Shooter Jennings - Put the "o" Back in Country"

By: Christie Bohorfoush - AngryCountry.com Staff Writer

You may ask what would make a guy like Shooter Jennings, who has subbed twice onstage for Axl Rose with Guns N' Roses, decide to record a country music album. Well, could it simply be that he has a family history? Do not let Shooter Jennings fool you. Sure, he rocks. He is lean and wiry, with tattoos snaking up his arms (his mother's name on one, a gun on the other) and a crimson stud gleaming in one ear. He has played sold-out shows at the Viper Room and the Roxy. And, as mentioned, he has subbed twice onstage for Axl Rose with Guns N' Roses.

But look a little closer. Underneath that gun are the letters CBCS, which stand for "country boy can survive." That earring turns out to be an eagle silhouette spread-winged into the letter "W", an icon known by anyone who listened to and loved the original outlaw, Waylon Jennings. That same icon is etched onto Shooter's stomach, but the one in his ear is even more special. "My Dad got his ear pierced when he was, I swear to God, sixty, because he wanted to be like me," the younger Jennings explains. "This was the earring he wore and I'm wearing it now."

Waylon Albright Jennings was born rollin'. The only child of Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter, he lived his first few years in a crib on his parents’ tour bus, "I thought everybody's family was like mine," he remembers. "We'd check out of hotels and travel all night. Songwriting, shows, stage setups, the band, the crew, the bus, the trucks... all that stuff was normal. And I loved it. To this day I sleep better on the bus than anywhere else."

Above all, there was the music. Though, strange as it seems, Shooter never thought of it as something he himself would ever do. "I remember hearing Dad's band," he says. "They were always great. I loved the way those shows felt, with the colored lights coming on. I can still really see him onstage, starting 'Luckenbach Texas.' Night after night, I'd watch from the wings. But I never put two and two together, like 'Maybe I'll get older and do this, too."

Without thinking about it much, Shooter started making music anyway. By age five he was playing drums. Between tours back in Nashville, he took piano lessons, did not like them, stopped, and then started teaching himself and enjoying it more. He picked up his guitar at fourteen and has not put it down since. He and his dad recorded a few things together when they happened to have some microphones set up and the tape recorder plugged in. Then at sixteen he discovered rock and roll.

Driven by a sound he heard coming together in his head... something like Lynyrd Skynyrd mutating into Guns N' Roses... Shooter left a couple of years later to seek his fortunes in L.A. "I had to get out of Nashville because I didn't feel it was my place at the time," he explains. "I wanted to get out while I was young. I wanted to play rock, and if I'd tried to do that in Nashville, a lot of expectations would have been laid on me. I wasn't comfortable with that, so after I got out of high school, I was gone."

In L.A., Shooter assembled a band and named it Stargunn. For six or seven years they tore up the local clubs, built a rabid following and earned raves from the local music press. But something was wrong. "I loved rock," he explains. "I loved its 'f-you' attitude. But that Hollywood thing started to get to me. The more I went to all these crazy Paris Hilton parties, the more I was like, 'Man, this sucks!' I felt like everybody I'd known back in Nashville was looking at me like I was some big Hollywood asshole. I was posing as a rocker... a country guy trying to be something he wasn't."

On March 30, 2003, Shooter dissolved Stargunn and went to New York City to spend some time with his girlfriend and sort out what he wanted to do next. It took just a few weeks for fate to show up, as it often does, with an opportunity in the form of an invitation to play at the House of Blues. "I was certainly not ready," he remembers, "but I said yes just to inspire my ass to get a band together and try. We did that show and it wasn't terrible, but it was enough to pump me up and get me to start writing the songs I wanted to write."

Once he had his material together, Shooter went back to L.A., found some musicians who could connect to his true new sound, dubbed them the 357s, and locked himself into a studio with them. Six weeks later they emerged with Put the "o" Back in Country, a set of rambunctious country tunes that leaves no doubt of where Shooter comes from and where he is going.

"In country music I feel completely free to do what I want to do," he insists. "I still get off to a lot of what's going on in rock... the White Stripes are great and so is Velvet Revolver. I almost feel like real rock and roll is more present in country than it is in rock. You wouldn't hear 'Keep Your Hands to Yourself' on rock radio now. It'd be on country radio because you can't bullshit country fans; they know authentic music when they hear it. And that's what I'm out to do."

