CODY WOLFE -The Nature Of The Beast:

I’ve said and did a lot in the past that made a lot of people hate me.

I want to make it clear I am working on changing, when you deal with a lot of shit like I do sometimes you let it get the best of ya and you act stupid. I’ve been playing music for 24 years now. I lived in my car in downtown Nashville for three of those years. Here is not even the tip of the iceberg of what has been really going on in my life and what it takes to move to Nashville and make it in music. Got my start in Music City recording in 2012 and made the move full-time in 2014 prior to even moving to Nashville. I played my share of shows going back till I was 6 years old. I remember playing 7 days a week many times as a teenager often times for free. I had written almost 100 songs before I even made the move. My drummer saying “How bad do you want it” I think I made about $300 for all 7 shows a lot of times not even getting paid at all. We played fairs, bars and anywhere that would have us. When I was a kid I played at senior centers, libraries and local events.

Made it through Covid in my car with gyms shut down I had no place to shower, used the bathroom in many gas stations or a cup and ate ryman noodles from a truck stop. I was alone curled up in the back of the car when suddenly I felt like I was getting stabbed. I doubled over in pain and had to get emergency gallbladder surgery, I made it through multiple tornadoes woke up with my windshield cracked a tree came down and the entire car shook as wind pounded the side of it the one time I’ll admit I got scared. Hail pelted the roof as tornado sirens blared in the background, it felt as if it was gonna flip over with me in it when I was just trying to get a little sleep after a hard days work. I woke up surrounded by about six Hendersonville police officers telling me “I had to move and it was a felony to live in my car in the state of Tennessee” no compassion at all for anything I had been through treated like dirt. I couldn’t afford rent I had to save everything for music. My family treated me like an outcast, it felt like no one cared. Some nights I didn’t even know if I should sleep or stay up just in case a tornado hit at least it would give me a chance to try and drive away. Came face to face with black lives matter protests downtown, which was dangerous they were throwing fire and smashing windows, got out of there and battled losing my job, I was still rattled from losing my girlfriend someone I knew for 7 years at that point, and pretty much everything that ever mattered to me, thousands of miles away from my family who was embarrassed to even call me family because I was chasing my dreams. I decided to go to the mall and walk it off and suddenly people came rushing out, shots were fired and police were arriving. I moved to a parking lot in Donelson and wrote a song. A while later, I lay there in the back of my car alone on Christmas shivering without any heat. When I went to work I had to get dressed lying down because I had no room to put my clothes on in the car. My entire car reeked smelling like dog food from working the night shift in a dog food factory. Dog food still stuck on my jeans caked on like slime. (More on that in a minute).

EVERY DIME I made the past 12 years has gone towards music from working dead-end factory jobs lifting 50 lbs of dog food every 4 minutes on an assembly line in a freezer at 4 am, I slipped and fell at work, and even ended up cleaning toilets at one point I still remember my boss telling me to “use my hand” when I said we didn’t have a toilet scrubber. I was only a mile up the road when the bomb went off in downtown Nashville. My friend (the only friend I had) took me for dinner at The Rodizio Grill the night before. Went to sleep only a mile up the road and woke up to all of Second Avenue leveled. Close call…One night I woke up to holes screwed into my tires by jealous musicians. This kept happening and I blew through my money on tires. I kept trying to stay positive but year after year it got worse and worse. I watched as Nashville changed around me. Red Rooster became Live Oak, apartment buildings went up and Douglas Corner closed down. I got older and older and I watched nearly EVERY OTHER artist succeed and get deals and cuts. From Luke Combs to Ryan Larkins to Trey Lewis to even as far back as Florida Georgia Line. Most recently I stood next to Zach Bryan at Live Oak when no one knew who he was or even cared. I watched every single one of these people have success right in front of me and attempted to work with them without any luck at all I was never even given a chance (Trey Lewis being the only exception) but had to leave town due to not being able to afford to live before I got any chance to even work with him meanwhile he had already blown up

Even my best friend went on to have major success getting cuts with Morgan Wallen but slowly started refusing to work with me after 10 years of being my bestfriend. All because a bunch of people on Reddit labeled me a fraud. While I went back to a lonely depressing and empty car, which ended up breaking down all altogether leaving me stranded on the side of I-65 and all while my ex was rubbing her new baby, and a life I could have had and a new man she replaced me with in my face. While I struggled to know if I would even eat the next day or not. Nobody understands the struggle, most only tell you to shut up and stop whining. So I’ve never posted it or even much less talked about it until recently. I played on Broadway at Tootsies and Hard Rock Cafe making no money I even played on a street corner to try and get tips but was chased away by Metro PD for “soliciting” Meanwhile I was plagued with the thought of homeless street musicians in my mind all telling me the same thing “I came here to chase a dream once this is how it turned out.”

