Woodyfest 2018: Desi & Cody

Desi & Cody at Lou’s Rocky Road Tavern

Friday at the festival [Sidenote: Welcome to Part Seventeen of our ongo­ing Woodyfest 2018 cov­er­age. This install­ment show­cases Tulsa duo Desi & Cody.] found this writer still cov­er­ing the enter­tain­ment at Lou’s Rocky Road Tavern. Erik “The Viking” Oftedahl and Blake Lankford had cleared the stage, mak­ing way for Tulsa duo Desi & Cody. Husband and wife Cody Clinton and Desirae Roses-Clinton enter­tained the audi­ence with their sar­cas­ti­cally humor­ous indie rock, which No Depression describes as […] sun drenched har­monies and cham­ber pop tex­tures [fused] into […] futur­is­tic folk. [Sidenote: Small, Sloan, “Desi and Cody’s Yes, This Is Killing Us is Delightful Futuristic Folk,” No Depression, 19 October 2018.]

The pair met in col­lege when Roses-Clinton heard a live per­for­mance of Clinton on the radio and resolved to see him per­form in-per­son. They became friends that night and later started dat­ing. The two shared a home by the time Clinton joined Leon Russell’s band.

Yes, This Is Killing Us is a beau­ti­ful record and a fun, wild ride — a con­tender for best of 2018. [I] can’t wait to hear what Desi and Cody do next.

Around that time Clinton started record­ing his first solo EP and hap­pened to hear Roses-Clinton singing in the shower. He described his reac­tion in an inter­view with No Depression: I was like What is that? That’s amaz­ing! She was singing hard­core, super crazy high opera type stuff. I was like Woah. [Sidenote: Cash, Garrett, The Age of Whatever: An Interview with Desi and Cody, No Depression, 24 August 2015.]

Misfortune Makes Music

Desi & Cody’s lat­est album, Yes, This Is Killing Us, is based on their expe­ri­ences tour­ing as a mar­ried cou­ple. Clinton had pre­vi­ously con­tended with alco­hol addic­tion but had been sober for nine years. But then the musi­cians each lost their fathers in a short time span. At the start of a European tour Clinton relapsed. They would spend the entire tour and much of the fol­low­ing year just get­ting wasted. [Sidenote: Small.]

The result­ing col­lec­tion is bois­ter­ous, darkly funny, mock­ing, and some­times poignant, show­cas­ing the pair’s strong sto­ry­telling chops. Besides the orig­i­nal mate­r­ial, Desi & Cody cover Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Games,” albeit in an entirely novel arrangement.

Enough time and dis­tance have passed for the humor to shine through — simul­ta­ne­ously fresh and nos­tal­gic, the collection’s blend of ’60s Motown and girl-group pop melded with touches of ’80s new wave keep every­thing from col­laps­ing under implied misery.

For their Woodyfest set, Desi & Cody were joined by drum­mer Micah Moseby, bassist Tyler James, and lap steel gui­tarist Mike Kindell.

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