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Jamey Johnson’s fans are patient. Actually, they have to be. The country star took about 14 years to release his latest album of original material, “Midnight Gasoline.” That record, which dropped in November 2024, was the follow-up to 2010’s “The Guitar Song.” True, the Alabama native had released “Living for a Song: A Tribute to Hank Cochran” in 2012, but it was a collection of cover songs, celebrating an artist Johnson admires. And it still took 12 more years for the public to hear “Midnight Gasoline.” But as Johnson revealed this week on Rolling Stone’s “Nashville Now” podcast, he had good reason for the delay. “You know, everything was moving right along until about 2010,” Johnson told Joseph Hudak, host of the podcast and a senior editor at Rolling Stone. “And I’ve tried to describe it before, but it was a concussion that I got from slipping on some ice in a parking lot at the studio, and that kind of turned everything upstairs into fight or flight. And it was just stuck there for the longest time, for lack of better explanation. “That’s what was going on,” Johnson continued. “And it wasn’t that I didn’t write; I just didn’t write enough that would warrant an album. And so the stuff that I did write, I’d send it to Willie, or I’d send it to George Strait or Merle. Over time, it just turned into, you know, I had a songwriting gig for a while, so there wasn’t a whole lot of time, and there certainly wasn’t budget for albums, and I kind of didn’t want to do the label thing anymore.” Johnson, 50, said he continued to tour, playing shows for appreciative fans across the country, including his home state. (He was born in Enterprise and raised in Montgomery.) The singer-songwriter, known for tough-and-tender tunes such as “In Color,” said he tried other ways to supplement his income, such as owning a golf course in Montgomery. “You don’t make money on those,” Johnson told Hudak. “And my partner and I, we really hoped better for it, but it wasn’t in the cards.” Johnson emphasized, however, that the 2010 concussion had a major impact on his life and career. In the aftermath, he said, it was difficult to think clearly and he began to rely on alcohol. “It felt like a lot of anger, a lot of frustration,” Johnson told Hudak. “I went from being able to process information at a pretty good pace, I thought, to getting confused over, did I order oysters or did I want to order oysters? And then getting confused as to, did that happen last year, or was 12? “The way I understood it, the way I think it was best explained to me, somebody was talking about how a drug, a pharmaceutical, has no effect on you whatsoever without the chemistry of your brain. The drug, if you look at it in that regard, taking the pill is a lot like getting a prescription, and the prescription gets delivered to the pharmacist. And the pharmacist fills the prescription is the way that the brain releases chemicals. And so when you’re stuck in fight or flight, it’s like an earthquake hit the pharmacy. Everything is everywhere. It’s just mixed. “For me, there was a period of just, holy sh—t,” Johnson said. “That’s right about the time I started blackout drunk. And it took me a while to heal up, and finally, in 2011, I quit drinking. The next year, I was trying to get it all sorted out. You know, that thing did a lot more damage than I thought it had done at the time. And looking back on it, it’s so evident to me now that that’s, you know, that’s the point where the rock hit the water, so to speak, is where that asphalt hit my head.” Johnson focused on substance abuse and sobriety in “Sober,” a single from “Midnight Gasoline” released in fall 2024. The song, written with James Slater, doesn’t mention his concussion, but its lyrics have extra resonance after Johnson’s revelations in the podcast. I’ve been mad/I’ve been drunk/I’ve been so high I can’t tell up from down But lately I’ve been working/on trying to get my feet back on the ground It ain‘t easy on the wagon/Hell I lost more of my mind than I have found All these drinking songs we’re playing/make it hard staying sober in this town. In a 2024 interview with Billboard, Johnson said giving up booze had a major impact on his life. “I had my last drink in September 2011,” the country star said. “Then I quit smoking pot in 2015. I think that lasted about eight years. Nine years. In that time period, it was all about sobriety. And with a sober mind, I’m able to do things like get a pilot’s license, manage a business, start a product line. I’m sober for the most part, but every now and then, I may still break out a joint if I’m writing or something like that. “But I don’t play games with the alcohol. That’s what led me down a dark path of self-destruction back then and I barely survived. Alcohol was an incendiary way of destructing myself. Everything just went up in in flames and you couldn’t put the fire out, you just had to wait for it to all come to ashes and then try to rebuild when you got done. And it seemed to me like I owed myself a better way to live than that.” Johnson was arrested in November 2024 for drug possession and speeding in Williamson County, Tenn., after getting pulled over with pot in the car. But the country star didn’t talk about that during the “Nashville Now” podcast. Instead, Johnson focused on the positive, including his thoughts on the state of country music today. “I am happy with it, and it’s headed wherever the hell it wants to,” Johnson said. “You know, it’s doing what it has done ever since I’ve been a kid. It’s evolved and it’s changed and it’s morphed and it never sits still. Every five years, it’s something completely different. I love all of the artists that are making their contributions today, and I hear it all every now and then when I end up in one of those streaming playlists. “And suddenly you’re hearing all this new stuff that’s kind of what happened over the past five years. And they are good. My God, they’re good. Great writers, great singers. So I’m proud of them. I think the world of them and think they’re doing a fantastic job. Even if I don’t remember all your song titles, I promise you, I’m hearing them.”
