Shooter Jennings' new album
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westcoastrodeo
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Shooter Jennings' new album
I finally picked up his new album today and I really like it. I've been listening to all day while doing some work at umvd and can't get enough of the 1st track and track number 5. It's a little bit more rock driven then his last album which I find a little more appealing. I think he does a great job blending rock-country-blues together. Haven't seen a live performance yet, so I'm curious if he has the same presence as his dad Waylon. I didn't even realize his mom is Jessi Colter too!
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a1aara
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Shooter Jennings rides the "electric rodeo"
By Jeffrey B. Remz, March 2006
A funny thing happened on the way to Shooter Jennings releasing his sophomore disc, "Electric Rodeo." In an unusual move, he actually started recording it before his well-received debut, "Put the O Back in Country," was even released in March 2005.
So when it comes to pressure, Jennings did not have to worry about whether he would make a better album than his debut. But he knew it would not be a clone.
"I don't really feel any pressure because we're kind of crazy anyway the way we make our records," says Jennings via telephone during a late April pit stop in Orlando for a concert that night. "To me, it was very purely created and made. I don't feel like there's any pressure. I'm really proud of it. So is the band. Our fans love it, and if it does better or worse than the first record, I don't really care. I'm just glad it's out."
"We recorded the debut like a year and a half before it came out...It took us 10 months really to finish 'Electric Rodeo.' We had definitely gotten pretty deep into it by the time the first record came out. We already had just gone to new places with our music, and I think as a band, we had grown. I knew where I wanted this record to go."
"This one is a more country record, yet we dipped more into rock. We kind of got rid of the Americana flavor a little bit...which is something I kind of wanted to do."
Jennings says he wanted "to invent a sound with this record that was really this electric '70s country record. I like Americana, but it's just the vibe, the darker edgier kind of thing to this record is what I really like about it."
The first two songs Jennings penned for the CD were the title track and "Little White Lines." A band mate wrote "Hair of the Dog."
With those three songs, Jennings says he " knew what the flavor of this record was going to be, and I kind of wanted to keep that intact and bring the humor to it and find a way to make a record I would want to listen to and I think we would want to listen to," says Jennings. "This record to me is more of the aim of where I was trying to show what could be possible for the first record. We had just kind of touched on it."
The "we" is his backing band, The 357s, featuring Leroy Powell on guitar, Ted Russell Kamp on bass and Bryan Keeling on drums.
"It was a very natural (progression), and us playing a lot more together and also us starting to learn each other's instincts. Musically, Leroy the guitar player, he's not all into wanking and playing a lot of notes and showing off how good he is. It's more about creating sonic textures and walls. I love that about him, and I love that about the band. With this, we evolved into a record that wasn't a bunch of guitar solos and unnecessary stuff. At moments psychedelic and moments kind of classic kinds of sounds."
While he has two albums under his belt and not too shabby sales on "Put the O" attracting more than 200,000 record buyers, Waylon Albright Jennings, aka Shooter, may be best known at this point of his young musical career as the son of two very famous country performers, Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter.
And while some offspring may seek to distance themselves from famous namesakes, that is not the case whatsoever with Shooter Jennings. In fact, he embraces his parents in many ways from recordings to using his father's stylized winged "W" logo to a tattoo on his right arm that says "Jessi Colter."
But for the naysayers out there who figure about the only way Shooter Jennings got a record deal was not through his own talent, he could care less. He's quite happy with the results thus far.
Jennings is not part of the Nashville star making machinery. He may have grown up there, but he's lived in Los Angeles for six years.
He started his musical career at the ripe old age of four where he would hack away on the drums ("Drums, I think I'm the best at. I still play them a lot"). He soon graduated to piano and gave that up for guitar.
Apparently, it's the genes because at a time when most kids are worrying about their pimples, Jennings knew early on that music was his calling.
Of course, he had very good teachers. His father was one of the leaders of the Outlaw movement, doing things his way and eschewing the Nashville establishment big time. He had lots of hits, like "Good Hearted Woman" and "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way," while hanging with the likes of Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson in The Highwaymen.
' Colter had a career of her own going, best known for her number one single "I'm Not Lisa" in 1975. Interestingly enough, Colter, who sang with her husband on the road, has resurrected her career after Waylon's death four years ago, by releasing a strong album in February.
