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| Shooter Jennings |
Waylon Jennings once wrote that he was “too dumb for New York City, and too ugly for L.A.” Jennings’s son, Shooter (his only child with wife Jessi Colter), could easily adopt that slogan for himself. As with his father, Shooter probably recognizes that he can raise a lot more hell and scare a lot more people in Tennessee than he can in one of our coastal media centers.
If you’re the child of music royalty, that means you grew up in a privileged environment with famous people dropping by the house on a regular basis. So it’s easy to see why most kids in those situations lack the fire in the belly that drove their parents to legendary status (an exception might be James Taylor and Carly Simon’s offspring, who are the wimpified children of wimpified children of privilege). With that in mind, it’s positively eerie how much Shooter recalls his dad, from the deep, manly-man baritone to the self-described need for reckless thrills and mayhem. You get the feeling that the only coddling he received as a kid was getting to pick out the priciest pistol at the gun store.
| Lynyrd Skynyrd with 3 Doors Down and Shooter Jennings 7pm Fri, Jul 7 $25-$55 Verizon Wireless Amphitheater 16765 Lookout Rd., Selma 657-8300 |
Hot on the boot heels of his 2005 debut, Put the O Back in Country, Shooter has returned with Electric Rodeo, a rowdy blast of Southern rock that falls somewhere between vintage Allman Brothers and Kid Rock’s countrified side. “I’d gladly trade all my big-city living/for some rowdy women/in a honky-tonk tonight,” he sings, blissfully pretending that it’s still 1974 and he’s David Allan Coe.
With “Manifesto No. 2,” he delivers an oddball gospel hoedown, goofing that Jesus will be his designated driver if he gets loaded, and bail him out of jail if he gets arrested. Leave it to Waylon’s son to relegate Christ to tour-manager duties.
- Gilbert Garcia
