Cross Canadian Ragweed Best Songs: ‘Carney Man,’ ‘Dimebag’

In the late 1990s, Cody Canada decided to roadtrip from Stillwater to Nashville with a group of friends. The plan was to catch James Brown, but the group ended up stumbling into a bar in Music City instead, over-serving themselves in the process. “Screw it, we’re not going to James Brown,” Canada recalled in Red Dirt. “We’re too drunk, and this is too fun and too cheap.” They then decided to keep driving, eventually making it to the beach in Panama City, Florida, before they realized they had run out of money. To calm the nerves in the car, Canada started writing what became “Alabama.” Ragweed fans sang the song’s late refrain of “They talked about Savannah (and) Sweet Home Alabama” back to the band at a fever pitch for the remainder of their career.

In 2001, Canada left the college town of Stillwater and moved to Yukon, Oklahoma, where Canada was raised. One night, he and Plato invited Jason Boland (of Jason Boland & the Stragglers) over for a night of weed and drinking. When they ran out of beer — and against better judgment — Canada and Boland set off on a beer run, driving the speed limit and fighting paranoia that they were going to get pulled over. When Boland remarked, “Isn’t it funny how you’re always 17 in your hometown?” Canada snapped to attention, saying, “If you don’t write it, I will.” The song became Ragweed’s debut single for Universal South in 2002 and was a centerpiece to Live and Loud at Cain’s Ballroom in 2006, when Canada told the crowd, “Sing it” in introducing the song — and let the fans take over part of the first verse on the album.

Ragweed found themselves opening for Lee Ann Womack in front of 50,000 people back in 2003 when RodeoHouston moved from the Astrodome to its new home at Reliant Stadium. Backstage, an intimidated Canada encountered Womack and asked if she wanted to join them for a song. When he suggested Willie Nelson’s “Angel Flying too Close to the Ground,” Womack replied, “That’s my favorite!” and a friendship was born. After that show, Canada asked Womack to sing harmony on a ballad called “Sick and Tired” — which would become the lead single on Ragweed’s Soul Gravy album. Womack accepted without hearing the song: “I don’t know you guys very well,” she said, “but I’m pretty sure you’re not going to record something I don’t like.”

Canada wrote “Flowers” for his wife, Shannon, who also managed Ragweed throughout the band’s career. When the two were newlyweds, an argument over how to best decorate the house for Christmas inspired what became this song — one of dozens of sentimental ballads that pepper the Ragweed catalog. The frontman often gave the band a break and performed the song solo and acoustic during concerts, something he did with Ragweed and continues to do with his post-Ragweed band, the Departed.

Most of Canada’s early-career songwriting — and thus most of Ragweed’s early music — centered around his marriage. “Constantly” is performed as a rock song despite being written as a love ballad, especially the chorus of “Baby, I’m nothing without you. Lady, you’re nothing without me. We got it constantly.”

History has painted Soul Gravy as Ragweed’s seminal album, but its follow-up, Garage, showcased the band at their peak. The leadoff single was “Fightin’ For,” which became the band’s highest-charting single when it hit Number 39 on Billboard’s country charts. Written as a release of pent-up frustration over not being able to let a fight go, the chorus of “You may have won this battle baby, but it don’t mean I won’t win the war” showcases Canada at his most defiant. The song was co-written with Great Divide frontman Mike McClure, who produced all of Ragweed’s major-label albums and frequently collaborated with Canada as a writer.

Part of Ragweed’s coolest-guys-in-the-room appeal came from publicly sticking to their guns even when they landed on major label Universal South. Including “Don’t Need You” on their label debut was no accident. The lyrics, which can just as easily be heard as a fuck-you to mainstream radio as they can be heard as a fuck-you from a jilted lover, were universally relatable to fans during Ragweed’s rise. “I don’t need you criticizing me, I don’t need you walkin’ all over me” in the song’s refrain worked crowds into a frenzy, and Canada closes it out by putting every bit of his voice into the line “And I don’t need you.”

When Canada and the Great Divide’s Mike McClure were working on production for Garage, they made small talk about the 2004 death of Pantera guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott, eventually leading to Canada recounting how he heard the news while sitting at a blackjack table in Las Vegas. He told McClure, “If something awesome had happened to Dimebag, we wouldn’t have heard about it. But he died, so we did,” to which McClure responded, “Bad news travels a little quicker.” Canada cut him off and said, “Bad news travels faster than any good news that you hear,” and that became the chorus of “Dimebag.” The tribute to Abbott and the 1994 death of Kurt Cobain is one of a few songs that immediately became a staple in setlists by the Departed after Ragweed’s breakup.

In the late 1990s, a wave of tropical-bent songs reshaped country music, and Red Dirt songwriters took notice. The Great Divide’s highest-charting single, “Pour Me a Vacation,” had not been out long when Canada showed up at McClure’s house with a half-written beach song of his own. He barely played a verse before McClure lit a joint and started making fun of Canada and changing the lyrics to be about the circus: “I want a big red nose/I want some floppy shoes/I want a squirtin’ flower, squirt it on you/like all the bad clowns do.” Both men got a laugh, but they finished it, and it became the title track to Ragweed’s debut album and signature live song. Canada eventually grew tired of audiences yelling for “Carney Man,” but when the Departed’s drummer Eric Hansen asked, “What’s wrong with making everybody happy?” in late 2016, Canada came around. Of playing “Carney Man” at Ragweed’s 2025 comeback shows, Canada says, “It’s gonna be a rush.”

If “Carney Man” is the staple at concerts, then “Boys from Oklahoma” is the out-of-body experience. Nearly every Red Dirt band of Ragweed’s era covered the Gene Collier-penned song, which gets right to the point in its opening line — “Them boys from Oklahoma roll their joints all wrong” — but Ragweed was the first one to put it on a live album. It made it on both Live and Loud at the Wormy Dog Saloon and Live and Loud at Billy Bob’s Texas. Nightly, Ragweed turned the song into its own event, inviting opening bands, friends from backstage, or fans from the crowd onstage to sing a verse or ad-lib one of their own. Since Ragweed and Turnpike Troubadours have dubbed the comeback concerts “The Boys from Oklahoma,” fans can expect this song to be the crescendo of Ragweed’s reunion.