"I was very lucky, and they were great parents," says Jennings, an only child. "I was very close to my mom and still (am) and my dad. My dad and I never had one fight. I always felt like very lucky and appreciative of that. They loved music, and it was around me so much, and I got to grow up in an environment like that. It nurtured me and freed me to do music I wanted to do."
Jennings grew up in Nashville, although he lived the music lifestyle until he started school. That meant life on the road with his folks doing concerts.
Once he started school, he would take off in the summer to travel on their road show. "I'd travel quite a bit with them especially if they went overseas."
While for some kids it may seem odd to be doing that, Jennings did not really know any other lifestyle.
"It's hard to explain because you don't know the difference when you were young. Everybody else is doing it. It's around you, so it's normal. It's great. It set me up for a life that set me up for a life of where I'm at in this business. It's definitely different and a gypsy style mentality. At the same time, I feel very fortunate to have had the experience that I had to give me the foresight I have now."
"I was about 13 or 14 and really starting to write my own stuff," says Jennings when asked when he knew he wanted a music career. "I was into all kinds of different music at the time."
He cited Trent Reznor, Mr. Nine Inch Nails himself, as a particular influence with his hit album, "The Downward Spiral." Jennings was struck by the fact that Reznor did the 1994 album on his own.
"This was the first time I was ever able to witness this guy make music himself," he says. "If he could do that, I could do that. That's what I started doing. I started doing my own tracks...On a computer, which eventually turned into a bigger studio in Nashville."
Jennings soon formed the rock band Stargunn in Nashville where they lasted for three years and continued for several more years once they moved to La La land.
"I was a lot younger, and it was a lot more rock to it. It was a lot more of a fusion of Guns N' Roses and Skynyrd. I think it was a very much immature version of where my head is now. It was still aiming for the same place."
The band called it quits March 31, 2003. "It was just because I felt it had run its course. We all did. We had reached the glass ceiling. One of the guys in the band had quit. After the manager (left), it all fell apart. It was just a mess. It was much needed to happen."
Jennings says he sort of knew where he wanted to take his music.
"I did, and I didn't then. I had an idea of where I wanted my music to go. I met Brian our drummer. We played a show on June 27, the first show as Shooter Jennings. I had already written 'Daddy's Farm' (the song appears on his debut). I met Leroy a little later, and then I met Ted, and I knew it was the band I needed."
And instead of a rock sound, Jennings opted to return to his musical roots.
As to whether record company folks would be turned on or off by his pedigree, Jennings says it was a plus. "It helped. They were curious to see what I was going to sound like."
He hooked up with Universal South Records, the home of folks like Marty Stuart, Joe Nichols and Lee Roy Parnell.
Jennings enjoyed a semi-hit last year with "4th of July," a bouncy rootsy/country which featured a snippet of George Jones singing is classic "He Stopped Loving Her Today."
He also has been a road warrior, playing often and seemingly everywhere.
In reading his song lyrics, that could be considered somewhat of a surprise since on his debut and especially "Electric Rodeo," he wrote about the loneliness of the road lifestyle and the desire to be home.
"I love the life on the road. I love my life where it is, but there is a lot of isolation in it. That's kind of also where the concept of the record came about too...I knew that that was the entire flavor for the whole record...I wanted to make a kind of half record where the first five songs were basically about being isolated and going back to a simpler life, and then it just gets loopy after that...alright, we got real serious in the beginning, and now we're going to get very lighthearted about it."
"That's the flavor of the record how much the road and the new life that we were on was affecting us in our personal lives and how we're learning how to balance it and deal with it - that's the kind of concept of 'Electric Rodeo' is. We're in this thing, we're in this traveling road show that's becoming successful, and it's trying to keep a balance. 'The Song is Still Slipping Away' is all about that. It's is the anchor for all of those songs. How do you balance the things that are real in your life and sort through them with the things that aren't. How do you stay real, but stay moving forward? It's a hard balance sometimes."
There seems to be some sort of ying and yang with Jennings - he acknowledges the peripatetic lifestyle as being somewhat difficult, but he also says, "I love playing our music...I love traveling and seeing all the different faces. Connect with people. I've gotten to connect with a lot of my family and friends more than I did before because we've been traveling more."
