Jameson Rodgers rose to fame with the hits "Some Girls" and the Luke Combs collaboration "Cold Beer Calling My Name," but he's also made a name for himself as a sought-after songwriter who's penned tunes for Florida Georgia Line ("Talk You Out of It"), Luke Bryan ("Born Here Live Here Die Here") and Jason Aldean ("Camouflage Hat").
Videos by Wide Open Country
Songwriting and, more specifically, great lyrics have always been important to Rodgers, going back to when he first heard Hank Williams Jr.'s 1980 heartbreaker "Old Habits" as a teenager.
"I can't recall a specific time and place when I first heard this song, but I'm guessing it was when I was around 15 years old and started making CDs for my first truck," Rodgers tells Wide Open Country. "I drove a 1995 Chevrolet Z71 and probably had 100 CDs in there. The verses of this song are some of the best lyrics I've ever heard. "I use life savers to help me get off cigarettes, oh but you know for your love, I ain't found no life savers yet," is my favorite lyric to this day. I remember my ninth grade English teacher bringing a guitar to class and playing Hank Sr. That sparked my interest in Hank and probably led me down the rabbit hole of everything Hank Sr. and Hank Jr. My dad was also a huge traditional country music fan so it was always playing around the house and in his truck. Whether I associate it with a certain memory -- maybe I do, maybe I don't. That's the beauty of music. The lyrics to the song are the standard to me. It inspires me to be a better songwriter every day. I think being in the music industry now, it really shows me how talented Hank Jr. was as a songwriter, and maybe he doesn't get the credit he deserves on that front. He's one of my favorite country music songwriters and inspires me to be better every day."
Rodgers released his debut studio album Bet You're From a Small Town in 2021.
