The boys from Oklahoma might roll their joints all wrong, but they know how to make some damn good Red Dirt country music.
The band that was a cornerstone of the Red Dirt movement has been a hot topic since the announcement of Cross Canadian Ragweed’s reunion show in Stillwater, Oklahoma. From their selling 180,000 tickets for the four-night event to fans swapping stories of seeing Ragweed in their prime and also how they’ve influenced other Red Dirt groups and individual artists over the years, people can’t stop talking about Ragweed.
While everyone is excited to hear the group live for the first time in fifteen years, Ragweed stepping back into the limelight also gives viewers and fans a chance to hear interviews with the frontman, Cody Canada, to listen to some untold stories of the band. Canada has changed his tune from saying that Ragweed was like a divorced couple that would never get back together to being blown away by the number of people who paid to see them in April of 2025.
I think the success of the reunion show is giving Canada the confidence to open up about how stellar the group was instead of focusing on how much each band member has grown as an artist since their split.
On a recent episode of The Watering Hole Podcast, co-hosts Rhett and Jager sat down with Cody Canada in Stillwater, Oklahoma, the birthplace of Cross Canadian Ragweed, to talk all things Ragweed, what’s on the horizon for him personally, and more. During one portion of the episode, the co-hosts asked him how it feels to hear that Cross Canadian Ragweed has influenced so many artists and other folks on the Red Dirt scene.
Canada responded that it’s taken him some time to get used to that.
“It took me a minute to get past that. Not that I have a problem with being old, but when someone… It took me a minute to get used to it I guess, but now I’m in full appreciation mode. Very grateful that everybody now.
Like Turnpike… Evan always told me he learned how to play harmonica to the ‘Brooklyn Kid’ song. And I thought he was lying, you know. But looking back on it, it’s like, man, the Okies got this sh*t down. We really do. That’s all I got. “
We know that Ragweed influenced many other artists to push the boundary with their sound, but it’s cool to hear how Ragweed directly influenced Evan Felker in his younger years.
April in Boone Pickens Stadium will be a full circle moment for Felker, as he will perform with the artists who inspired him to pick up a harmonica and pursue a music career.
Even if Ragweed never announced this reunion, the collective would agree that they are a generational band based on how much they have inspired other artists. They have directly impacted every artist coming out of Oklahoma. Boy, are there some good ones…Turnpike Troubadours, Wyatt Flores, Southall, not to mentioned the rockers coming out of Texas like Koe Wetzel and many others.
Oklahoma knows how to produce some legendary country acts.