Shooter Jennings

The sole child of country icons Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter, Shooter Jennings grew up riding tour buses from his earliest years. Music seemed inevitable, yet he forged an independent path much like his father, drawing deeply on hard rock alongside outlaw country. His 2006 release Electric Rodeo leaned heavily into electric guitars, while 2007’s The Wolf highlighted his raw country twang. The Hierophant project allowed Jennings to dive into metal and electronic textures, and the 2016 album Countach honored Euro-disco pioneer Giorgio Moroder. In 2022 he teamed with Yelawolf for Sometimes Y, blending 1970s and 1980s rock influences, and later documented his affinity for Warren Zevon with the live recording Shooter Jennings and the Werewolves of Los Angeles Do Zevon. Throughout these explorations, his gritty songwriting and vocals stayed consistent.

Born Waylon Albright Jennings, he took up drums by age five and started piano lessons before abandoning formal instruction to teach himself. At fourteen he picked up guitar, then discovered Southern rock and Guns N’ Roses-style hard rock at sixteen. He relocated from Nashville to Los Angeles, formed the rock outfit Stargunn, and built a local following over six or seven years before disbanding the group to return to his outlaw-country origins. After a brief period in New York assembling country material, he settled back in Los Angeles and assembled the .357s. The band recorded the rowdy country set Put the O Back in Country, issued in 2005 on Universal South Records. Electric Rodeo, actually tracked earlier, surfaced in 2006, followed later that year by the concert album Live at Irving Plaza. His third solo outing, The Wolf, arrived in October 2007 and included a cover of Dire Straits’ “Walk of Life,” whose writer Mark Knopfler had long been a family acquaintance. One month afterward, Jennings became a father when girlfriend Drea De Matteo gave birth to Alabama Gypsy Rose; he proposed to her onstage in Utica, New York, in 2009.

For his fourth studio album, Black Ribbons, Jennings rechristened his band Hierophant and delivered a dark concept piece shaped by Nine Inch Nails and produced by Dave Cobb. The record emerged in early 2010, then reappeared later that year as Black Ribbons: The Living Album on a Tarot-card-shaped USB drive containing both studio tracks and live Hierophant performances. In 2011, Jennings and blogger Adam Sheets launched the Sirius/XM channel XXX devoted to insurgent country, rock, and their hybrids. He also moved to New York City with De Matteo, formed the Triple Crown with pianist Erik Deutsch, and welcomed son Waylon Albert “Blackjack” Jennings in April. The band quickly cut the video-only single “Outlaw You,” which topped CMT’s daily request chart until a label dispute forced its removal; follow-up single “The Deed and the Dollar” also reached number one. The album Family Man appeared in March 2012 without “Outlaw You.”

The Other Life, released in 2013 on his Black Country Rock imprint, featured guest spots from Patty Griffin, Scott H. Biram, and Jim Dandy of Black Oak Arkansas. Its live companion The Other Live, drawn from 2013 tour dates, surfaced in early 2014. That same year Black Country Rock issued an EP of a brooding “You Are My Sunshine” recorded with Jamey Johnson and Twiggy Ramirez for Sons of Anarchy. Jennings also released the George Jones tribute EP Don’t Wait Up (For George). Early 2016 brought Countach, nine tracks inspired by Giorgio Moroder and featuring Marilyn Manson, Brandi Carlile, Steve Young, and Richard Garriott de Cayeux. He collaborated with Billy Don Burns on A Night in Room 8, reissued Black Ribbons amid the presidential election, and signed with Dave Cobb’s Low Country Sound for the 2018 album Shooter, which celebrated vintage country and blues. Producing work then dominated, encompassing Tanya Tucker’s While I’m Livin’ (2019), American Aquarium’s Lamentations (2020), Jamie Wyatt’s Neon Cross (2020), Marilyn Manson’s WE ARE CHAOS (2020), and Brandi Carlile’s In These Silent Days (2021). In 2022 he issued Sometimes Y, a wide-ranging collaboration with Yelawolf.

October 2022 saw Jennings headline a full Warren Zevon set at the Rebels & Renegades Music Festival in Monterey, California, backed by the Werewolves of Los Angeles—guitarist John Schreffler, bassist Ted Russell Kamp, drummer Jamie Douglass, and keyboardist Brian Whelan. The performance was captured and issued in November 2023 by Black Country Records as Shooter Jennings and the Werewolves of Los Angeles Do Zevon. That year he also contributed “Human Fly” to the Cramps tribute compilation Goo Goo Muck. Producing continued with Tanya Tucker’s Sweet Western Sound, Logan Ledger’s Golden State, and the Turnpike Troubadours’ A Cat in the Rain, all released in 2023.