Album Review – Waylon Jennings – “Songbird”

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Outlaw Country (#580) on the Country DDS.

Cherish these moments when one of the joys in life as a music fan is hearing unheard recordings from one of your favorite artists unearthed years after they’ve passed on. Soon the voice profile for every legendary singer will be loaded up into the matrix to be rendered over who knows what, and will be piped into our brains to pacify us as we lay in stasis in our organic cocoons so our body energy can be harvested to power the machines.

But ahead of this dystopian hellscape we’re barrelling towards, there is new old Waylon Jennings songs to enjoy, packaged by his Grammy-winning son Shooter Jennings into an album called Songbird—one of three such albums Shooter has promised rendered from archival recordings. And no, this is not some AI project. One of the more pernicious developments with the AI paradigm is making us all to second guess what is real, and what isn’t.

Waylon Jennings was the real deal if there ever was one, and that’s why unheard tracks come so anticipated, especially in this era when so much of popular music sounds like bad parody. The 10 tracks from Songbird are from the ’70s and early ’80s era, discovered by Shooter in the family’s musical archive. You can tell they’re from that era since they come with that distinctive Waylon half time beat and two tone bass line, with Waylon’s voice sounding fresh and vital. This is Waymore at the peak of his powers.

Still, it’s important to understand that recordings often went unreleased in their era for a reason. This was the stuff left over from recording sessions, and sometimes left unfinished for whatever reason. Shooter does a great job carefully curating the music, and adding tasteful and unobtrusive additions respectful to their original era to complete them as “songs,” even if he leaves loose ends at the beginning/ending of the recordings to keep their authentic and original aspect.

Even when tempering expectations though, Songbird has a lot to offer, starting with the title track. Christine McVie’s contributions to Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors album are perhaps the most overlooked on one of the most landmark albums in music history. But Waylon exposes the universal appeal of the song and brings out its beauty through his version.

“The Cowboy (Small Texas Town)” written by Johnny Rodriguez is another gem of the album. During the rollout of Songbird, Shooter tapped into Waylon’s hometown of Littlefield, TX, purchasing billboards and doing giveaways at Waymore’s, which is the liquor store/museum owned by Waylon’s little brother. “The Cowboy” really helps put you in the place and time that it was recorded. With archival albums, you know you’re not going to get a string of hits. It’s often the time capsule nature of them where the appeal is found.


But it’s not just nostalgia that makes the material of Songbird resonant. “I’m Gonna Lay Back With My Woman” captures the quintessential Waylon sound in its most vibrant aspect, including Waylon playing lead guitar parts along with a dedicated lead player. “Wrong Road Again” is comparatively restrained with the acoustic guitar doing most of the work, but Waylon’s voice is captured exquisitely, with all the contours and signature tones coming through. Waylon Jennings feels alive once again through these recordings.

“I Hate To Go Searching Them Bars Again” is one of the songs on the album that you understand why it didn’t make a final cut originally, taking one too many turns through the chorus to make up for the lack of viable verses to stretch the song to 2 1/2 minutes. But that’s not an issue for Waylon’s take on “Brand New Tennessee Waltz” originally by Jesse Winchester. By the end, it begins to feel epic.

When you get to “I Don’t Have Anymore Love Songs,” you can definitely feel an era shift from the mid ’70s to sometime in the ’80s in both the approach of the music, and the timbre of Waylon’s voice. The song is a cover from Hank Jr. who Waylon took under his wing like a young brother in the era. The ’80s era sound carries through to Waylon’s cover of Johnny Cash’s “After The Ball.”

What we don’t get from Waylon Jennings on this archival release is unheard examples of his songwriting. Waylon was never an especially prolific songwriter, though he wrote many of his biggest ones, and the ones we now consider his signature tunes. The songs of Songbird were ones Waylon Jennings recorded not because he needed to, but because he wanted to. They were songs from his friends, and the songs he’d pick on the bus or backstage after the show. They were some of the songs he’d wished he written.

Even bad Waylon is leagues better than most of what we hear today. But Waylon never really released bad songs. And even after his son cobbled together a bunch of stuff left on the cutting house floor, Waylon still hasn’t. It’s that voice, that distinctive sound, the Outlaw panache Waylon brought to everything he touched that makes the moments of Songbird valued and cherished, even if they’re second rate in the Waylon universe.

1 3/4 Guns Up (8/10)

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Purchase/stream Songbird

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