I was not very familiar with Shooter Jennings, I did remember about his short appearance in the Johnny Cash biopic ‘Walk the Line’, where he was playing his father Waylon Jennings of course, and singing one of his father’s songs ‘Long Way From Home’… but this was about all I knew about him. However, I had my first encounter with the guy on Tuesday, as he performed an in-store concert at Amoeba before signing his new EP, ‘Don’t Wait Up (for George)’ an homage to his mentor and friend, the great late George Jones.
Jennings, son of a country star, has already had a long and dense career, with numerous studio albums and several out-of country episodes (like the successful band Stargunn described as hybrid of Lynyrd Skynyrd, David Bowie, and Guns n’ Roses or the 2010 album ‘Black Ribbons’ a dystopian concept rock opera involving Stephen King), but Jennings’ true love seems to have always been country music.
Jennings’ homage EP to George Jones, released on August 5th, is filled with two original tunes (‘Living In a Minor Key’ and ‘Don’t Wait Up (I’m Playin’ Possum’) that he wrote for the family friend, and three Jones’ hits, reinvented by Jennings: 1962 ‘She Thinks I Still Care’, 1974 ‘The Door’ and 1981 ‘If Drinkin’ Don’t Kill Me’.
‘When people ask me about who I remember hanging around as a kid, I always say that I remember Tony Joe White and George Jones being the most frequent and consistent around the house’ said Jennings, in a statement. ‘Very few people can look at a child and see the full grown human inside them and make them feel important. George was always this way with me, making me feel like he took me seriously, no matter what age I was.’
At Amoeba, he appeared on stage with his acoustic guitar wearing a cap written ‘Repent’, and was only accompanied by a violinist, although he said he regretted that his bassist friend Faren Miller was not there to play with them (he was in Kentucky). As he was playing without setlist, I can’t be totally sure but I don’t think he played any of the Jones songs, although he performed his two original compositions, the stormy outlaw country, ‘Don’t Wait Up (I’m Playin’ Possum’) and the slower ‘Living In a Minor Key’, which he had only performed once live and had ‘fucked it up’. He didn’t mess it up this time….
He was quite talkative between the songs explaining that the project started in 2012 as someone representing himself as the producer of George’s upcoming record, asked him if I had any songs to submit. He wrote two songs and it turned out that this guy wasn’t really a producer, but when Jones died, the songs were still there, waiting… and he got the idea of this new tribute.
Jennings is a passionate performer, strumming his guitar and building a small tempest while dueling with the female violinist. After the two original tunes, he covered a Waylon Jennings tune after explaining that people were always asking him which song was his favorite one.. an impossible (and stupid) question. ‘The song seems to be about a woman but it is about Nashville and the music industry’, he said before singing ‘Belle of the Ball’.
Then Shooter played some of his big hits with the raging ‘Outlaw You’ full of energy and thunder, ‘The Gunslinger’ ending with a stormy jam between guitar and violin, but also a surprising (to me) cover of Nirvana’ ‘Something in the way’ suddenly turning morose. Everything in his attitude and music looked raw and sincere, I had never seen him live but he gave me the impression that his shows could be much more rowdy than this acoustic one! However, Shooter is surprising and very much all over the place, contributing with people as diverse as Billy Ray Cyrus, Wanda Jackson, and Marilyn Manson and yes, releasing this year another EP beside his homage to George Jones, a tribute to pioneering electronic musician Giorgio Moroder called ‘Countach (for Giorgio)’, something you would not really expect from the son of a country royalty.
