BY BRETT NIERENGARTEN @PRORODEOBRETT
There’s always something to do when you’re a musician, according to Jon Stork.
“There’s a never-ending compiling of ideas and concepts,” he said. “This is probably the most intense workload that nobody ever thinks of.”
Stork knows what a workload is, he was home-schooled until Junior High and spent a lot of time outside with his family’s horses, cows and chickens where there was always something to do or always something to fix.
Stork’s mother was a worship leader and played the piano while his father played the guitar. The youngest of four siblings in a musical family, he was the last one to pick up an instrument, inspired one day after he realized his older brother got all of the shine for playing the guitar.
“It hit me about 10-years-old, we were at a big family function and my dad would always tell my brother ‘hey, bring your guitar, I’m going to make you play for everybody,’ and when he looked at me he said, ‘Jon, show ‘em some pictures of your cows,” Stork said. “And I just went, ‘I can do this, I am going to play guitar too.’”
The decision to pick up a guitar obviously proved to be a pivotal one in the Southeast Texas native’s life. Carried by his signature “RockyTonk” style, Stork’s debut album Radio Cowboy had two songs spend multiple weeks at the top of Texas radio charts in 2020 and 2021. He followed it up a single, Blood, in 2022 that also reached the Top 3.
“Starting out in Beasley, Texas, I didn’t think I’d be playing five miles down the road, much less all over the country,” he said. “I’m just blessed.”
Leading up to the release of his new song Missing You Lately, Stork caught up with The Cowboy Channel prior to playing Billy Bob’s earlier this month to talk about his chickens, career and more.
TCC: How did growing up in church influence your music?
JS: You feel music in church, that’s where I felt it first. That was a huge launching phase for me.
TCC: Do you remember the first time you performed live?
JS: I always had a guitar around, I always carried a guitar. I kept the guitar with me after I left the ranch, I was a couch player in college. One of my buddies tricked me into a going into an open mic in College Station. He said, ‘I’ll buy your drinks for the rest of the night if you get up there and play.’ I was pulling all of my excuses out because I didn’t play in front of anybody unless I was in my living room.”
“There was only like six people in the bar and as soon as I got on stage, all of these people walked in the door. I didn’t know any of them, these were all musicians for different bands in the area. And I was playing a Cody Johnson song and a guy walks up on stage and turns everything up and whispered in my ear ‘sounds good keep going.’ And I finished up, played my three or four songs and got off stage and shook his hand and said ‘man, thanks a lot for doing that, that was really cool.’ And he said ‘You can play that song anytime you want.’ And I was like, ‘who are you?’ He goes ‘my name is Jodie, I play fiddle for Cody.’ And then the dumbest thing that’s ever come out of my mouth, I said ‘Cody who?’ and he said ‘Johnson.’”
TCC: Can you describe what that feeling was like on stage that night?
JS: They talk about being bit by a bug, it was infectious. It’s a culmination of different feelings and thoughts, but it’s infectious and it’s crazy.
TCC: Can you expand on the work it takes to fine tune a performance?
JS: We’ve had a couple of rehearsals in the last few weeks, which is more than we’ve had in months. Because we’re always going and most of the time, we only get together and leave from the same spot. But with the group of guys that I’ve got right now, everyone is well aware of the potential and the ability within the group and just getting together and having multiple brains in the same direction and the same mentality, helps tremendously. And that just goes into creating different aspects of the show. The little things make the big things. That’s the cool stuff to me, making it better when you know you can make it better. Just like athletes, you have to have reps, you have to practice in order to get better. You have to train in order to get stronger.
TCC: What have you learned about what it takes to put on a show over time?
JS: Going out with these bigger acts and seeing what they do and how they operate, it just dumps gas on the fire. Because everyone’s like ‘we can do this better, we can do that better.
TCC: You’ve mentioned wanting to be genuine when you are writing, do you have a specific songwriting process?
JS: Just like any other profession, you want to look to others who are better at the same thing you’re doing in order to help you grow. So, I’ve been co-writing a lot as well as starting and trying to write songs by myself, but my best ideas I want to save for writers I can learn from.
The songwriting process or format changes every time I sit down. It could be I start on a chorus or it could be sitting in the living room with my wife and she goes ‘ooo, I like that, but what if you did this here.’ It’s never the same, it’s constantly changing, evolving and trying to make the next thing better than the last.
TCC: Do you have any really good songwriting advice you’ve gotten?
JS: Radney Foster told me a story of a time where he was a runner in LA and they said dress nice, you’re going to take a van to the airport and you’re going to pick somebody up. Don’t talk to him our you’re fired. They didn’t tell him who, it was Willie Nelson. At that moment, I had to make a decision if I was going to ask him a question, I said ‘screw it.’ So, Willie got in and Radney turned around and said ‘Mr. Nelson, what’s some advice you could give to a young songwriter?’ And he said ‘the first 100 songs don’t count.’
TCC: Tell me about the chickens.
JS: So, it started a long time ago when I first got into music and my first producer had mentioned ‘you gotta have some kind of story or connection people can grab on to.’ I grew up in the middle of nowhere in a map dot outside of a map dot town and I raised chickens and sold eggs all the way through high school. So from the time I was old enough to start doing things on my own, my dad said go for it. So, they called me the chicken boy or the egg boy.
My producer told me I needed to take a promo picture in a room full of chickens and I said ‘that’s a lot of chickens, but I can find one.’ So, my chicken Ethel, she was just the nice one of the bunch and didn’t mind being held, so I grabbed her one day and we took a picture and from there, it just kind of rolled into t-shirts and stickers. And they still use the promo picture.
Some answers have been condensed for clarity. You can listen to Jon’s music here, follow him on social media here, and get updates on his tour and more here. Special thank you to Joey Hollis.