Just these real honest moments of creativity.” “Making music and then me writing lyrics. “We’re still able to go in and get giddy and excited over creating together,” Jennings says. In addition to the “bunch of songs” written at home before heading to Nashville, much of SHOOTER – including highlights like “Denim & Diamonds” and the Lone Star anthem, “Do You Love Texas?” – were co-written by Jennings and Cobb in the studio, “on the spot.” Jennings’ hard-fought clarity and determined honesty can be heard throughout the record, on songs like the tender “Love In A Minor Key” – which he first recorded for 2014’s George Jones tribute EP, DON’T WAIT UP (FOR GEORGE) – and “Rhinestone Eyes,” a heartfelt paean to his wife, Misty. SHOOTER stakes its claim as classic country right from the jump, kicking off with the brass-fueled boogie-woogie of “Bound Ta Git Down” (though admittedly, few if any country LPs start with a high-energy honky tonk tune referencing weed, Guns n’ Roses, and Jennings’ good pal, Marilyn Manson). It let me stay really centered with who I am.” And y’know, it was the right scenario to make this record. The label wanted to put me up in a hotel but I said no, I’m going to stay with my friend and his wife. I wasn’t interested in taking a Nashville state of mind with this record. “I was only in Nashville because Dave’s a good friend and we work really well together. ‘”To me, I was still in L.A.,” Jennings says. With his own peace of mind in mind, he opted to stay with a dear friend from childhood in Springfield, TN, 30 minutes drive from Music Row. Though raised in Nashville, Jennings has spent the past two decades residing in Los Angeles and admits to having little taste for contemporary Music City’s hard hustle and hipster bustle. Indeed, Jennings had just recorded a complex concept album – as yet unreleased – touching on death and the seemingly abrupt changes in the world over past few years and was already set to reunite with Cobb to co-produce of Brandi Carlile’s critically hailed 2018 studio album, BY THE WAY, I FORGIVE YOU. Come down to Nashville and let’s record that record.’” I want to make the best country record for right now. I want to make a slammin’ country record. “I called Dave and said, Everyone is taking the adventurous route we took on my first records but nobody is making records like Hank Williams Jr.,” Jennings says.
SHOOTER – which marks their first full length effort together since 2010’s psychedelic metal concept album, BLACK RIBBONS – turns that experimental approach on its head by stripping the country sound bare to its bones to reveal the genre’s hot blood and hard muscle.
Jennings’ decade-plus relationship with the GRAMMY® Award-winning Cobb extends all the way back to 2005 and his first trio of solo albums, a landmark series of records in which they tried to “stretch the boundaries of what was acceptable on a country record” by adding elements like electronics, psychedelic guitars, and Shooter’s distinctly modern point of view. Every once in a while you realize you’re shooting wild so you have to stop and recalibrate.” It was almost like recalibrating a firearm. I wanted to do something straight and simple. “This record is almost a re-centering for me. “I think that’s why I was so excited to do this now,” he says. With SHOOTER, Jennings truly puts his own mark on country music, living up to his extraordinary birthright with unparalleled passion, experience, and heart. In short, making music for real people with real lives. But with songs like “Fast Horses & Good Hideouts” or the raucous “I’m Wild & My Woman Is Crazy,” Jennings more than affirms his mission by returning to country’s original, if oft misplaced, mandate: singing songs about growing up and getting older, about going out and getting trashed. It should be noted, Jennings’ last studio album was a genuinely visionary tribute to Giorgio Moroder so in some ways, making a straight up country record is as much of a left turn as anything else in his brilliantly mercurial career thus far.
Produced by longtime friend and collaborator, Low Country Sound founder Dave Cobb, at the renowned RCA Studio A on Nashville’s Music Row, the album sees Jennings staking out a fairly straightforward goal: to simply make a great country record. Ever the outlaw, Jennings has now crafted what might well be his most truly idiosyncratic work thus far, SHOOTER.