Whiskey Myers makes honest music.
Loud and proud, they sing about what they know with a refreshing directness and clarity. Some call it rebel
music, but it’s more like everyday soul. Their songs are stories, with characters and situations that are
immediately relatable. Stories of celebration, mourning, trials and triumph. Through the quality of these
songs, and their undeniable power in concert and on record, the band has attracted a devoted army of
outspoken fans who pack venues, sing the band’s praises online and continue to make Whiskey Myers a
growing word-of-mouth sensation.
Whiskey Myers’ most recent full-length album,
Firewater
, was released on their own Wiggy Thump
imprint in the spring of 2011. It continues to sell steadily, enjoying a remarkable run on the Texas Music
Charts that culminated with its third single “Anna Marie” reaching #1. All over their home state, they are
commanding larger and larger crowds, selling out 1,000-capacity venues with ease and delivering stadium-
sized shows grounded in the sincerity and unpretentious, fun-loving energy of their bar-band roots. “Our
fans always tell us how much they get out of seeing us play,” says lead singer Cody Cannon, “ but it’s a
two-way street; we get something, too. They inspire us to dedicate ourselves more and more to our music
and our sound. And it sure feels like it’s paying off.”
As their chemistry onstage and in the studio reflect, Whiskey Myers is a brotherhood. The five members cut
their teeth together, honing their chops side-by-side from an early age. Hailing from the Palestine, Texas
area, Cannon was given an acoustic guitar by his “wild-ass biker” (Cody’s words) grandpa, and guitarist
John Jeffers’s dad taught them both the rudiments of the instrument. A job at a sporting goods store
introduced Cannon to future Whiskey Myers lead guitarist Cody Tate, forming the songwriting core of the
band. Upon moving to Tyler, Texas, they picked up drummer Jeff Hogg and enlisted Cannon’s cousin Gary
Brown on bass—even though he’d never played the instrument before.
What came next was a blur of gigs, songs, struggles, and victories. With each show, their natural bond as
friends continued to grow into a formidable musical telepathy and with each song they composed, their
innate gifts as craftsmen were honed further. The resultant sound, so perfectly crystallized on
Firewater
, is
hard-driving and immediate, steeped in the rich legacy of southern rock. Often reduced to a one-
dimensional stereotype, the kind of music that inspired Whiskey Myers—artists like Lynyrd Skynyrd, the
Allman Brothers, and Hank Williams, Jr.—is actually multifaceted and inventive, drawing from country,
R&B, psychedelic rock, and string band traditions.
In that tradition, Whiskey Myers are grand southern eclectics, pulling in an array of influences and
seamlessly mingling them. Listeners can pick up traces of everything from grunge to rockabilly in the
course of a set, united by Cannon’s soulfully heartfelt singing and Brown and Hogg’s solid, supple
foundation. On top of it all, Tate and Jeffers intertwine their leads, soaring in harmony one moment, darting
around one another in intricate improvisations the next. Sure, they’re rousing—just cue up “Bar, Guitar,
and a Honky Tonk Crowd” or “Turn It Up” for a dose of pile-driver intensity. But they’re range is wide and
expanding to encompass touching pleas like “Broken Window Serenade” and the acoustic stomp of “Anna
Marie.”
In Whiskey Myers’ world, nothing is off-limits. Nothing is too personal, too sensitive, or too controversial
to embrace and explore.