Artist of the Week 12.22.2013- Shooter Jennings

[BiloxiParish]

I'm not sure if I did this right... I am sorry Clams


When I first heard Shooter Jennings it was in the year 2006 in New Orleans at the annual Voodoo Festival. I was fresh from a horrible break up that had left my young mind somewhat broken. This would be the first festival I had ever went to alone. I purchased my 3 day pass to the event in hopes of seeing Social Distortion, The Flaming Lips, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blue October, and The Secret Machines. I can’t recall the time of day of it was but it was still daylight when I saw this short, long haired, bearded guy wearing Aviators belting out a song that spoke to my broken hearted soul. It was a southern sounding anthem of a song called “Gone To Carolina”

“Every time I think I smell that sweet southern rain
it takes me to a station on the long black train
I wanna hear the wind blow, and feel the earth move below me
despite of all the good times, I gotta rest my soul
So I'm gone, yes I'm gone
gone to Carolina, where I know that I belong”

At this point in my life the closest I had come to listening to anything southern was my Johnny Cash Greatest Hits album and maybe the Kings of Leon “Aha Shake Heartbreak”. I was raised in south Mississippi and despised that redneck shit with a passion. You learned to hate it after so many years of being force fed Garth Brooks by your parents. There was no way I was going to be caught dead listening to this CMT stuff. As the song continued to draw me in I had to look at my schedule to see who this guy was and his name was Shooter Jennings. I wondered if he had any relation to Waylon Jennings at all(Waylon is Shooter’s father, I had no clue back then). That show would ultimately change my listening habits slowly over the course of a few years, and seeing Shooter Jennings would allow me later that day to be open to sitting through the set of a previously unknown band to my ears of Patterson Hood, Mike Cooley, and Jason Isbell. A band that I learned was called the Drive-By Truckers and would a few years later become one of my favorite bands of all time. There was nothing else remarkable about the festival for me, besides these two bands.

When I got back into the swing of things in college I would download a few Shooter tracks off of iTunes here and there that I liked, but thats all it was, just a liking of a few songs. I even added Shooter to my likes page on MySpace.

3 years would go by and one day at the end of 2009 Shooter Jennings released the first single off an unknown upcoming album called “Wake Up”. The song blew me away, it was part Pink Floyd and part The Allman Brothers. The song was Alt Rock, Experimental, but still had that Southern Edge to it. I had never heard anything like it before. The album “Black Ribbons” would drop in March. “Black Ribbons” ended up being a concept album about a dystopian American future which featured skits by legendary writer Stephen King playing a Radio DJ describing the collapse of America around him over the air to anybody that was listening. King’s final act was to play the one band the US Governement didn’t want him to play. The album itself was genre bending, mixing industrial NIN style layers with southern soul, psychedelic, alternative music meeting roots music in a massive orgy. Stand out tracks being “Black Ribbons”, “Summer of Rage”, All of This Could Have Been Yours”, “Wake Up”, and “Don’t feed the Animals.” The album to this day gives me head a rush when I really need it.

I started to really get into Shooter Jennings more and more after that album dropped. Since then he has released two great albums “The Family Man” and “The Other Life”,in “The Family Man” he returns to his southern roots, mixed in with a little John Prine. The album features guest spots from Tom Morello and Eleanor Whitmore. “The Other Life” I believe was recorded in those same sessions but features some stand out tracks such as the lead single “Wild and Lonesome” featuring Patty Griffin as well as “The White Trash Song” which is a cover featuring the great Scott H. Biram. Other stand out tracks are “The Gunslinger” and lead track “The Other Life”. The album is return to form for Shooter with that southern rock flare with some maturity to it.

Shooter Jennings always seems to get a bad rep from music lovers. He is in the crosshairs of music reviewers, hardcore fans of his father, and the outlaw movement in general, because his father is Waylon Jennings and his mother is Jessi Colter he is standing on the shoulders of giants but also trying to get out from beneath their bright lit shadow.There have been periods of calling myself a fan of his where I have misunderstood his intentions or questioned the songs he has put forth on albums in his catalogue there are some duds and cringeworthy stuff, but for every bad track there is another that is equally superb. He has tried to honor his fathers legacy by rereleasing classing Waylon albums and also even playing the role of his father in the Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line in a scene alongside Joaquin Phoenix.

He has his critics like SavingCountryMusic blogger Trigger who often times has a bad thing or two to say about Shooter and there are those who just wish he would play his fathers old songs and thats it. I love when Shooter pushes the envelope like recently releasing a cover of classic song “You Are My Sunshine” featuring Jamey Johnson and music by Twiggy Ramirez that was played on the closing of a Sons of Anarchy episode.

So at any rate if it wasn’t for Shooter Jennings, I would have never found the Drive-By Truckers. I would have never found bands like Jason Isbell, Son Volt, Lucero, North Mississippi All Stars, Steve Earle, Old Crow Medicine Show, The Avett Brothers, The Dexateens, Glossary, Lee Baines, Doc Dailey, Alabama Shakes, Arliss Nancy, John Moreland, and Uncle Tupelo (the list goes on and on). I wouldn’t even be here today if it wasn’t for Shooter somehow slowly over the course of few years bringing me back home to my roots and discovering this music scene and my love for the South. 

I would probably be listening U2 or something..

[3milelake]

Nice work BP. Always cool to know what someone's gateway drug to great music is.

[LBRod]

I saw him live a few times and had a blast. He lost me with Black Ribbons.
Have not gone back since. I still enjoy his earlier stuff with Leroy on guitar.