Over the past few years I fought hard to make people see the value in my music. I came up with out-of-the-box song and video ideas all for people to say “You aren’t unique at all, you are just like everyone else with a dream trying to make it.” I couldn’t afford to hire a PR team and after 12 years in Nashville I could barely even play a writer round let alone yet find anyone that would help. Sure I got meetings with ASCAP and a ton of other songwriters and influential people, all caught up in their own story not really caring about anyone else or anyone “outside their circles”. As I kept getting passed on, or brushed off I decided to take matters into my own hands and learn everything I could about the music business. I decided to not only teach myself a million and one new trades but to do the work of nearly every single person at a major label all to try and further my career on my own. I learned digital marketing and organically grew my Twitter to nearly 700,000 followers getting 10 Million Monthly Impressions and nearly 12 Million on a single tweet with NO AD spend all through organic digital marketing which I taught myself. I then became a social media analyzer and examined the data and buying habits of these followers and started to learn about their interests, and demographics and ran back-to-back analytics, I targeted followers based on locations, and interests.

I then compiled lists of these people to market songs to ran funnels and wrote music specifically around my fan's target interests. Booking my own shows in these locations I sent out thousands of email blasts harvesting venue and promotor data from Pollstar, I became my own booking agent. I built relationships with my fans and treated them as friends and not just fans trying to win over their support from major artists. A lot of labels did not like this and I was called out several times for being a "fraud" even though I was doing everything the right way. As you can imagine I was as stressed out and burned out as I was fired back with an attitude. I upstaged a few “label experts” when they said my followers were fake but should have been a lot more humble, about it. Most don't know I how well-versed I am in marketing, I just don't have a huge budget after paying for recordings, music videos, and touring backline.

After that, I learned more and more work and took on even more rolls that I wasn’t getting paid for, people kept telling me the fans I worked so hard to connect with were “Bots” just because many years ago after being turned down by The William Morris agency I bought some followers on Instagram. I was told “It was a numbers game and I had to be competitive” This was before I put in the work and knew what I now know about the music business. I mainly bought the followers to get verified on Instagram so I wasn’t impersonated. I had amassed a large REAL following on Twitter but didn’t know how to grow on Instagram and just wanted a blue check on there so people knew it was my real account. I had written several emails to Instagram all were ignored, I even hit them with trademark violation complaints because I had so many accounts impersonating me. Yet they refused to give me the bluecheck, finally, I realized their criteria was based on how many followers you had, I caved and bought 100k followers so they would verify my account and fans would know my real Instagram.

This was a long time ago, I wasn’t buying followers to get ahead it was for authenticity purposes. I went back and completely reimagined my music career and did it the right way like I said earlier. I learned the structure of a hit song from meetings with ASCAPs Ralph Murphy and picked apart Ashley Gorleys biggest hits. Read books from Rick Barker and Jay Frank. I talked to every single guitar guru I could about how guitar amps different guitars and combinations of pedals what they were used for how they came together in a mix. I became a guitar tech. I became a studio assistant, helping around the studio every chance I could. I learned my own graphic design and designed every album cover I put out from photoshopping myself onto a giant clock for the Clockwork album to producing the music video for “Better Without You” and doing the job of a day-to-day manager by calling ahead before going to a location and organizing everything possible from a private jet in a music video to what I would be wearing and the entire storyline of the video and song. I became an investor investing thousands into songs and videos. I studied a small amount of social psychology to learn the behaviors of people which days they felt like buying music on and what they felt when they heard a song they liked and what environment they were in and how music was being consumed. The psychology also helped in branding and my approach to creating an “over the top” sorta alter-ego character-like persona that people would hate in turn this would make me even more famous and kind of loved in a roundabout way kind of like an annoying meme you hate because its annoying but end up using it. I wanted to cater to Jimmy Buffett fans with the idea of escapism but at the same time capture the attention of the music industry especially those who use private jets to fly to golf courses on a day to day basis. I wanted to relate to them to capture their attention but also to tap into people's imagination and inspire them to be better and remain hopeful no matter how bad their situation was. I became an SEO specialist and started my own blog, just like this one, my own news network and podcast to help me get discovered and rank higher in Searches. I learned how to backlink and learned how to set up an RSS feed to Google News from my website.

