I'm CJ Tuttle — songwriter, creator, and the writer behind a roster of voices that finally got my catalog out of the notebook.
I grew up in North Syracuse, NY, playing football and lacrosse through my formative years. Sports taught me teamwork and stubbornness — lessons I've carried into every chapter since. After high school I moved to Rochester, NY for school, and that's where my life really started.
In 2001, my best friend Matt passed away. His death touched a lot of people, and I remain close with his mom Margaret to this day. She's almost a second mother to me. Matt's memory shaped everything I've written since — there's a song on the album written specifically for him.
In 2004 I met the love of my life, Abbey, while we were both working at a landscape nursery. Our paths separated for a few years before we reconnected in 2007 and started dating soon after. We tied the knot in 2013. Skylar arrived in 2014. Rylan followed in 2016. Piper in 2018. They're the reason most of these songs got written, and the reason I finally had the nerve to release them.
The band that didn't go anywhere.
Years before any of this, I was in a band. We played local bars and a few college shows, and recorded one demo — a single take because we couldn't afford a second one. I sang for the band, and I'm the first to admit that's most likely why we never went anywhere. I can't sing. I knew it then and I know it now.
What I could do was write. That one demo was the one I used to enter the Billboard Songwriting Contest and the Great American Songwriting Contest. Both contests recognized my work. Nothing else came of it. Life moved on. I founded a digital marketing agency in 2013 and put the writing away for a long time.
The guitar that changed everything.
In late 2024, on a whim, I walked into House of Guitars in Rochester just to look around. I picked up a Taylor to try it. I didn't want to put it down. Honestly — I was afraid that if I did, someone else would come take it. I bought it that day. It was my first guitar in years.
A month later, I joined a Skool community called Creator Secrets — a group focused on AI video tools. In one of the lessons, the instructor demoed a tool called Suno. The second I saw it, I wondered what it would do with my old band lyrics. I pulled "Halfway" out of the drawer — the same song I'd entered in those contests — fed it into Suno, and left the style field blank. What came back is essentially the "Halfway There (CodiKrome Version)" streaming on Spotify today. A country song I didn't know I had in me.
From CodiKrome to the roster.
I kept going. Fed in the rest of my old lyrics. Started writing new ones. "Some Ghosts Never Die" was the first brand-new song I wrote after the revival — and the moment I decided this was an album, not an experiment. Fifteen tracks under the artist name CodiKrome. I almost stopped at fourteen. "Damn Sure Ain't How It Ends" was the anthem I added at the end, mostly for myself.
Alongside the album, I wrote a novel about the experience. It started as a blog post — I was just trying to document what was happening because I couldn't quite believe it. Then my imagination got hold of it. The book became CodiKrome: The Words Are What Matter, released alongside the album in August 2025 with QR codes embedded throughout the book linking to the soundtrack. The album hit over 20,000 streams. The "Matt's Song" music video took second place at a music video contest.
CodiKrome was the first voice I built. Then came Krome Theory (rock), Riffy Waters (pop with reggae), Kairo Miles (modern soul), and most recently Bubba Moh (soul/blues with a rock edge). Same writer. Different voices. Different rooms.
I still write every single day. I don't use AI to write a single lyric — the most help I get from any tool is a rhyming dictionary. AI builds the voices and helps me make the music videos. The songs are still mine.
Thanks for being here. Thank you for every listen, every stream, every share.