Swift famously announced she would return to the studio to record new versions of her earliest albums following the sale of Big Machine Records in 2019 to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings. With her efforts to purchase the master recordings to the five albums she had recorded for Big Machine already having been denied at that point, she moved forward using her influence and star power in a way few have ever been able.
In 2021, Swift released newly recorded versions of both her Fearless and Red LPs to massive commercial success and critical acclaim. Although he lives over 900 miles from Nashville’s Music Row in the Texas Hill Country, Cody Canada paid close attention to Swift’s power play.
Swift inspired Canada to make a similar move, and he announced that his band The Departed would re-record Soul Gravy, the influential 2004 record his previous band Cross Canadian Ragweed recorded for Universal South. A simple, short phone call put this project into motion.
Canada called the label offices to ask about getting some copies of the Box of Weed box set collection from 2011, which contains the six albums Ragweed had recorded for Universal. He was told by a staff member that he could absolutely get his hands on them, but he would need to pay $35 per set first. He had also wanted to one day release the early Ragweed albums on vinyl, a notion that now seemed impossible.
“I said, ‘I’m not paying for my own music,’” he says. “And I was told, ‘You don’t own these recordings, so you have to buy them from us.’ It was devastating to hear. I wanted to vomit, and I just hung up. I didn’t say anything, just hung up. Years later, I hear about what Taylor Swift is doing, and I thought ‘I didn’t know you could actually do that.' She opened my eyes to this. I’m following the leader.”
Spiritual Ownership
That wasn’t the first time ownership of his music had become a prominent theme in Canada’s career. The Departed was formed in 2011 following the breakup of Cross Canadian Ragweed in 2010. The dissolution was an ugly one.“It was a band divorcing, and that’s an ugly, gross thing for everyone involved,” he says.
The bitterness Canada felt following the Ragweed split led his new band to ignore the Ragweed songs that made him famous, even as they began touring. Without hearing classic cuts such as “Alabama” or “Seventeen” mixed in with the new songs from The Departed, many fans were left confused and upset.
At the height of Ragweed’s success in the mid- to late aughts, the band could pull in close to 20,000 people in for a Texas concert. That wasn’t the case for The Departed as it toured behind its first pair of albums. By the time 2014 rolled around, Canada was ready to reclaim a sort of spiritual ownership over the songs he created that were so special to him. He had missed those songs, and the fans had missed him singing them.
“I told the band, ‘Look, we have to start playing these songs of mine,’” Canada says. “There were two dudes in the band that said, ‘We don’t want to do that,’ and for me it was like, ‘Well, see you later then. I’m not going to fire you, but this is what we’re going to do.’”
Since the departure of Chris Doege and Steve Littleton, The Departed has performed as a tight, power trio, breathing electric life into the Ragweed catalog, along with songs from The Departed’s four albums.
It was easy to see and hear the difference between a Departed concert before and after the switch. As a five-piece, the group had been an effectively groovy, Southern-rocking band, but as a trio armed with the Ragweed repertoire, there was a night and day difference for the better. Buzz around the band was bigger than before, thanks not only to the return of the older material, but due to the evident joy Canada beamed when playing those songs. To be fair, The Departed’s 2018 album, appropriately titled 3, was also a barn-burner that would fit nicely with any of the Ragweed albums.
A Second Helping of Soul Gravy
The track listing for the new record is the same as the original version, but there will still be plenty of fresh meat for fans to sink their teeth into. For the most part, the arrangements are given a more rock-forward, guitar-driven approach. Canada makes no bones about not liking what he describes as a “thin, electronic” sound for some of the guitar parts on the original record, and he’s not making any apologies for beefing things up now with “an almost ZZ Top-type of sound” in some cases, he says.Fellow Texas country A-listers Randy Rogers and Ray Wylie Hubbard sing on the record, and Canada’s two sons, Dierks (guitar) and Willy (drums) join their dad on the poetic ballad “Flowers.” Lee Ann Womack will reprise her role as collaborating vocalist on “Sick and Tired,” and other surprise contributions are lined up for the album that will likely see the light of day later in 2022.
Speaking about Soul Gravy takes Canada back to a time before the in-fighting and the dilemmas that fame and money can bring. When Ragweed began writing songs for Soul Gravy, Canada was still a young star on the rise, and things were far simpler than they would become.
“Shannon [Canada’s wife] and I had moved to Yukon [Oklahoma], and we just were not happy,” he says. “But we had what we called ‘the mustard sandwich rule’ in our marriage where as long as we were happy, we were fine with eating only mustard sandwiches. I wrote 'Down' during that time, and we even had a show to play in Waco with Willie Nelson. I thought, “Man, I could not be happier! I’ve got my wife, my dog, I’m playing a show with Willie, and we’re moving somewhere new.”
And to be clear, Canada’s not trying to uncover a lost fountain of youth or cover up painful memories from a different time by re-recording Soul Gravy. Just the opposite. He’s doing it because it’s what feels right. Because he can.
“I’ve always been happy with the songs on Soul Gravy,” he says. “But not how they all turned out on the final record. I get to do something about that now. This is really for me, my kids, and our fans who love these songs.”
Cody Canada and The Departed perform on Saturday, March 12 at the Granada Theater, 3524 Greenville Ave.
