The new track heralds the first of three previously unheard collections of music
Shooter Jennings has shared “The Cowboy (Small Texas Town),” a previously unheard new single by his legendary father, Waylon Jennings, available everywhere now via Son of Jessi/Thirty Tigers. Written by outlaw country legend Johnny Rodriguez and originally recorded during sessions for Jennings’ chart-topping 1978 album, I’ve Always Been Crazy, the track heralds the upcoming arrival of Songbird, the first of three completely new albums’ worth of material by the groundbreaking country music superstar, arriving Friday, October 3rd.
“It’s a beautifully simple song that tells the story of an artist from humble beginnings uniting both sides of the aisle over music and I think the first half tells my dad’s tale pretty simply,” says Shooter. “The second half really turns the heat up. It’s got one of my favorite lines I’d heard in a long time in it about the ‘white collar people.’ It fits more today maybe than it did when it was written.”
Compiled and mixed by Shooter Jennings at Hollywood’s hallowed Sunset Sound Studio 3, Songbird collects recordings produced between 1973 and 1984 in various studios by Waylon 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. The album was first unveiled earlier this summer with the first single and title track, Jennings’ tender version of Fleetwood Mac’s “Songbird.”
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 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.”
