Chattanooga Times Free Press - ChattanoogaNow
Shooter Jennings: Defying expectations
Leave it to Shooter Jennings to zig when everyone else is zagging. Always the rebel, Jennings had an album nearly complete. Then after reuniting with Dave Cobb, the hottest producer in Nashville today and with whom Jennings made his first four records, Jennings scrapped that album to go in a completely different direction.
“I have this other record done — I’ve just got a couple songs to do vocals on and it’s finished — that’s a little more adventurous,” Jennings said in a phone interview. “But all of a sudden, the landscape in new country has changed and lots of people are putting out concept records, near psychedelic records, things like we were doing six, seven years ago. So I thought the most outlandish thing to do is make a Hank Jr. record. A straight-ahead drinking, rockin’ record.”
That album was “Shooter,” released last year. Jennings said he wanted to make “Shooter” in the vein of a Hank Williams Jr. album in part because of today’s bitterly divided social and political climate. He has no interest in making any kind of statement with his music and he’s convinced that people come to music for different reasons other than getting some kind of political lecture.
“I don’t care if people like (President Donald) Trump or hate him, if they voted for him or not, people just want to have a good time,” Jennings said. “They don’t want to hear about immigration or whatever on a record or at a show. So let’s do something happy, fun and boogie-woogie. It’s the most outlaw thing I could have done. I hate to use that word.”
Outlaw, Jennings said, was worn out by the time his dad, Waylon Jennings, sang “Don’t You Think This Outlaw Bit’s Done Got Out of Hand” in 1978, the year before he was born. But the label has lived on, and even provides the name for the Sirius/XM radio channel Outlaw Country on which Jennings has a program every weekend.
Waylon, with whom Shooter was very close, died in 2002. He remains very close to his mother, Jessi Colter, and takes his children to visit her in Arizona when opportunities arise.
“My kids don’t travel with me on the road very much,” Jennings said. “They’ve been able to be around Kris Kristofferson a lot — they were 2 or 3 when they first met him. It’s really important they meet those people. My kids are deep. My daughter plays music. My son, Black Jack, doesn’t forget anything. They get to be around these people, my friends, my parents’ friends and learn from them. That’s really important. They’re getting to know my dad, (although) they never met him, through those people.”
Jennings still draws on things he learned from Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and others who were around Waylon and Jessi when he was a kid.
And he’s taken plenty from others he’s met along the way, including the Oak Ridge Boys’ Duane Allen, with whom he had a chat while they were waiting for a revolving restaurant at the top of a Nashville hotel to move around to where they could step off to use the restroom.
“It was one of the most ObiWan Kenobi, Mace Windu talks I’ve ever had,” Jennings said. “He was telling me ‘Nothing matters. Don’t worry. If you think a song is good, the song is good. If somebody else thinks it’s good and throws money behind it, it can be a hit. Just make your music.’ He’s right — and that’s what I’m doing.”