I learned how to encode songs, sell tickets, chart songs, set up pre-order campaigns and email lists, organize music licensing and publishing, copyright, trademark, design and create merch, get on playlists, I learned how to write and distribute PR to nearly a thousand accredited news networks in the entire country, how to play tricky guitar solos and took years and years of vocal lessons. All to watch people that just came to town a week ago have more success because they knew the right people, said the right thing or had a ton of money. With almost no budget and no acceptance by the music community its hard to utilize any of these skills. Everytime I put in ANY work people would downplay it. Call me lazy, said I bought bots or didn’t know what I was doing. I couldn’t even make any of these skills work for anyone else because I was self-taught without a degree no one would hire me.

I have done the work of a whole label on my own from ads specialist to manager, booking agent, promotor, graphic designer, social media marketer, digital marketing specialist, playlister, music video producer, songwriter, guitar player, content creator, SEO Specialist, sync agent, singer, branding expert, PR team, Ads Manager, Guitar Tech, and event organizer. All while working sometimes as much as 12-hour days and 60-hour weeks at a regular job suffering from heat while living in my car. Years and years of work with ALL my money going towards songs, music videos and gear. Imagine working for years and years but making no money because its already spent. Relatable yet? Again watching everyone else succeed around me even after going to bars every night and networking with them all while trying to be happy for others success while people downplayed my own.

While others called me a “fraud” to my face and behind my back because I put in the work and would appear to “get ahead” they thought I was “shortcutting” people. I got no credit for any of my hard-earned work. This is 12 years of hard work and me not getting paid at all. Grinding it out and learning from a lot of trials but mostly errors. All this work made me miserable. I wasn’t doing what I wanted to do at all, I wasn’t playing music I was tied up learning all of this crap. Although I had some success from a song or two its really NOTHING compared to the time and money I’ve put into this. To make matters worse because of my attitude and how I would reply to people calling me a fraud after they assumed I was shortcutting people I started to make things even worse for myself. I let everything get to me, family and friends didn’t care about any of the work because it wasn’t making money or if it did it wasn’t even close to what I put into it.

Depression got the best of me, my attitude got the best of me. Demons plagued my life but I refused to let them in.

I turned to Jesus every single time, going to church and even prayer circles in downtown Nashville. Most of all I refused to quit. But it would seem that every time I turned to God and vowed I wouldn’t quit. Everything would just get worse, I got into multiple car accidents none were really even my fault people smashed my car, ran and got away with it. Night after night I worked hard emailing venues on my own and booking shows only to watch them all get canceled my entire friends, family and fans now turned completely against me. My followers going down by the thousands. As I watched all my hard work crumble being labeled a fraud because I tried to make my life better then what it is. I kept getting really upset because my life was crap and my attitude was too. To make matters worse I have to adapt to the ever-evolving landscape of the music industry from pretty much everyone being famous now because of TikTok to just about anyone becoming a song-writer with the help of AI, everyone becoming content creator and digital marketing “expert” and graphic designers all with the help of AI. I feel like everything I learned over the past 12 years has been for nothing and like I wasted my time and my life. I am currently living in a bubble of fear, paranoia, and depression and have nightmares every single night of how bad my life is. Some nights I can’t and don’t sleep or wake up sweating forced to face the grim reality of what my life really is.

All this being said this time around I hope to make things right. I went on the Josh Terry Podcast and apologized for being something I am not, for trying to hide my real life from people including myself so even I couldn’t see how bad it was. I apologized for stuff I said when I felt angry, lonely, bitter and torn up inside, I got humbled and even bullied and I am okay with all of that. I am ready to give this one last shot. I deleted my social media. I want a fresh start and to focus on music and music only.

I am coming back to Nashville with pretty much no money to my name, and no plan B. I don’t expect anything at all, I just want to play music. I am extremely grateful to Josh Terry podcast for getting me on the show. As we all know, nobody is perfect, I don’t want anyone to feel bad for me there are many people that have had it far worse and I have seen it firsthand. The whole point of me writing this is to try and get you to please understand what I have been going through and for you to know the real me. I didn’t mean anything I said in the past it came from a deep place of bitterness and upsetness in my life that not many will ever know or understand and I pray none of you ever will. I am truly sorry for everything and I mean that. This is the worst business anyone can ever be in, but I love music so much I can’t think of doing anything else.

Thank you for reading this and taking part in the journey, I know this sounds negative but this is the true reality of everything I’ve been going through my past 12 years in Nashville. Although I’ve had a lot of great moments it took a few people calling me out for me to realize they weren’t even great moments, its all been fake and exaggerated to make it seem like my life is great when its not. I just want people to know the truth, or at the very least I guess this is just the nature of the beast.

Cody Wolfe- Josh Terry Podcast:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4iouPAuem0