The Tennessee Highway Patrol stopped country singer-songwriter Jamey Johnson for speeding on Sunday, November 17, and he was taken into custody, according to The Tennessean.
The Accusations
In Williamson County, he was accused of speeding and possessing drugs “with intent to manufacture, deliver, or sell the controlled substance,” according to court records obtained by the outlet.
He has a court date on February 6 and could be fined up to $5,000 for the offense. In an interview with Billboard earlier this month, Johnson, who has had ten Grammy nominations but no wins spoke candidly about his sober path.
“September 2011 was the last time I had alcohol,” he disclosed. In 2015, I gave off smoking marijuana. That lasted for eight years or so, I believe.”
He added, “I’m sober for the most part, but every now and then, I may still break out a joint if I’m writing or something like that. But I don’t play games with the alcohol. That’s what led me down a dark path of self-destruction back then and I barely survived. Alcohol was an incendiary way of destructing myself. Everything just went up in in flames and you couldn’t put the fire out, you just had to wait for it to all come to ashes and then try to rebuild when you got done. And it seemed to me like I owed myself a better way to live than that.”
On November 8, Johnson’s first album in 14 years, Midnight Gasoline, was released. The project is the first of what he refers to as the Cash Cabin Series, a series of CDs that Warner Music Nashville and his own Big Gassed Records will produce.