Ultimately, though, it goes back to the music.
"Music, man, is why we make the records, not for any other reason, not to be stars or whatever. The four of us in the band are all so like minded in that way that we play for ourselves. We want to get better and better and better and keep putting on an amazing show for everybody and keep throwing in, adding new things."
Led Zeppelin "changed their formula so many different ways," he says. "Yet, it's an amazing band. As time went on, they became better and better and branched out and got wilder. We're kind of like that in the way we operate. We switch instruments and do all kinds of instruments and do all kinds of things."
"It's definitely a lot of work," Jennings admits. "Like even today, I have to get three radio shows done (Jennings hosts a show on Sirius satellite radio). I've done five phoners, and I still got until five to get one of my shows mailed off, or I'm going to be in trouble...It's also hard to keep a real balance on your real personal life as well at home too. Personal relationships what not. All those things are really tough. You got to be really good and have a good sense of balance, or it could be easy to get lost in all of that."
Jennings has been going out for a long time with actress Drea DiMatteo.
"It's a challenge, but it's also what it keeps you real," says Jennings of the road and being a musician.
When it comes to his musical influences, Waylon is never too far behind. On "Some Rowdy Woman," Shooter tends to echo his father's vocals, although he is not Waylon Jr. either.
He has that gritty Waylon sound as well on the appropriately title "Little White Lines" (Waylon had a cocaine problem in the '70s).
The song even quotes the words "Lonesome, orn'ry and mean," a song recorded by his father. (This was not the first time that son quoted the father. On the title track of the debut, Shooter sang, "Are you ready for the country?")
"It's always going to happen," Jennings says of references to his father. "They talk about how I'm copying and imitating my dad on that song...I wasn't. I wrote that song. That was me and my voice...That's what I sound like when I write songs that sound like that...That's all right. I'm proud of my dad. If that happens, it happens. I know and I'm confident enough in my own musical ability and my band the way we are, eventually we will outshine that. I'm not angry about it. I'm so proud of where I come from."
So much so apparently that in last fall's popular Johnny Cash biopic, "Walk the Line," Shooter played his father in a small role.
Drugs are referred to in several Shooter Jennings songs. The debut had "Busted in Baylor County," based on a true story of what happened to Jennings and his band.
As for "Little White Lines," which has a spoken part where Jennings makes like he's speaking to a cop, trying to pretend that the drugs are really for a back problem, "cocaine is so passé now. It's not a cool drug any more like it was in the '70s because people didn't know anything about it...I always found it like in the '70s that there was all these blatant cocaine songs...I wanted to write one of those for the hell of it."
As for the spoken part, Jennings says, "I'm a big fan of Dr Hook and the Medicine Show. That's where kind of a lot of the inspiration for where the lines came from...where they have these spoken parts where it was funny."
He then quotes Dr. Hook from a song "Freaking at the Freaker's Ball."
"It's kind of making light of it was what my intention was. Don't everybody be so serious about it all this stuff because it's not that big a deal, you know what I mean."
As for the record label, "they let us do our thing. They don't complain. There have definitively been battles. They don't always understand where we want to go...They were in no way (opposed to the song)."
Jennings intended to release Hank Williams Jr.'s "The Living Proof," but axed that in exchange for "It Ain't Easy," a ballad about what his father meant to him.
"The decision was made at the very last minute, as last minute as you can make it because it was really penned at the very last moment."
"'Livin Proof' is a great song, and I love it, but they're too close sentiment wise. I'm not so much threatened by my father's shadow as he (Hank Jr.) was. It's not such a big issue with me or try to run away from that or try to prove myself outside of that. To me, 'It Ain't Easy" was more how I feel towards my dad and how I feel about my life...I felt it was a better sentiment to me than the other one because it was more appreciative I think of where I come from, but the other track, I love it. At one point, it's going to come out."
"It was written very quickly. It wasn't necessarily easy, but it was an emotion I was going through at the time, which was pretty heavy. There was a lot of self doubt going on. I was fighting a lot with the record label about some issues. The first single was going to be 'Aviators,' but I wanted a video shot for that, but they didn't do that. Radio turned it down...It really started making me feel pretty trapped at the time, and so I just kind of wrote it."