Not only that, Shooter does it with a sound that is nourished by tradition, that acknowledges his family, and yet is entirely his own. "In my head, I still wish I sounded like a Waylon record from 1978," he laughs. "But I know I sound like myself. I guess that comes from finally doing what I want, even though I'm embracing my heritage, too. That's important in country music. Somebody asked me once if it's hard living in my father's shadow. Hell, no, it's great! I love my father's music. In fact, I want a Waylon song on my next album. But Put the "o" Back in Country is all me, coming out fast, balls to the wall."

"The main thing I want people to understand is that I'm a country artist," Shooter says. "Sure, there's rock in there. I've played a lot of rock and roll. I take a lot from it. But it's country music. And I'm going to push it as far as I can because it's that important."

I must admit that for this writer I have picked up and sat this album back down on my desk a number of times. It is no secret that this gal likes her country music well grounded in its traditional roots. In fact, my first influences in music were drawn from my teenage years; years that sprang out of the soulful tunes brought to us through Motown and artists such as Smokey Robinson, Jackie Wilson, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, and so on. It was not until the British invasion in the early sixties that this kid even began to listen to rock and roll through the help of the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, the Dave Clark Five, etc. Most of whom were bringing their brand of rock and roll music from their influences in American Motown artists. With Motown music all but drying up and a new turn to "rap" music, I eventually found myself settling into a love of country music; and here again, due to its having roots based in heavily laden lyrics that touch one's soul.

This being said, however, I have received no less than three copies of this album. Because of this persistence for me to give this album a shot, and even though I am not one to dig rock and roll heavily brought to my country, I decided to sit down and throw this CD in the ole music machine. And because Shooter Jennings promised that this album is [and I quote,] "Hoss, it's country music, the way it ought to be... alive with blood and thunder, spit and spirit and Southern soul." Still the question remained... would this album touch this gal's soulful heart?

The answer is a resounding, "NO!" In all of the albums that I have been sent for review in the two years since I began AngryCountry, this is by far the worst. To be brutally honest, the music in this project left me stone cold. It lacked soul, great lyrics, and anything that resembled country music. In fact, the album proved that just because one has a dad in the country music business does not often mean that the apple does not fall far from the tree. Here, adding a few fiddle licks to the mix never took this music in a country direction. What I found, instead, was exactly what made me turn away from rock and roll... poorly written lyrics, crude storytelling, and simply a lack of emotion to the songs. In short, this album just is not country!



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Put the "o" Back in Country"


Track One: "Put the "o" Back in Country"

A straight forward track that speaks to all that is missing in today's country music, in radio, and with the Nashville music industry. I could not have said it any better myself; but this is not the album or the artist to speak for traditional country music.


Track Two: "4th of July" (featuring George Jones singing "He Stopped Loving Her Today")

Rockin' tune about the road, love, and turning to the car radio for a little country music and finding it in George Jones.


Track Three: "Lonesome Blues"

Finding oneself growing older and alone is addressed in this blues inspired track that never really fills the bill for the soul and emotion that is in a great blues number.


Track Four: "Solid Country Gold"

A song that looks at the loss of soul in country music today and the desire to have it returned. The sad part is that this debut album and the music in it do not reflect those traditional roots.


Track Five: "Busted in Baylor County"

Hard driven track about hitting the road too fast and finding yourself in trouble with the law over their finding pot in the vehicle. Of all the songs on this album, this is the one that expresses the most of all that is the worst of the MTV and rock and roll generation - sex, rock and roll, and trashy lyrics. NOT what any country music fan wants to find in their country music!


Track Six: "Sweet Savannah"

A track about trying to find love in another's arms, but realizing that the love you lost is not forgotten. Probably the closest track that brushes on a country theme, and yet, just never is able to get there and touch the soul.


Track Seven: "Steady at the Wheel"

Another track about driving and the feel of being behind the wheel of a great car.


Track Eight: "Manifesto No. 1"

Ode to a girl who broke a guy's heart is brought to this tune which is supposed to be a gospel influenced track. Here again, trying to touch on a tune with lyrics revolving around God just cannot be managed through a rough edged rock and roll base line and attitude.


Track Nine: "The Letter"

The typical "Dear John" letter is looked at in this track about being told goodbye.


Track Ten: "Southern Comfort"

Nice guitar work saves this song that looks at calling the south home.


Track Eleven: "Daddy's Farm"

In this track the farm life and music is told through living out the days on daddy's farm.

Buy The Album: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0007OY3U2/ecnadmedia-20