Cody Hibbard is the fifth artist I have interviewed from this season of The Road, and, in my humble opinion, he is the most country-sounding of them all. Fortunately, he took that as the compliment it was meant to be.

Cody Hibbard is Korean but was adopted by an American family from Oklahoma when he was 13 months old. He grew up on a farm and still lives there today. Like many ranchers/farmers, he would get up early and do his chores before heading off to school.

He stated, "We raised cattle and had chicken houses and most anything else you could think of. And I grew up hunting and fishing, and being outdoors was pretty much my whole life."

As a teen, he tried working odd jobs to avoid being on the farm so much, but he couldn't stand being inside. "I was raised out in the woods and in the country and working with my hands, and that's just how it was," he reported.

His dad listened to rock music, and his mom listened to Christian and occasionally Country Music. "It just depended on who you rode with," he recalled.

After high school, he enrolled in the Naval Academy, but an injury redirected his life into the world of pipelining.

Hibbard played piano as a young child, but can't remember much about it. He got his first guitar at age 11 but wasn't really interested in it. As a young adult, he became a welder in the oil and gas industry and, after buying a guitar at a pawn shop, he "started picking around a little more."

Amidst the grind of relentless work and endless roads, Hibbard discovered a newfound solace in the company of his guitar, strumming melodies around the campfires amongst fellow blue-collar workers.

Unfortunately, after his injury, Hibbard got addicted to pills, was at odds with his faith, and lost his house. That's when he serendipitously found music.

In May of 2019, he was at a restaurant with friends in Texas, and the waitress told him, "I don't want to offend you, but you don't sound like how you look." His friends teased, "If you think that's weird, you gotta hear him sing." This conversation led to the opportunity to sing the three songs he knew. The manager liked him so well that he was asked to come back and sing more often, forcing Hibbard to learn new songs.

In January of 2020, Hibbard released his first EP, Memory and a Dirt Road, which swiftly garnered millions of streams. His subsequent singles, including "Ice Cold Therapy," "Armed and Dangerous," and "The Truth," released in the summer of 2020, solidified his place in the country music scene.

But it would be "Dying Breed," a hit that would become his signature song, that put the country crooner on the map. He recently sang it on The Road competition, where he won over the crowd in Dallas and advanced to the next round.

Because he has had such a roller coaster of a life, Hibbard admits his catalog of songs is "all over the place." He shared, "I don't pick music for my fans, I pick it for myself. It just means more that way."

In 2024, Hibbard released his second album, Long Ride in A Short Bed, which produced songs like the title track, the rowdy "Set in My Ruts," and my favorite, "Backroad to Heaven."

Backroad to Heaven was written alongside Reid Morris and Wesley Davis. It reminds me of two of my other favorite songs: Larry Fleet's "Where I Find God" and Craig Campbell's "Outskirts of Heaven." I like the lyrics that say, "He still sits in that shotgun seat even though He knows my faults."

Contestants on The Road are required to sing one original and one cover. When he sang Lee Ann Womack's "A Little Past Little Rock," the Oklahoma crowd was all over it.

But it would be the song "Had It Been a Boy (Brinley's Song)" that brought Gretchen Wilson to tears on The Road. When he found out his then-wife was pregnant, he initially wanted a boy but ended up with a daughter. It was at that point that he quit his pills cold turkey. Even though he was sick with a kidney stone on the evening he performed on The Road, he still won the crowd over.

What makes The Road so different from other competition shows is that the cast is all together on a tour bus for extended weeks at a time. Wilson told me that the most challenging part for the contestants was being away from their families for longer than they were used to.

But for the father of four, it was different: "I've been gone all my life. It was one of those things.  I was a pipeliner, and I'd be gone for months at a time." Only before was he not followed around by a television camera.

Hibbard has new music forthcoming, but has no timeline for releasing it. I love his authentic, blue-collar sound.

Tune into The Road on CBS on Sunday night to see if the Oklahoman advances to the next round. In the meantime, he is grateful for the exposure the show has brought to his career.

You can follow Cody Hibbard on his website, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and all streaming platforms.

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Bethany Bowman is a freelance entertainment writer. You can follow her blog, Instagram, and X.