Cody Hibbard Was Addicted to Pills, Mad at His Religion and Lost His House. Then He Found Music (Exclusive)

Country artist Cody Hibbard was 13 months old when he left South Korea.

“I was adopted,” Hibbard, 31, tells PEOPLE. “We lived in Tulsa my freshman year. My dad was a garbage collector and my mom was actually a math teacher. And when they got me, my mom quit teaching and my dad went on trashing.”

Until his dad bought the farm he had always dreamed of.

“Dad bought 340 acres,” Hibbard remembers of the lot located in Adair, Oklahoma. “We lived in a little double building for a while until dad built a house. We ran cattle here. And dad wanted chicken coops, so we started building chicken coops for Tyson [Foods].”

So if anyone ever doubted Hibbard’s country roots, he was always quick to point out that they were completely wrong to do so. “I’m sitting next to each other right now,” he admits with a laugh.

Cody Hibbard.

Brooke Stevens

Admittedly, Hibbard is the first to admit that he didn’t always love country life growing up. “I had a kind of rebellious spirit,” he says. “I remember my grandfather taking me to the United States Military Academy in New York and I loved hearing about the CIA and the Secret Service and the DEA and the FBI. I actually wanted to be a forensic scientist.”

But when it came time to either go to college or start working on the family farm, Hibbard says he decided to enlist in the Marines. “I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to go to college for,” he remembers. – Honestly, I didn’t want to go to college.

Hibbard’s rebellious spirit continued when he eventually changed his mind about the Marines, choosing instead to accept an invitation to attend the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. There he suffered a shoulder injury, which resulted in two surgeries.

“I was put on pain meds after the first surgery and I got hooked easily,” Hibbard remembers. “I wanted more and I needed more and I didn’t think anything the doctor would give you would amount to anything that bad.”

Hibbard soon left the Naval Academy to attend another school, but his need for painkillers began to turn into an addiction. “I did a lot of things behind people’s backs,” says Hibbard, who started playing guitar while working as a pipeline worker after dropping out of college. “I was very good at hiding things. I remember waking up in the hospital. My friends had just left me outside the emergency room stairs. They must have freaked out and driven away. I knew I had a problem.”

Cody Hibbard.

Brooke Stevens

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It was precisely these and many other difficult circumstances that eventually found their way to his music. Hibbard released his first EP, Memory and dirt road in January 2020, followed by the one of the same name Cody Hibbard EPIC. But so far, nothing touches the sharpness heard on his hard-hitting album A long ride in a short bed.

“‘Kill the Messenger’ is my song about getting so mad at my religion,” Hibbard recalls of the first song A long ride in a short bed. “I spent most of my life following a priest who ended up doing some really bad things, and that’s where the symbolism of that song comes in. I had to really dig deep and, in my mind, I wanted to ask myself if I wasted all that time going to study Bibles and church camps?”

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There’s also “Bad Trip,” a soul-sucker at its best that was written solely by Hibbard and came from another turbulent period in his life.

“That was the last time I had a bad night,” remembers Hibbard, who says he “came off the pill” 10 years ago when he found out his ex was pregnant with his first child. “I took some pills and drank as much as I could. I was late on every bill. My ex wanted to leave me. I was a young father and I was trying to pay for everything to take care of our daughter. And I admit it — I didn’t care about my the first house. I thought I was being chased by the police, I didn’t know how it worked.”

Cody Hibbard.

Brooke Stevens

Hibbard says a return to these turbulent times during creation A long ride in a short bed it was certainly a challenge, but one that the father of four now says cleared him mentally, as did the album’s highly sentimental songs such as “Backroad to Heaven” and the destined-to-be-hit “Had It Been a Boy.”

“I never cried in the vocal booth, and I really didn’t cry much until I was about 30,” he says. “And I’ve never cried as much in the studio as I did recording about four or five of these songs on this album.”

But today life is better.

“I’m not addicted to anything else,” he says. “I don’t have any alcohol in the fridge. I’m very blessed the way it all turned out.”

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Source: HIS Education