The only son of country legends
Waylon Jennings and
Jessi Colter,
Shooter Jennings literally spent his childhood on a tour bus. Born
Waylon Albright Jennings,
Shooter was playing drums by the time he was five years old and had already begun taking piano lessons, only to break them off and follow his own path to an understanding of the instrument. He discovered guitar at 14 and rock & roll (particularly Southern rock and the loose-limbed hard rock of
Guns N' Roses) at 16. Soon he moved from Nashville to L.A., where he assembled a rock band called
Stargunn.
Stargunn earned a strong local reputation for its live shows, and enjoyed a six- or seven-year run on the L.A. circuit before
Jennings rediscovered his outlaw country roots and dissolved the band.
After a short stay in New York, where
Jennings assembled material for a country project, he returned to L.A. and put together a second band -- this time with solid country roots -- which he named
the .357s.
Jennings and the band holed up in the studio, eventually emerging with a rambunctious country album called
Put the O Back in Country, which was released in 2005 on Universal South Records. Following in his father's footsteps, but with his own feisty, scrappy sense of country,
Jennings placed himself in a fine position to both explore that legacy and to carve out his own. A second album,
Electric Rodeo (which was actually recorded before
Put the O Back in Country), appeared in 2006, followed by a live set,
Live at Irving Plaza, later in the year.
Jennings' third solo effort,
The Wolf, was released in October 2007, featuring a cover of
Dire Straits' "Walk of Life" (whose composer,
Mark Knopfler, had been a longtime family friend). ~ Steve Leggett, All Music Guide