Cody Ash | Jelly Roll's drummer

Country music has changed. Whatever you think about that, one consequence is that its drummers now have to be able to play rock, hip-hop and arena pop as well as a shuffle.

Cody Ash is the current example. He drums for Jelly Roll, the most unlikely mainstream country star of the decade, and Drumeo’s voters named him Country Drummer Of The Year for both 2024 and 2025.

Here is who he is, where he came from, and what a modern country touring gig actually asks of a drummer.

Cody Ash at a glance

Who is Cody Ash?

Cody Ash grew up in Mount Washington, Kentucky, a few miles south of Louisville. He graduated from Bullitt East High School in 2011 and played in the University of Louisville marching band, which is where a lot of very solid drummers learn to hold a tempo under pressure.

His first professional band was O’Kingdom, who toured the East Coast and the South. After that came something much heavier: Sylar, a metalcore band out of Queens, New York, with whom he recorded the album Seasons. Remember that when you hear how hard the Jelly Roll show hits.

The pandemic stopped all of it. By his own account to the Louisville Courier-Journal, he spent it bartending at a Louisville pub and managing bands, before landing the Jelly Roll gig in 2021, just as the artist’s move from mixtape rapper to arena headliner was taking off.

He has been behind the kit for that whole run, including Jelly Roll’s spot on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve on 31 December 2023. He now lives in Nashville, and his YouTube channel covers the touring life and the rest.

What happened in late September 2026

At the end of September, Drumeo published a video challenging Ash to learn Joey Jordison’s part on Slipknot’s “Wait and Bleed” as fast as he could. Jordison was his favourite drummer growing up, and the video was picked up by Consequence and BraveWords. It’s embedded below. It’s the clearest demonstration you’ll find that the metalcore years never left his hands.

It is not his first Drumeo appearance: in August 2025 they had him write his own parts to Slayer’s “Seasons In The Abyss” having never heard it.

What’s next with Jelly Roll off the road

In late July 2026 Jelly Roll announced he was stepping away from touring “for a year or two”, with a last show on 30 July. Nothing has been said publicly about what that means for his band. Ash is still described everywhere as Jelly Roll’s drummer, and we’ll update this page when that changes.

What Cody Ash actually does

He plays heavy. Jelly Roll’s material sits somewhere between country, rock and Southern hip-hop, and the drums are built for an arena. This is not a brushes-and-a-shuffle gig, and a drummer who came up in metalcore is not an accident.

He plays hybrid. Triggers and pads carry the programmed elements of modern country production: the trap-adjacent hi-hats, the sub-drops, the sampled claps.

He locks to a click, hard. Almost everything at this level runs to tracks. The drummer is the human element inside a very precisely arranged show.

He still plays country. Underneath the volume there are proper train beats, proper cross-stick verses and proper dynamics. That is the part people miss.

He plays for the singer. Jelly Roll’s whole appeal is the vocal and the story, and the drums stay behind it.

Two years running

Drumeo’s voters made Ash Country Drummer Of The Year in the 2024 Drumeo Awards and again in the 2025 Drumeo Awards, announced in January 2026. The category usually rotates. Harry Miree took it in 2023 and Billy Freeman won the first one. Two consecutive wins shows how visible the Jelly Roll run has been, and how much of that show rests on the drums.

Cody Ash’s drum kit

• Drums: DW. Drumeo’s 2025 gear breakdown had him on a DW Design Series kit in Tobacco Burst.
• Cymbals: Zildjian.
• Sticks: Vic Firth.
• Heads: Remo, where he is a listed artist.
• Electronics. Pads and triggers integrated into the acoustic kit, the modern country touring standard.

Every era, with buy links, is on Cody Ash’s Rig Vault page.

Want the sound without the rig?

Modern country is a hybrid genre now, and the entry cost is lower than you would think.

Add a sample pad. One pad next to the hi-hat, loaded with a clap, a trap hat loop and a sub-drop, is the difference between sounding like a 1998 country band and a 2026 one. Our electronic drum kit guide covers what you actually need.

Then learn to play to a click without sounding like one. The whole skill in this genre is being locked to a grid and still feeling human: pushing the backbeat fractionally, leaving the hi-hat loose.

And keep the country vocabulary. Train beats, cross-stick verses, brushes. They still turn up, and drummers who arrive from rock without them get found out. The Gear Guru will spec a hybrid kit to a budget.

Where to start listening

• Jelly Roll live footage from the arena tours. The whole job, on display.
• “Son of a Sinner”, live. Restraint, then weight.
• Drumeo’s “Wait and Bleed” challenge. The metal player underneath the country gig.
• His own YouTube channel. Tour life, playthroughs, and a good look at how the kit is put together.

Final thoughts

Country drumming used to be a fairly narrow specialism. It is not any more, and Ash is a good example of the current version: a Kentucky marching-band kid who went through metalcore on the way to Nashville, and who now has to be a rock player, a hybrid programmer, a click-locked professional and a traditionalist, sometimes within the same song.

Two Drumeo awards in a row suggests the drumming community has noticed.

See Cody Ash’s full rig in the Rig Vault, or read about Fred Eltringham, the other end of the Nashville spectrum entirely.