Interview and words by Stephanie Foster

A little boy drifts to sleep to his mother singing “The King is Gone” by George Jones and “When You Say Nothing At All” by Keith Whitley. As she sings, he thinks about how incredible she and her voice are. He is inspired by his mother and decides he too wants to sing and make music. That little boy would grow up just to do that.

Cody Morgan is a local Lexington alt-pop artist born in Hazard, Kentucky, a small town known for its coal mining and lumber industry. Located in the eastern part of the state, the population amounts to 5,000 and from a young age, he said he felt as though he did not really belong there.

“I feel like I was born with a soul that was meant to roam, that was meant to be somewhere bigger, doing something bigger,” Morgan said.

His mother would sing to him before bed and play guitar for him, which sparked Morgan’s interest in music. After finding a guitar left by his cousin at their grandmother’s house, he took it home and began playing it. It was as though it were meant to be. His mother had taught him some basic chords, but he caught on quickly and began teaching himself progressions, riffs, and eventually entire songs.

Morgan’s parents also promised him that they would buy him a “real” guitar for Christmas if he learned 10 songs. It only took a week for him to keep his end of the bargain. He often sat next to his parent’s CD collection, a clash of heavy rock and country, and carefully chose songs that spoke to him before mastering them by ear.

“I was obsessed,” he said. “I would practice for like eight hours a day. Like as soon as I got home from school, I would go straight to my room and start learning.”

It was obvious to his parents that he was passionate about music and as soon as he turned 18, Morgan left his small town in order to pursue his musical dreams. His mother worked as his “manager” for a few years, booking him gigs and entering into competitions. After managing her son, she saw more potential in him and pushed him to expand his talents beyond the guitar.

“I used to hate singing and only wanted to be a guitar player,” Morgan said. “She saw my potential, I guess, and pushed me into it.”

To move closer to his ultimate goal, Morgan has made music his full-time job. Of course, he is not without struggle. Money and budget-related issues often trouble the majority of independent artists, especially those who classify themselves in the indie genre. In a survey done by Forbes about independent musicians in 2019, “eight in 10 musicians do not earn enough from their music careers to not worry about their financial situation.” After his mother stopped working with him, Morgan often had to split his time between creating and managing himself.

Despite this, his hard work has paid off to where he has managed to earn a large following on social media, especially on Tik Tok, where he has over 12,500 followers. Under the username @spacecowboymusic, he attributed the majority of his following to “literally singing on his toilet.” In a messy, dark bathroom, Morgan played his guitar and sang for the camera. He sometimes would be in his bathtub, while other times he sits on the toilet. Though he still often posts videos of him performing, they are more often in his bedroom rather than the bathroom now.

People all over the world lost their jobs and stability at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Morgan was no exception to this. With the live music industry all but gone, he found himself unable to book any shows and had to put his music career on hold to make ends meet as a server. Though this situation could be viewed as dim by some, Morgan approached it optimistically and deemed it as a blessing in disguise.

He said that being a creator allowed him to put on the act of serving easier and helped him to smile through it all. It also helped him with his social anxieties, such as talking to strangers and carrying conversations with those he may not know.

“Serving really made me realize how short life can be and that my dreams and happiness need to be prioritized,” he said. “I took the chance to do music full-time. Obviously, I’m doing it as safely as I possibly can. At the beginning of this year, I was like ‘I can stay inside and never seize the opportunity, or I can go out and brave the world and just take all the precautions and make my dreams come true.’”

Morgan believes that learning to love the work and that nothing is guaranteed are two important lessons he has learned. His current short-term goals are to grow in more popularity in the Louisville-Lexington-Cincinnati triangle, though he has his sights set on bigger dreams.

“I want to make all the people who have believed in me all these years proud,” he said. “They just want to see me succeed as much as I want to see them succeed.”

He wants to “become as famous as possible,” including hopefully winning a Grammy, in order to repay those who have supported him over the years. Morgan wants to let them know that it was not for nothing.

“It’s very hard to have a dream like this one where the odds are so 50-50. It gets really hard sometimes,” Morgan said. “You get knocked down and you’re all alone. You start to lose faith and the dream starts to seem too far away, but self-belief is your best friend.”

Morgan’s most recent song is named “939” and can be streamed on Spotify. He said he currently has new music in the works but is unsure of when it will be released.