"It is very heart felt."
Jennings gets jocular on "Alligator Chomp (The Ballad of Dr. Martin Luther Frog, Jr.) as told to Tony Joe White," an "off the wall" song penned by Powell.
While the song focuses on relationships between frogs and alligators, to Jennings, "Everybody is always so busy fighting everybody else, they don't even pay attention. If everybody was working together, they'd all be a lot stronger."
Jennings is in a busy period right now in releasing music.
Next up is a disc of Waylon Jennings and the 357s. The music is based on recordings father and son did a decade ago with new backing music.
"We planned to do a record together then. He was really excited about it. It was wild, no one knew what to think about it then. Now they will though."
"I can't explain to you what it is because it's not like a metal record. There's pedal steel on almost every record. We take it musically to a lot of different places."
"It's a very different record, but I think people are going to embrace it."
Jennings indicates there is a country vibe to the disc. He and his father recorded 25 songs together with this collection containing vocals only by his father though Shooter helps on a few songs.
And this fall, Jennings expects to produce his mom's next album, this one focusing on gospel music.
But, for now, Jennings is concentrating on his own music and starting to record another album in May.
Jennings say he takes the best advice his father gave him to go onward and upward. "Really the biggest lesson I ever learned was just being myself and him saying 'don't try and be like anybody else because you won't be'. It's really given me a strong sense of myself."
And to that end, "Electric Rodeo."
"I think we definitely stoked it in a different flavor. I don't feel we were trying to follow up the first record. We were definitely trying to lead people. Our fans love it. I know that. There were some definitely some people who were 'Fourth of July' freaks, and they don't like this record as much. It doesn't have as much as the Americana smiles on it that the first one did. I don't think that anybody thinks we didn't come (up) to par as artists. I'm not too worried. I'm excited the album's out and proud of it."
http://www.countrystandardtime.com/shoo ... ATURE.html
By Jeffrey B. Remz, March 2006
A funny thing happened on the way to Shooter Jennings releasing his sophomore disc, "Electric Rodeo." In an unusual move, he actually started recording it before his well-received debut, "Put the O Back in Country," was even released in March 2005.
So when it comes to pressure, Jennings did not have to worry about whether he would make a better album than his debut. But he knew it would not be a clone.
"I don't really feel any pressure because we're kind of crazy anyway the way we make our records," says Jennings via telephone during a late April pit stop in Orlando for a concert that night. "To me, it was very purely created and made. I don't feel like there's any pressure. I'm really proud of it. So is the band. Our fans love it, and if it does better or worse than the first record, I don't really care. I'm just glad it's out."
"We recorded the debut like a year and a half before it came out...It took us 10 months really to finish 'Electric Rodeo.' We had definitely gotten pretty deep into it by the time the first record came out. We already had just gone to new places with our music, and I think as a band, we had grown. I knew where I wanted this record to go."
"This one is a more country record, yet we dipped more into rock. We kind of got rid of the Americana flavor a little bit...which is something I kind of wanted to do."
Jennings says he wanted "to invent a sound with this record that was really this electric '70s country record. I like Americana, but it's just the vibe, the darker edgier kind of thing to this record is what I really like about it."
The first two songs Jennings penned for the CD were the title track and "Little White Lines." A band mate wrote "Hair of the Dog."
With those three songs, Jennings says he " knew what the flavor of this record was going to be, and I kind of wanted to keep that intact and bring the humor to it and find a way to make a record I would want to listen to and I think we would want to listen to," says Jennings. "This record to me is more of the aim of where I was trying to show what could be possible for the first record. We had just kind of touched on it."
The "we" is his backing band, The 357s, featuring Leroy Powell on guitar, Ted Russell Kamp on bass and Bryan Keeling on drums.
"It was a very natural (progression), and us playing a lot more together and also us starting to learn each other's instincts. Musically, Leroy the guitar player, he's not all into wanking and playing a lot of notes and showing off how good he is. It's more about creating sonic textures and walls. I love that about him, and I love that about the band. With this, we evolved into a record that wasn't a bunch of guitar solos and unnecessary stuff. At moments psychedelic and moments kind of classic kinds of sounds."
