If you don’t know that Shooter Jennings is a multi-dimensional artist by now, you’re lost somewhere back in 1970’s Outlaw Country. The son of country music legends Waylon Jennings and
Shooter fearlessly confronts the duality of man’s nature. Can Saturday night and Sunday morning learn to live side by side? Directly quoting one of his father’s songs, he asks, “Don’t y’all think this ‘outlaw’ bit done got outta hand?” As a lens through which to view and contemplate the finer points of man’s perplexing nature, The Other Life is not just Shooter’s birthright but a surprisingly fertile platform for hard-won philosophical insights.
This is new territory for Jennings. Choosing not to cancel the show because of some unforeseen issues, he headed to the Crescent City after playing SXSW while his band headed on to the next shows in Florida. He has done solo before but never quite like this. It is just him, alone, except for the black guitar he whips into a frenzy during the first half of his set, and an old piano that the venue had on hand.
The Roots Picnic and more tour date announcements from the past week.
With a back up band that looks more L.A. than Nashville, it’s hard to take Shooter for straight up country, especially when he says, “we’re country music,” while one guitar riff teases Black Sabbath’s “Sweet Leaf,” and another purges in psychedelic excess.
