Skip to content
Search

Cody Canada Is Reviving a Cross Canadian Ragweed Classic Album — But Says the Band Will Never Reunite

Cody Canada Is Reviving a Cross Canadian Ragweed Classic Album — But Says the Band Will Never Reunite

Cody Canada is ready to give a festival audience a heavy dose of Cross Canadian Ragweed. He just wants to make it clear that he’ll be doing so with the Departed.

At a one-day festival called Spring Revelry, which organizers and artists confirmed to Rolling Stone will take place on May 4 in Indianola, Iowa, at the sprawling Memorial Balloon Field, Cody Canada and the Departed will perform Ragweed’s 2004 record Soul Gravy — one time the defining album of the Red Dirt genre — from front to back.


Canada’s set is part of a stacked festival lineup headlined by Turnpike Troubadours and Ryan Bingham with the Texas Gentlemen. Trampled by Turtles, Muscadine Bloodline, Josh Meloy, Kaitlin Butts, and Tyler Halverson are also on the bill. Tickets go on sale — via Ticketmaster — Wednesday at 9 a.m. Central.

Ragweed was signed to Universal South when Soul Gravy was released, and the label retains the rights to the album. Ragweed broke up in 2010. Since then, Canada and Ragweed bass player Jeremy Plato have toured as the Departed, which also features Eric Hansen on drums. In 2022, the Departed re-recorded Soul Gravy, free from label ties — think “Taylor’s Version” but for an Americana album. The release cast fresh attention on the Departed, who have since enjoyed a sustained run of sellout or near-sellout crowds at venues like Gruene Hall and Billy Bob’s Texas. The band will make its Ryman Auditorium debut on March 2 as part of a triple bill with Randy Rogers and Stoney LaRue. At the same time, calls on social media for a Ragweed reunion, Canada says, have become increasingly difficult to ignore.

“The one thing that really does bother me about it is, I just wish people could remember better than they do,” Canada tells Rolling Stone. “They’re hearing memories. And they are drunk memories, because what we do now with the Departed is better than Ragweed.

“When people hear Soul Gravy, they think of Ragweed shows. They think about how hammered they were, or that they got laid or that they made a big road trip. But what we’re doing now as a three-piece band is better. I’m sorry, but that’s the truth.”

Social media is not the only place where Canada finds clamoring for Ragweed. Since the pandemic, he says he has fielded eye-popping offers for a reunion. However, Ragweed — which featured Canada, Plato, drummer Randy Ragsdale and rhythm guitarist Grady Cross — ended with its members on bad terms. Canada says those differences have not been resolved.

“The offers I get for Ragweed are really hard to overlook sometimes,” Canada says. “But people don’t realize the hard feelings that are still there. It’s like asking somebody who is divorced if they’ll get remarried. The answer is ‘Fuck no,’ right? Well, what if somebody offers you three million dollars to get remarried? I’d love to be able to say yes, but I wouldn’t feel right about it. And I wish people would remember what we actually sounded like. The best nights of their lives were some of the worst performances of my life.”

Soul Gravy’s original release hit Number Five on Billboard’s country albums chart and Number 51 on the Hot 200. Two songs — “Alabama” and the Lee Ann Womack duet “Sick and Tired” — made the Billboard country songs chart.

“I knew that ‘Sick and Tired’ would do something, just because of Lee Ann,” Canada says. “One reviewer called me and her ‘barbed wire and roses’ and I never forgot that. I understood at the time that it would be at least a blip on the radar. But luckily, it was more than that. Every song on there, from front to back, I was very happy with. There wasn’t anything I wanted to change. I just didn’t know it was going to be as talked about as it has been since.”

The original record was produced by Mike McClure. The band produced the remake in-house, with Departed engineer Brian Kinzie overseeing the mixes. Womack reprised her vocals on “Sick and Tired” and Randy Rogers and Ray Wylie Hubbard also contributed to the Departed’s version.

“This was a really good mix of tunes that meant something to me,” Canada says. “Nothing felt made up, like I was just looking for 12 songs to put on a record. It was a very personal record, I think, and the redo was a lot easier than I thought. There were a handful of tunes that we already did as a band, but once we got into the studio and started attacking it, everything came back to me. I’m not gonna say it wasn’t nostalgic, because it was. It was pretty awesome to relive all of those tunes for this.”

He says he’s looking forward to playing the album in its entirety. “We don’t really release full-length records anymore, and that’s something I really miss,” Canada says. “For someone to ask us to do it now, 20 years later, is pretty awesome.”

Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author of the 2020 book Red Dirt: Roots Music Born in Oklahoma, Raised in Texas, at Home Anywhere and the 2023 book The Motel Cowboy Show: On the Trail of Mountain Music from Idaho to Texas, and the Side Roads in Between.