While he has two albums under his belt and not too shabby sales on "Put the O" attracting more than 200,000 record buyers, Waylon Albright Jennings, aka Shooter, may be best known at this point of his young musical career as the son of two very famous country performers, Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter.
And while some offspring may seek to distance themselves from famous namesakes, that is not the case whatsoever with Shooter Jennings. In fact, he embraces his parents in many ways from recordings to using his father's stylized winged "W" logo to a tattoo on his right arm that says "Jessi Colter."
But for the naysayers out there who figure about the only way Shooter Jennings got a record deal was not through his own talent, he could care less. He's quite happy with the results thus far.
Jennings is not part of the Nashville star making machinery. He may have grown up there, but he's lived in Los Angeles for six years.
He started his musical career at the ripe old age of four where he would hack away on the drums ("Drums, I think I'm the best at. I still play them a lot"). He soon graduated to piano and gave that up for guitar.
Apparently, it's the genes because at a time when most kids are worrying about their pimples, Jennings knew early on that music was his calling.
Of course, he had very good teachers. His father was one of the leaders of the Outlaw movement, doing things his way and eschewing the Nashville establishment big time. He had lots of hits, like "Good Hearted Woman" and "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way," while hanging with the likes of Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson in The Highwaymen.
' Colter had a career of her own going, best known for her number one single "I'm Not Lisa" in 1975. Interestingly enough, Colter, who sang with her husband on the road, has resurrected her career after Waylon's death four years ago, by releasing a strong album in February.
"I was very lucky, and they were great parents," says Jennings, an only child. "I was very close to my mom and still (am) and my dad. My dad and I never had one fight. I always felt like very lucky and appreciative of that. They loved music, and it was around me so much, and I got to grow up in an environment like that. It nurtured me and freed me to do music I wanted to do."
Jennings grew up in Nashville, although he lived the music lifestyle until he started school. That meant life on the road with his folks doing concerts.
Once he started school, he would take off in the summer to travel on their road show. "I'd travel quite a bit with them especially if they went overseas."
While for some kids it may seem odd to be doing that, Jennings did not really know any other lifestyle.
"It's hard to explain because you don't know the difference when you were young. Everybody else is doing it. It's around you, so it's normal. It's great. It set me up for a life that set me up for a life of where I'm at in this business. It's definitely different and a gypsy style mentality. At the same time, I feel very fortunate to have had the experience that I had to give me the foresight I have now."
"I was about 13 or 14 and really starting to write my own stuff," says Jennings when asked when he knew he wanted a music career. "I was into all kinds of different music at the time."
He cited Trent Reznor, Mr. Nine Inch Nails himself, as a particular influence with his hit album, "The Downward Spiral." Jennings was struck by the fact that Reznor did the 1994 album on his own.
"This was the first time I was ever able to witness this guy make music himself," he says. "If he could do that, I could do that. That's what I started doing. I started doing my own tracks...On a computer, which eventually turned into a bigger studio in Nashville."
Jennings soon formed the rock band Stargunn in Nashville where they lasted for three years and continued for several more years once they moved to La La land.
"I was a lot younger, and it was a lot more rock to it. It was a lot more of a fusion of Guns N' Roses and Skynyrd. I think it was a very much immature version of where my head is now. It was still aiming for the same place."
The band called it quits March 31, 2003. "It was just because I felt it had run its course. We all did. We had reached the glass ceiling. One of the guys in the band had quit. After the manager (left), it all fell apart. It was just a mess. It was much needed to happen."
Jennings says he sort of knew where he wanted to take his music.
"I did, and I didn't then. I had an idea of where I wanted my music to go. I met Brian our drummer. We played a show on June 27, the first show as Shooter Jennings. I had already written 'Daddy's Farm' (the song appears on his debut). I met Leroy a little later, and then I met Ted, and I knew it was the band I needed."
And instead of a rock sound, Jennings opted to return to his musical roots.
As to whether record company folks would be turned on or off by his pedigree, Jennings says it was a plus. "It helped. They were curious to see what I was going to sound like."
He hooked up with Universal South Records, the home of folks like Marty Stuart, Joe Nichols and Lee Roy Parnell.
