When Turnpike Troubadours reunited in 2021 following an uncertain hiatus, they turned to Shooter Jennings to guide them in recording their first album in six years, 2023’s A Cat in the Rain. The Grammy-winning producer also helmed the follow-up, this year’s superb The Price of Admission. Yet Jennings says that some of the Oklahoma band’s fans weren’t happy.
“The preconceived notion thing goes forever. If you look at Turnpike fans and what they say about the last two records I did, they say I ruined their careers. Because there’s something about me that’s polarizing to people,” Jennings says on Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now podcast when asked about living with the pressure of being the son of pioneering outlaw Waylon Jennings.
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Jennings — by way of his production work with artists as varied as Brandi Carlile, Lukas Nelson, and Guns N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan, and his own eclectic solo albums like 2010’s Black Ribbons — has succeeded in outrunning his father’s long shadow. In fact, when he started his country career in 2005 with Put the O Back in Country, he was blind to any expectations.
“When we cut Put the O Back in Country, I had no pressure, and there was no shadow. I moved to L.A. when I was 21 years old to be in a rock band,” he says, “and nobody knew who I was.”
According to Jennings, few were even aware of Waylon — save for the guitarist in the influential grunge band Alice in Chains, whom he met one night at the Sunset Marquis hotel. “The only person who knew who Waylon Jennings was, was Jerry Cantrell. He goes, ‘You’re Waylon’s kid? Right on.’ And he was so nice to me from that point on,” Jennings says. “But otherwise no one really knew who he was or really cared.”
Jennings recently produced and released Songbird, a posthumous album by Waylon Jennings made up of secret recordings the younger Jennings discovered a few years back. He intends to release two more volumes of the project.
Download and subscribe to Rolling Stone’s weekly country-music podcast, Nashville Now, hosted by senior music editor Joseph Hudak, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts). New episodes drop every Wednesday and feature interviews with artists and personalities like Lainey Wilson, Hardy, Charley Crockett, Gavin Adcock, Amanda Shires, Margo Price, Dusty Slay, Lukas Nelson, Ashley Monroe, Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor, and Clever.
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