Cody Hanson on Building, Breaking, and Rebuilding Hinder | The Sharp Notes Interview

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Being a rockstar might look effortless from the outside, but as Cody Hanson of Hinder makes clear, staying relevant in the music world takes far more than talent. In this revealing conversation, the drummer and co-founder of the multi-platinum band pulls back the curtain on the real work behind the music—from scrapping a full album that didn’t feel honest, to reigniting the band’s passion with the song that would become their seventh studio album, Bring Me Back to Life.

What’s striking isn’t just Hanson’s musical role, but his deep involvement in every aspect of the band’s output—recording on the road, mixing and mastering at home, designing the artwork, even managing the logistics of owning a tour bus. His reflections highlight how today’s artists must blend creativity with strategy, especially in a world dominated by streaming, social media, and emerging tools like AI.

Ultimately, Hanson’s story is one of resilience and reinvention. Whether building a recording studio on a moving bus or navigating the shadow of a massive hit, Hinder’s journey shows that the magic of rock and roll is built on long hours, smart pivots, and the unshakable drive to just keep creating.

ch: Are those all vinyls behind you?

ezt: That's it. It's not a fake, green-screen thing. This is my lifelong collection here, so that's what I use as my backdrop here.

ch: Dude, that's incredible. Do you know how many there are?

ezt: Just about 8,000 right around now.

ch: That's amazing.

ezt: I'm trying to keep them watered and fed. How about you? You do a vinyl thing? Are you a record guy, or what do you do?

ch: We just started ours. We finally just bought our first real record player, probably less than two months ago. We don't have a big collection, but we do have a small one that we're working on.

ezt: You remember it growing up? You're an '80s kid. I think we're similar ages. You're a little younger than I am, I think, but you grew up with it. Do you remember that, cassette tapes, and all that stuff?

ch: Yes. I was going to say I started in cassette tapes more than vinyl, so I'm just going back and catching up on vinyl now.

ezt: Congratulations. This is your seventh studio album. This is really exciting. Part of the press, part of the story about this new record, is reigniting the band's energy, the band's passion. In this moment, particularly I think with that song, Bring Me Back to Life, which the album is named after, what was happening, putting that together, getting you guys a little reinvigorated?

ch: Honestly, we had decided that we were done with making new music. We'd decided everybody just wanted to hear the old material live, and that's what we were going to do. Marshall and I, we write and record outside of the band. We got together one day, and we just didn't really know what we were going to write about. He was like, "Man, what if we just write about that? What if we just write a song about not knowing what to write about?" He spit out the first line, "I've got nothing left to say that I really want to put in a song," and we were like, "Let's give it a shot."

We did it, and it came together really fast, like all the good ones do. When we got done, man, it just felt special. It had that thing. It had that hook. It felt good. It reminded us like, "Hey, we actually know how to do this." We just got excited again. That was the jumping off point for the new record.

ezt: That's cool. Imagine how the Eagles feel. Everybody just wants to hear the first three. What was your vibe that you felt, "Maybe we're just going to play our back catalog"? What led you to feel that way?

ch: I think that when you have a song that's so big, like “Lips of an Angel”, for example, I think you feel like it's hard to escape that song sometimes because it was so big. It's still everywhere. People are starting to cover it constantly now. When we play live, people are always yelling out for those older songs. Our previous releases, especially The Rain, didn't really feel like anybody cared when we released it, to be perfectly honest. That's one of the reasons. Then another reason was we wrote an entire album prior to the pandemic that we wanted to model after the first record. We thought, "Hey, that's the formula. That's what people like, so let's see if we can recreate that."

ezt: Simple, easy.

ch: No problem. While it had some moments, it just didn't feel right. It didn't feel genuine. It didn't feel like who we are now as a band, so we decided to scrap that and throw it away. I think we were just a little bit frustrated at that time, and so we decided, "I don't think we're going to do it." Then, as I said before, we wrote Bring Me Back to Life and it jumpstarted us, and we were like, "Man, this is awesome. Let's keep it going and see what happens."

ezt: It brought you back to life. I'm always fascinated by stories where musicians and bands record something. They take a lot of time. They spend a lot of energy recording something, and then at the end, they go, "You know what? Let's just get rid of it." That must be a really difficult decision to make in the moment.

ch: Especially when it's an entire album. We had spent months working on this thing, and then it just didn't have that magic for us. Like I said, it just didn't feel like who we are as a band now. I think we made the right decision. I think that the body of work that we ended up putting together is much stronger, and we're all very, very proud of it.

ezt: You've been with the group here-- the group has been around just about 20 years more or less. After all that time, when you sit behind the drums or maybe you're producing something that you've done, like you have recently, what surprises you about your fellow band mates and maybe about your own playing, or your own production, or growth that you-- does anything jump out at you that surprises you?

ch: I'd say, on a daily basis, Marshal (Dutton), of all people, surprises me in the studio all the time. His knowledge is insane. He's such a talented guitar player and piano player, and I think a lot of people don't realize that. He's literally probably the best guitar player I've ever heard in my life. Anytime we're in the studio and he picks up a guitar, he surprises me every time. The stuff that he can come up with on the spot is incredible, so it makes it a lot of fun.

Hinder's Marshal Dutton

ezt: One of the interesting things about your story was you were going to school for business and marketing when you started the band. Musicians are notorious for not completing school and things, and maybe just forging their own path and not going within the institution of things. From what I understand, you took a lot of that business education and knowledge and really was applying it towards the creation of the band at that time. Could you just shed a little light on that, about how that connection between school and rock and roll, which isn't always evident, really worked out in your case in some ways?

ch: Yes. To be honest, whenever we started the band, I didn't even want to be in a band at all. I hadn't played drums in years. I hadn't picked up a pair of drumsticks since probably my freshman year of high school, sophomore year, maybe. It had been a while. Once we started it, I was really into marketing, and I thought it would be really cool to just create a business and a brand and figure out how to get people to shows, and to make something seem bigger than it actually was. That was the whole goal with everything that we did, and it worked, man.

It was crazy. When we were playing around town in Oklahoma City, there wasn't a huge music scene here by any means, but I remember playing at this little club. The way we did it is we played every two weeks, and we just made all the right moves and did advertising in the right spots. We planned in this 100-capacity venue, and there would be a line, literally, a mile down the road, people waiting to get in. It was like that every weekend. That part was a lot of fun for me.

ezt: That's interesting, especially nowadays, where so many musicians, but even more than musicians, just influencers, or whatever we want to call them, it's almost like the brand comes first. People are focused on that brand. In your case, and in maybe musicians of a certain age, the music was first, and then you had to figure out how to market it. Especially as you're playing festivals and sharing the stage with other groups, do you see what they're doing? Is there something a little different in the 21st century than what you were doing? It seems like you were a little ahead of the curve.

ch: Everything's completely different now. If I'm being perfectly honest, if we were a new band coming out right now, I don't think we could have done it. The old way of doing things it seemed like there was a pretty straightforward formula. Now, with social media and all the little things that you have to do there, it's almost like you're just getting lucky, you know what I mean? Those are things that I don't really understand. It seemed like a more simple way of doing things back then. I don't know what people are doing now. It's crazy.

[laughter]

ezt: Speaking of other ways, maybe the theme of this interview is ways that Hinder were ahead of the curve. I heard this other story about you had some synergy going with your bandmates. Instead of spending so much time just vegging out on the tour bus, you built a recording studio so that you could spend the time traveling, recording and producing a record so that when you guys were off the road, you could do your own thing without having to feel like, "Oh my gosh, we have to get into the studio and do this." That's also a pretty unique idea. I haven't heard of anybody doing that before.

ch: That was for the All American Nightmare album, and we have written a crazy amount of songs. I think it was like 70-something songs for that album. I was actually managing a band called Faction, which Marshall was the guitar player in. I was managing them at the time, and he had started doing demos for them. I was like, "Man, for demos, those really sound good. Why don't you come out on the road? We'll buy some pieces that we need. We'll set it up in the back lounge." The two of us just worked.

We'd get up early in the morning and work all day until it was time for the show. We'd play the show, rinse and repeat, and we did that for months while we were out on the road. That's how we got the majority of those demos finished, and it was crazy. It was a crazy amount of work, but I don't regret a second of it. We learned so much about recording and editing, and mixing. At that point, we didn't know anything, and now, I think that kicked everything off, I guess, to the point where we're at now. There's a lot of hours, and I don't know, a lot of time spent, but it was worth it.

ezt: It's interesting. It reminds me, there's a Jackson Brown record, and there may be a song or two that they recorded on the bus. I'm sure you had a much more sophisticated recording studio on your bus than he did. There's different spots in the recording where you hear the engine picking up and slowing down and stuff like that. It makes for an interesting listening experience to just say, "Oh, this is in transit as we're listening to this thing."

ch: You know what, now that I think about it, even for our Welcome to the Freakshow album, a lot of the vocals that ended up on the album were done in the back lounge of a bus. We weren't quite able to get what we wanted when we came back in the studio, and so we ended up using some of those demo vocals. I'm sure you can hear the air conditioner going and people carrying on in the background. It's pretty crazy.

ezt: As you do different shows and again, you're sharing the stage with younger acts, and maybe you're also sharing the stage with some older acts that you grew up, maybe we grew up admiring at our age, and you sharing time and space with some of your heroes, I imagine. Can you recall any moments right now that you connected with someone that you really enjoyed listening to when you were younger, or maybe was a great influence on you and the band?

ch: Oh yes, we've had so many. We were lucky enough to tour with Mötley Crüe, did a handful of shows with Aerosmith. We probably got to know the Nickelback guys better than anybody. We spent a lot of time with them, and that was great. We were huge Theory of a Deadman fans coming up. We spent a lot of time touring with them. There have been so many. It's been really cool, something that the teenage me would never have thought would happen.

ezt: You know what they say, don't meet your heroes.

ch: [chuckles] We've had some interesting things happen with some of those people that I would have considered musical heroes back then.

ezt: It gets complicated.

ch: It gets complicated, yes. [laughs]

ezt: I really like “Time to Breathe” off the record. It's got your signature sound, but there's something particularly melodic and moving about the track. I like when you guys do those power ballady kind of things when you get into the melody and that stuff. That's one of my favorite sounds that you guys make. Can you tell me a little bit about that track?

ch: Yes. Thanks. That's actually one of my favorites as well. I like that it's a rollercoaster musically and emotionally, sonically. I like how it starts off with that really broken down piano thing and for a half a second-- it makes it all the way through the first chorus with-- it doesn't really go beyond that, and it makes you wonder, "Is it going somewhere else? Is it not? Is this going to be a piano ballad and that's it?" I like how it's a slow build to get there, but when it kicks in, it's like you just want to roll the windows down and give it the--

It's like you won the big game. That's what it feels like to me when that second chorus hits. Then, obviously lyrically, it's got that emotional thing to it, that really draws people in, that people can relate to. That's definitely one of my favorites.

ezt: Where'd you record the bulk of the album? Was it in your home studio there or somewhere else?

ch: Yes, we did the entire thing right here.

ezt: You're mixing and having someone master. Who do you have working on those things?

ch: Actually, I was able to do the majority of, definitely, the mastering and a lot of the mixing. Marshall he's around all the time for every aspect as well. I think he knows that I enjoy the mixing and the mastering part. He steps in when it's necessary. When I'm really ruining something, he'll go, "Hey man, let's do this." He's a good teammate like that. We did everything right here. It was cool.

ezt: I like the album cover too. It's an interesting visual there. Can you tell us where that

came from? Cool. I think it's cool.

ch: I think it's really cool, too. I do a lot of graphic design as well. I do a lot of stuff for the band. I did it, and it's got a lot of AI elements to it. It looks like it's completely just like an AI prompt, but that's not it at all. It actually took quite a while to put it all together. There are several different elements that came into it, but that was the point. It was to have the AI monster gobbling up the city, gobbling up the world. Kind of have that hidden meaning there. That's what's happening. Technology, social media, AI is all just swallowing society. That was intentional, but [chuckles] I think a lot of people are missing that, and they're coming down on us for the AI slop, I think was the latest I heard it called. [laughs]

ezt: Now they know. Now they know the true story. It's interesting. Obviously, this podcast is music-based, but often, certainly in the last six, seven months, AI has been coming up. How has AI impacted how you recorded this album a little bit, or have you been using any of the musical tools, or maybe just what do you think from a musical point of view? We know it's affecting everything in many different ways, but from a musical point of view, do you have a strong opinion about what people are doing or not doing with it?

ch: Yes. My take is you're not going to fight it. If there is a tool that is available to you to make it better, to make your songs better, why wouldn't you use it? Obviously, we're not using it during the creation of music. That would seem really weird to me. We're not going there, but it does help to analyze mixes, especially in the mastering part. You can analyze your sound waves and see what's going on, and you can compare your tracks to other songs that you really love by other people.

Then that gives you the ability to go back and fix it yourself, you know what I mean, and make adjustments because it's not there yet. It's not perfect. You're not just going to hit a button and then just magically, your song and your track's amazing. It doesn't work. I'm not saying that it won't get there. It may, but in that sense, we use it here and there, just a little bit. It's handy, I think.

ezt: It's handy. Did you name the monster that's coming over the building? I think that monster needs a name.

ch: I agree. If you have any ideas, I'd love to hear it.

ezt: The AI Bertha monster or something. I don't know.

ch: I love it.

ezt: I think you got to get a name for it. It's interesting to hear you talk, of course, about the marketing and the production and the mastering, and graphic design. In many ways, you really are the beating heart of the band. I don't know if anybody else would get mad at me for saying that, but it sounds that way. Your case study here is really a career, and it's been resilient several decades here. What advice would you give to younger bands or just creatives that might be dealing with some burnout, especially in the creative world, keeping a ship like this afloat? What would you say to folks?

ch: Oh, that's a tough one, to be honest, because burnout is something that I experienced quite a bit. When you're a band, especially a young band, I would assume nowadays you have to wear a lot of hats. You have to learn how to write, record, mix, master, do graphic design. You have to be a bus mechanic, you know what I mean? There's so many things and it takes so much time and effort. I think that just surrounding yourself with the right people and the right team is key. Take breaks if you need it. Do things for yourself whenever possible to take your mind off of it.

That's something that I'm really bad at. I try to work as much as I can. Luckily, my wife is smarter than me, so she'll pull me away whenever she knows that it's absolutely necessary, so I'm lucky there. I would say just learn all those things so that you can control everything yourself, but take breaks and walk away for a little while when you have to.

ezt: Get a little hindsight there. Of course, we're talking about AI. We're talking about a band that's grown and changed over several years. The new album is going to be out on vinyl.: we’re talking about records, and it's Glow-In-The-Dark. That's pretty crazy. Where did you get that idea? Who told you about that concept?

ch: That's one variant. We're actually going to be doing several different variants of the vinyl, so that's pretty cool. The label just-- they sent us this big sheet. They're doing crazy things with those now. We got to go in and just pick what we wanted, so I think we chose four different ones. We have some more options. It's going to be fun.

ezt: How do you feel having something tangible like that works with just the usual streaming that everybody's doing nowadays? Does it mean anything to you? I know we were talking about cassette tapes and everything before, but does it tap into any of your ancient memories of being a kid?

ch: Oh, absolutely. It's always cooler to have something that you can hold in your hands, you know what I mean? It's a constant reminder. Say if it's sitting up on display, and you can see it when you walk by, especially as a creator, it's really cool to see it and go, "I made that. That right there took four years out of my life, but I did it, and it's done. The rest of the world gets to enjoy it with me, and that's pretty cool."

ezt: I have to get the Glow-In-The-Dark variant, and I have to get a big picture of Bertha. I want to enjoy the AI creature in all of its majesty in 12 x 12.

ch: Yes, man. Absolutely.

ezt: Looking back on the band's journey from Oklahoma City, which I guess you're in now, but thinking about those early years, what's something that you didn't know then that maybe you wished you knew, or maybe something that you know now that you wished you knew then? What would you tell the younger version of yourself?

ch: Don't buy a tour bus.

[laughter]

ch: No. That's something that we were lucky enough to do, but man, that is like a whole new job that I didn't think-- keeping up with a tour bus, like learning how to be a mechanic on one of those things, is something that I did not see coming. It's pretty rewarding as well.

ezt: Isn't there a rental? Can't you just lease them when you're going on the road, or how does that work? I guess you guys crunch some numbers and you must have figured, "Hey, let's buy the thing.

ch: Yes, you can. It becomes really tough when you are like us. We'll do a couple of months where we only do weekend shows or every other weekend or whatever. It's tough to find one for things like that, so it's nice to always have one available. We've learned it's really nice to just have everything inside set up the way you want. You don't even have to take everything out all the time. You can leave those essential items in there, and it just makes you feel more at home when you're gone. That actually we've learned is pretty important. It's yours. You can do whatever you want in that little safe space, and that's pretty nice.

ezt: That's cool. You can't park it in the driveway, though, can you?

ch: Not in my house. Luckily for me, my parents live out in the country on five acres, and so we recently just had this dump truck just full of gravel. I don't even know how many tons of gravel it was, but we poured this nice little gravel pad that we get to pull it in the yard and let it sit there while we're not using it.

ezt: If that bus could tell stories.

ch: Oh man. I'm glad it can't.

[laughter]

ezt: If maybe someone younger, someone at a concert that came to see someone else, learns about your music, maybe they don't know about you, what do you hope they take from this new record? What do you hope they learn about your band and your sound, and your story?

ch: I think that hopefully people just think what we've continued to grow as a band and grow as writers and musicians. I think that, really, the goal is for people to just really enjoy the music. All you can do as a writer is hope that people can relate to the stories that you're telling and hope that maybe it gets them through a bad day or just makes some sort of impact on their life. That's really all you can do. I think that's the big hope.

ezt: Cool. Congratulations on the brand new Glow-In-The-Dark record and good luck on whatever dates you're playing this summer. I appreciate your time doing this with me today, Cody. Thank you.

ch: Yes, man. Thank you so much. This was great. Appreciate it.