More Stories

Pierre Lapointe, Grand duke of broken souls

Cotton two-piece by Marni, SSENSE.com / Shirt from personal collection

Photographer Guillaume Boucher / Stylist Florence O. Durand / HMUA: Raphaël Gagnon / Producers: Malik Hinds & Billy Eff / Studio: Allô Studio

Pierre Lapointe, Grand duke of broken souls

Many years ago, while studying theatrical performance at Cégep de Saint-Hyacinthe, Pierre Lapointe was given a peculiar exercise by his teacher. The students were asked to walk from one end of the classroom to the other while observing their peers. Based solely on their gait, posture, and gaze, they had to assign each other certain qualities, a character, or even a profession.

Lapointe remembers being told that there was something princely about him. That was not exactly the term that this young, queer student, freshly emancipated from the Outaouais region and marked by a childhood tinged with near-chronic sadness, would have instinctively chosen for himself. Though he had been unaware of his own regal qualities, he has spent more than 20 years trying to shed this image, one he admits he may have subtly cultivated in his early days.

Keep ReadingShow less
Cops Who Falsified Warrant Used in Breonna Taylor Raid Didn’t Cause Her Death, Judge Rules

Cops Who Falsified Warrant Used in Breonna Taylor Raid Didn’t Cause Her Death, Judge Rules

A federal judge in Kentucky ruled that two police officers accused of falsifying a warrant ahead of the deadly raid that killed Breonna Taylor were not responsible for her death, The Associated Press reports. And rather than the phony warrant, U.S. District Judge Charles Simpson said Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, was responsible for her death because he fired upon the police officers first — even though he had no idea they were police officers.

The ruling was handed down earlier this week in the civil rights violation case against former Louisville Police Detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sgt. Kyle Meany. The two were not present at the March 2020 raid when Taylor was killed. Instead, in 2022, Attorney General Merrick Garland accused the pair (along with another detective, Kelly Goodlett) of submitting a false affidavit to search Taylor’s home before the raid and then conspiring to create a “false cover story… to escape responsibility” for preparing the phony warrant. 

Keep ReadingShow less
Queens of the Stone Age Cancel Remaining 2024 Shows After Josh Homme Surgery

Queens of the Stone Age Cancel Remaining 2024 Shows After Josh Homme Surgery

Queens of the Stone Age have canceled the remainder of their 2024 tour dates — including a string of North American shows and festival gigs scheduled for the fall — as Josh Homme continues his recovery from an unspecified surgery he underwent in July.

“QOTSA regret to announce the cancellation and/or postponement of all remaining 2024 shows. Josh has been given no choice but to prioritize his health and to receive essential medical care through the remainder of the year,” the band wrote on social media.

Keep ReadingShow less
Sabrina Carpenter Is Viscously Clever and Done With Love Triangles on ‘Short N’ Sweet’: 5 Takeaways

Sabrina Carpenter Is Viscously Clever and Done With Love Triangles on ‘Short N’ Sweet’: 5 Takeaways

After Sabrina Carpenter’s summer takeover with “Espresso” and “Please Please Please,” the anticipation for Short n’ Sweet was at an all-time high. On her sixth album, the pop singer keeps the surprises coming as she delivers a masterclass in clever songwriting and hops between R&B and folk-pop with ease. Carpenter writes about the frustration of modern-day romance, all the while cementing herself as a pop classic. Here’s everything we gathered from the new project.

Please Please Please Don’t Underestimate Her Humor 

Carpenter gave us a glimpse of her humor on singles “Espresso” and “Please Please Please” — she’s working late because she’s a singer; ceiling fans are a pretty great invention! But no one could have guessed how downright hilarious she is on Short n’ Sweet, delivering sugary quips like “The Lord forgot my gay awakenin’” (“Slim Pickins”) and “How’s the weather in your mother’s basement?” (“Needless to Say”). She’s also adorably nerdy, fretting about grammar (“This boy doesn’t even know/The difference between ‘there,’ ‘their’ and ‘they are!’”) and getting Shakespearian (“Where art thou? Why not uponeth me?”). On “Juno,” she even takes a subject as serious as pregnancy and twists it into a charming pop culture reference for the ages: “If you love me right, then who knows?/I might let you make me Juno.” It’s official: Do not underestimate Ms. Carpenter’s pen. — A.M.

Keep ReadingShow less
RFK Jr. Suspends Campaign, Endorses Trump

RFK Jr. Suspends Campaign, Endorses Trump

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has suspended his 2024 presidential campaign, and according to a court filing in Pennsylvania on Friday will throw his weight behind former President Donald Trump.

Multiple news outlets reported on Wednesday that independent presidential candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. was planning to drop out of the race and endorse Trump. He clarified at an event in Arizona on Friday that he is not terminating his campaign, only suspending it, and that his name will remain on the ballot in non-battleground states. He said that if enough people still vote for him and Trump and Kamala Harris tie in the Electoral College, he could still wind up in the White House.

Keep ReadingShow less