Jennings enjoyed a semi-hit last year with "4th of July," a bouncy rootsy/country which featured a snippet of George Jones singing is classic "He Stopped Loving Her Today."
He also has been a road warrior, playing often and seemingly everywhere.
In reading his song lyrics, that could be considered somewhat of a surprise since on his debut and especially "Electric Rodeo," he wrote about the loneliness of the road lifestyle and the desire to be home.
"I love the life on the road. I love my life where it is, but there is a lot of isolation in it. That's kind of also where the concept of the record came about too...I knew that that was the entire flavor for the whole record...I wanted to make a kind of half record where the first five songs were basically about being isolated and going back to a simpler life, and then it just gets loopy after that...alright, we got real serious in the beginning, and now we're going to get very lighthearted about it."
"That's the flavor of the record how much the road and the new life that we were on was affecting us in our personal lives and how we're learning how to balance it and deal with it - that's the kind of concept of 'Electric Rodeo' is. We're in this thing, we're in this traveling road show that's becoming successful, and it's trying to keep a balance. 'The Song is Still Slipping Away' is all about that. It's is the anchor for all of those songs. How do you balance the things that are real in your life and sort through them with the things that aren't. How do you stay real, but stay moving forward? It's a hard balance sometimes."
There seems to be some sort of ying and yang with Jennings - he acknowledges the peripatetic lifestyle as being somewhat difficult, but he also says, "I love playing our music...I love traveling and seeing all the different faces. Connect with people. I've gotten to connect with a lot of my family and friends more than I did before because we've been traveling more."
Ultimately, though, it goes back to the music.
"Music, man, is why we make the records, not for any other reason, not to be stars or whatever. The four of us in the band are all so like minded in that way that we play for ourselves. We want to get better and better and better and keep putting on an amazing show for everybody and keep throwing in, adding new things."
Led Zeppelin "changed their formula so many different ways," he says. "Yet, it's an amazing band. As time went on, they became better and better and branched out and got wilder. We're kind of like that in the way we operate. We switch instruments and do all kinds of instruments and do all kinds of things."
"It's definitely a lot of work," Jennings admits. "Like even today, I have to get three radio shows done (Jennings hosts a show on Sirius satellite radio). I've done five phoners, and I still got until five to get one of my shows mailed off, or I'm going to be in trouble...It's also hard to keep a real balance on your real personal life as well at home too. Personal relationships what not. All those things are really tough. You got to be really good and have a good sense of balance, or it could be easy to get lost in all of that."
Jennings has been going out for a long time with actress Drea DiMatteo.
"It's a challenge, but it's also what it keeps you real," says Jennings of the road and being a musician.
When it comes to his musical influences, Waylon is never too far behind. On "Some Rowdy Woman," Shooter tends to echo his father's vocals, although he is not Waylon Jr. either.
He has that gritty Waylon sound as well on the appropriately title "Little White Lines" (Waylon had a cocaine problem in the '70s).
The song even quotes the words "Lonesome, orn'ry and mean," a song recorded by his father. (This was not the first time that son quoted the father. On the title track of the debut, Shooter sang, "Are you ready for the country?")
"It's always going to happen," Jennings says of references to his father. "They talk about how I'm copying and imitating my dad on that song...I wasn't. I wrote that song. That was me and my voice...That's what I sound like when I write songs that sound like that...That's all right. I'm proud of my dad. If that happens, it happens. I know and I'm confident enough in my own musical ability and my band the way we are, eventually we will outshine that. I'm not angry about it. I'm so proud of where I come from."
So much so apparently that in last fall's popular Johnny Cash biopic, "Walk the Line," Shooter played his father in a small role.
Drugs are referred to in several Shooter Jennings songs. The debut had "Busted in Baylor County," based on a true story of what happened to Jennings and his band.
As for "Little White Lines," which has a spoken part where Jennings makes like he's speaking to a cop, trying to pretend that the drugs are really for a back problem, "cocaine is so passé now. It's not a cool drug any more like it was in the '70s because people didn't know anything about it...I always found it like in the '70s that there was all these blatant cocaine songs...I wanted to write one of those for the hell of it."
As for the spoken part, Jennings says, "I'm a big fan of Dr Hook and the Medicine Show. That's where kind of a lot of the inspiration for where the lines came from...where they have these spoken parts where it was funny."
