Are you going to try to do that one live?
CJ: Oh yeah, we’ve already done that one live, but only one time! Dude, it’s so much fun to play live. It’s one of those songs that people don’t know, so they are sitting there thinking, “What is this?!” But it kind of blows their faces back. It’s a rocking tune!
AH: Even though you’ve known Josh so long, is it hard to put yourself in someone else’s hands in the studio, knowing they are going to try to pull things out of you?
CJ: Well, that’s a maturation process on the artist’s part. I go into the recording studio now, and things may not turn out the way I’d structured things at first. I’ve learned to go in way more open-minded. That comes from trust, though, as well, with the people who are around me.
Find more information here on his website: https://codyjinks.com/