Shooter Jennings has announced the release of Songbird, a completely new, previously unheard album by his legendary father, Waylon Jennings. The first of three previously unheard albums worth of material by the groundbreaking country music superstar, Songbird collects recordings produced between 1973 and 1984 in various studios by Jennings and his longtime drummer and co-producer Richie Albright, featuring members of his indelible backing band, The Waylors, including Albright and renowned pedal steel guitarist Ralph Mooney, along with such special guests as Tony Joe White, Jessi Colter, and more. Compiled and mixed by Shooter Jennings at Hollywood, CA’s hallowed Sunset Sound Studio 3, Songbird arrives via Son of Jessi/Thirty Tigers on Friday, October 3, 2025. Pre-orders/pre-saves are available now.
Songbird is heralded by the first single and title track, Jennings’ stunning version of Fleetwood Mac’s “Songbird,” available everywhere alongside an official visualizer/music video streaming now at YouTube. Both “Songbird” and the Songbird project were officially unveiled yesterday at a special Waylon Jennings Birthday Party/Father’s Day celebration hosted by Shooter Jennings at The Viper Room in West Hollywood, CA. The surviving members of the Waylors, Waylon Jennings’ backing band, were the house band for performances by Jaime Wyatt, Elizabeth Cook, Ashley Monroe, Charley Crockett, and Shooter Jennings, as they performed songs from Waylon Jennings’ illustrious catalogue.
The Songbird project began in the summer of 2024 as Shooter Jennings began sorting through hundreds of high-resolution multitrack transfers of his father’s personal studio recordings. Having just begun an exclusive residency at Hollywood’s historic Sunset Sound Studio 3 (redubbed by Jennings as “Snake Mountain”), the 3x GRAMMY® Award-winning producer and artist set to work examining the tapes with the help of veteran engineer Nate Haessly. While his initial hope was to simply unearth some previously lost Waylon Jennings songs that he could share with the world, what he instead discovered was “an audio record of an incredibly profound artist and his legendary band through their peak period of creative expansion.”
“What became very apparent to me was that my dad was recording constantly with his band The Waylors between tours,” says Shooter Jennings. “Just having won the David-and-Goliath battle against RCA for creative control and artistic freedom, Waylon was awarded the ability to record his music on his terms in his own studios, with his touring band, and without label oversight and without any outside influence.
There was just so much inside, my mind was blown! These weren’t demos, these were songs that were cut with the intention of releasing, and as time went on, not all of them found places on the albums that Waylon and the Waylors were releasing at the time.”
Jennings soon realized there was more than enough gold in his father’s vast musical archive to create not just one, but three, brand new Waylon Jennings albums more than two decades after his untimely passing in 2002. Though the majority of the recordings were fully finished, he added a few final touches by bringing in a number of surviving members of The Waylors, including guitarist Gordon Payne, bassist Jerry Bridges, keyboardist Barny Robertson, and backing vocalist Carter Robertson, with contemporary country stars Elizabeth Cook and Ashley Monroe specially enlisted to help take “Songbird” to new heights. Jennings then mixed the original and newly recorded material “in a purely analog fashion” on Sunset Sound Studio 3’s custom 1976 DeMedio API mixing board.
“Songbird is the beginning of Waylon’s return to the modern world,” Shooter Jennings says. “This is the first of three gifts from me to you: the fans that have kept my father’s voice, songs and legacy alive all these years. The next few years are going to be full of some of the most exciting musical moments that the world never knew they were going to hear. I hope that these records bring the kind of joy to you that they have brought me.
“This project has given me an entirely new chapter in my relationship with my father and working on this music has brought a whole new understanding about how, when and why my dad made music. The hard work is there on the tapes and the passion and the soul within is as alive today as it was the day it was recorded.”
