Back to the start
Here’s how Beau Jennings re-recorded band’s debut LP without playing a note
Fifteen years ago, Beau Jennings was excited to explore anything through a song.
The Oklahoma-born musician, now 38, was navigating his 20s and stitching together his first batch of tracks under the moniker Cheyenne.
These days, there’s less banjo and more Springsteen-induced bravado, but Beau’s early songwriting blueprints seemingly have never been a source of embarrassment. That’s the thing about Cheyenne’s debut LP, “I Am Haunted, I Am Alive.” It’s a loud first impression full of mostly somber, soul-searching meditations.
The alt-country leaning 2005 album marked Beau’s lo-fi emergence out of a bedroom laboratory and into laying the foundation for a sound that helped define the local music landscape. “I Am Haunted” also acted as an early reference for Blackwatch Studios engineers, another unmistakable force in Oklahoma-bred music.
“When I think back on the album, I can see definitely see where Cheyenne was defined,” Jennings said. “A world was made and … it was a concept record even though I wasn’t trying to make one.”
I was surprised to hear Beau not only planned to re-release the record but also aimed to recruit former bandmates, buddies and contemporaries to re-record the whole LP.
So, why’s the original “I Am Haunted, I Am Alive” worth the fuss? A lot of artists probably would pay you to destroy their first record.
For one, the title feels like a rallying cry. “I Am Haunted” succeeds as an auditory promise that Beau