He then quotes Dr. Hook from a song "Freaking at the Freaker's Ball."
"It's kind of making light of it was what my intention was. Don't everybody be so serious about it all this stuff because it's not that big a deal, you know what I mean."
As for the record label, "they let us do our thing. They don't complain. There have definitively been battles. They don't always understand where we want to go...They were in no way (opposed to the song)."
Jennings intended to release Hank Williams Jr.'s "The Living Proof," but axed that in exchange for "It Ain't Easy," a ballad about what his father meant to him.
"The decision was made at the very last minute, as last minute as you can make it because it was really penned at the very last moment."
"'Livin Proof' is a great song, and I love it, but they're too close sentiment wise. I'm not so much threatened by my father's shadow as he (Hank Jr.) was. It's not such a big issue with me or try to run away from that or try to prove myself outside of that. To me, 'It Ain't Easy" was more how I feel towards my dad and how I feel about my life...I felt it was a better sentiment to me than the other one because it was more appreciative I think of where I come from, but the other track, I love it. At one point, it's going to come out."
"It was written very quickly. It wasn't necessarily easy, but it was an emotion I was going through at the time, which was pretty heavy. There was a lot of self doubt going on. I was fighting a lot with the record label about some issues. The first single was going to be 'Aviators,' but I wanted a video shot for that, but they didn't do that. Radio turned it down...It really started making me feel pretty trapped at the time, and so I just kind of wrote it."
"It is very heart felt."
Jennings gets jocular on "Alligator Chomp (The Ballad of Dr. Martin Luther Frog, Jr.) as told to Tony Joe White," an "off the wall" song penned by Powell.
While the song focuses on relationships between frogs and alligators, to Jennings, "Everybody is always so busy fighting everybody else, they don't even pay attention. If everybody was working together, they'd all be a lot stronger."
Jennings is in a busy period right now in releasing music.
Next up is a disc of Waylon Jennings and the 357s. The music is based on recordings father and son did a decade ago with new backing music.
"We planned to do a record together then. He was really excited about it. It was wild, no one knew what to think about it then. Now they will though."
"I can't explain to you what it is because it's not like a metal record. There's pedal steel on almost every record. We take it musically to a lot of different places."
"It's a very different record, but I think people are going to embrace it."
Jennings indicates there is a country vibe to the disc. He and his father recorded 25 songs together with this collection containing vocals only by his father though Shooter helps on a few songs.
And this fall, Jennings expects to produce his mom's next album, this one focusing on gospel music.
But, for now, Jennings is concentrating on his own music and starting to record another album in May.
Jennings say he takes the best advice his father gave him to go onward and upward. "Really the biggest lesson I ever learned was just being myself and him saying 'don't try and be like anybody else because you won't be'. It's really given me a strong sense of myself."
And to that end, "Electric Rodeo."
"I think we definitely stoked it in a different flavor. I don't feel we were trying to follow up the first record. We were definitely trying to lead people. Our fans love it. I know that. There were some definitely some people who were 'Fourth of July' freaks, and they don't like this record as much. It doesn't have as much as the Americana smiles on it that the first one did. I don't think that anybody thinks we didn't come (up) to par as artists. I'm not too worried. I'm excited the album's out and proud of it."
http://www.countrystandardtime.com/shoo ... ATURE.html
Shooter Jennings
BY GRAYSON CURRIN
Shooter Jennings
Shooter Jennings is easy to dismiss. He falls in that exclusive, often infamous club of musicians who have not yet enjoyed the success of their more famous musical parents. Lennon, Allman, Dylan: Some were on the tour bus as children with their famous parents, picking up the craft at an early age through osmosis and, eventually, choosing the path that made a parent important.
Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Conten ... id%3A31226
BY GRAYSON CURRIN
Shooter Jennings
Shooter Jennings is easy to dismiss. He falls in that exclusive, often infamous club of musicians who have not yet enjoyed the success of their more famous musical parents. Lennon, Allman, Dylan: Some were on the tour bus as children with their famous parents, picking up the craft at an early age through osmosis and, eventually, choosing the path that made a parent important.
Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Conten ... id%3A31226