Music transcends life.

It travels beyond the hollers and dark foothills of the countryside, weaving and diving its needle into the fabric of every breath that we take in and exhale. The words tumble through the mind and fuel lost hearts with vigor. One cannot help but smile, cry, laugh and welcome the highwall of emotion that is conjured with each note and within each verse.

Imagine a place where all of this mystique and complex power babbles and flows. And there you will find Cody Howard, sharing his magic from his debut album, Appalachian Dream.

Howard is, perhaps, as damn humble as a successful musician and songwriter may come. In a room full of people, the most creative and genuine personality in the entire scene would probably be Howard, quietly sharing a soft crooked smile from the side of the room. He's a young mind with an old cherub’s warmth and an “awe shucks” Eastern Kentucky drawl.

After the release of the quietly acclaimed EP A Long Way From Home (2020), Howard continues to demonstrate his prowess and back-woods wizardry. With the eight-track offering of Appalachian Dream nourishing the ears with a true troubadour’s wealth, one cannot help but be thrust into the emotion of each scene. Howard has a simple way of wording that digs deep, refusing to let go.

“Warsaw,” the second piece of the collection, describes a place etched on the steady banks of the Ohio River in the no-man’s lands of the Kentucky/Indiana border,where Howard laments finding a piece of himself and being able to reconnect with the muse tucked away in a chaotic period of life. This spirit, the magic found within his own mind, is unlocked with the beauty of nature and the calm found within the most basic and complex attribute of life - Love.

”And I wish I could go back to Warsaw / So I just could catch my breath /

Sing you a song about being alone / And I’ll swear that I’ll love you to death”

There is a shadowy peace on “Fragile Bones,” painting the struggles of a run-down coal mine father, a body battered and beaten beneath the earth, only for the work and industry to take its toll on his family and their unknown futures in the hills.

“They don’t give him no money / Didn’t give him a home /

All they gave him was black lung / And some fragile bones”

The foot-tapping, gentle rhythm of “Another Life,” refocuses the album with a song of an optimistic future that is released from the mental chains that inhibited love.

The title track, “Appalachian Dream,”co-written with the fabulous Lyssa Culbertson, closes Howard’s masterclass and encompasses all the traits of a Harlan County romance, the lady, the land, the lyrics. Howard feels every vowel.

“Beautiful as all the hollers and the hills / Nothing could

compare to how you made me feel”

If you have been sleeping on Cody Howard, it’s time that you return that smile from across that crowded room. Give yourself a chance to experience creativity and craftsmanship in a whole new fire light.

Find out more about Cody Howard here: