CODY JOHNSON & JAY BUCHANAN - "Rabbit Gets A Gun" - Amazon Music Original

Some songs feel unearthed rather than written, and “Rabbit Gets the Gun” is one of them. It opens like a bedtime fable, all kings and scepters and a kingdom gone to rust. By the first chorus, the fable has grown teeth.

The pairing began as a fan’s wish. Johnson has long called Rival Sons “my favorite rock band,” and he describes recording with Buchanan as “an out-of-this-world experience.” Buchanan says he had passed on earlier country offers that felt like “a marketing-first, art-second thing,” but he found Johnson “a different breed.” The two cut the track at Nashville’s storied RCA Studio A with Grammy-winning producer Dave Cobb, who also produced Rival Sons’ Feral Roots. The song comes from two writers with hard-won credentials. Travis Meadows, a Jackson, Mississippi, native, lost most of a leg to bone cancer at 14 and spent years as a traveling preacher before making records like Killin’ Uncle Buzzy. Levi Lowrey, a great-grandson of old-time fiddler Gid Tanner, co-wrote Zac Brown Band’s No. 1 “Colder Weather.” On paper, it’s a formidable lineup. On record, it delivers.

Meadows and Lowrey write in the plain language of parable. King Fox wields a golden scepter and an iron fist, taxing the birds for flying and the fish for swimming, while the worms gather underground. Call it Animal Farm by way of a revival tent. No one is named, and no one needs to be. The sharpest blow is also the quietest: a nod to the powerful enjoying “the corn that you’re growing out on somebody else’s land.” It isn’t a slogan so much as a long-held grudge, delivered with precision.

The casting is what lifts it. Johnson, a former bull rider and one-time prison supervisor from Sebastopol, Texas, sings with the measured authority of a man reading out the charges. Buchanan, who has fronted Rival Sons for well over a decade, answers with the blues-soaked wail that helped earn Feral Roots two Grammy nominations. The admiration runs both ways. Johnson praises Buchanan’s “soul and grit, and an unmistakable voice”; Buchanan credits Johnson with “a good dose of Texas onery.” True to form, Cobb leaves the edges rough: country in its bones, blues-rock in its blood. Buchanan remembers the session as “easy and collaborative,” and the record bears that out. It plays less like a duel than a conversation.

The chorus is almost nursery-rhyme simple: it ain’t no fun when the rabbit gets the gun. Rather than dress it up, the song leans in, borrows a line of scripture (“the first shall be last, last shall be first”) and lets repetition do the heavy lifting. By the time the outro turns into a chant, punctuated by a growled “No, it ain’t, son,” the hook no longer sounds like a chorus. It sounds like a verdict.

The song has taken an unhurried path to listeners. It premiered April 21 as an Amazon Music Original, days before Johnson’s first headlining set at Stagecoach in Indio, California. There, Buchanan joined him as a surprise guest on a night that also brought out Boyz II Men for “On Bended Knee.” “What an incredible night, what a beautiful audience,” Buchanan said afterward. On October 16, the studio recording finally arrived on every major streaming platform, and it holds up without the festival lights.

The timing speaks to Johnson’s confidence. In May he swept Entertainer and Male Artist of the Year at the ACM Awards. In June he released Banks of the Trinity, a 16-track, Trent Willmon-produced return to his East Texas roots. He now heads into the 60th CMA Awards on November 18 with four nominations, including Entertainer of the Year. An artist on that kind of run has every reason to play it safe. Johnson chose a snarling allegory with a rock singer instead, and he sounds energized by the risk.

Is it a protest song? Only partly. Buchanan calls it “an underdog story,” one both men relate to “from lived-in, hard-worn experience,” and that framing suits it. The song is pointed enough to provoke and catchy enough that the chorus lands well before the politics do. Above all, it’s a reminder that country and rock ’n’ roll were drawn from the same muddy creek. At three minutes and 35 seconds, not a moment is wasted. Four and a half stars, and the missing half comes down only to how quickly it ends. King Fox should be worried.

(Review Written By: Dave Pierce)