“The one thing I wanted to do was cut a country record that reflected the entire range of music that I love, that I listen to and that I’m inspired by,” says Shooter Jennings about his gripping third studio album, aptly titled The Wolf. His goal has been fully achieved. The Wolf’s thirteen tracks present a compelling portrait of a young man and his music. It’s full of fire and conviction – about what music can mean in people’s lives, about overcoming setbacks through sheer strength of will, and about how being tough means being willing to feel and acknowledge painful emotions.
The Wolf is also full of surprises. The biggest of those is Jennings’ rollicking cover of Dire Straits’ “Walk of Life,” a song that he has loved since he was a boy. The song took on a sharper edge when Jennings checked out the lyrics (“He do the song about the sweet-lovin’ woman/He do the song about the knife”), and suddenly it sounded like something he might have written himself. “Just that line reveals everything,” Jennings says. His personal connection to the song makes his version even sweeter. “Mark Knopfler was friends with my dad, and he’d be over at our house hanging out when he was in the States,” recalls Jennings, who is, of course, the son of singer-songwriters Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter. “He had an attitude about him that I really liked. So that’s another interesting aspect – like, hey, dude, we cut your song!”
Much of The Wolf is personal in a more introspective way, however. The album kicks off with “This Ol Wheel,” an emotional journey through Jennings’ past – from his decision to leave Nashville for Los Angeles in 1996, to the bitter breakup of his former band Stargunn in 2003, to the inevitable struggles of holding his current powerhouse band, the .357’s (guitarist Leroy Powell, bassist Ted Russell Kamp and drummer Bryan Keeling) together. “There was a point with this band where there was a lot of inner turmoil,” Jennings explains. “The song is about me saying that I’m not going to let it go down. We’re going to keep going no matter what happens.”
Indeed, a love for things that last – along with an appreciation for the constant effort required to make things last – pervades The Wolf. The love songs “Tangled Up Roses” and “She Lives in Color” both address the complications and the rewards of sustaining a love affair. “Being in a relationship that’s tumultuous -- the highs are super-high and lows are super-low,” Jennings explains. “Things get rough, but the level of passion is unmatched by anything you’ve ever been through. I’ve been with my girlfriend for years, and we’ve had our difficulties, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything, because it’s been the best relationship in the world at the same time.”
On the more humorous side of the battle of the sexes, Jennings offers “Time Management 101,” which, in the sly spirit of Hank Williams, Jr., suggests a cure for the touring musician with a wandering eye: “If I could ever keep it together for more than an hour or two/I’d spend a little less time on me, and a little more time on you.” In contrast, “Higher,” which was written by Keeling and Powell, sets aside playful puns to make a hilarious case for the tried-and-true, girl-at-every-gig ethic of traveling musicians. “No dinner, no movie, no flowers, no malls/No suit, no tie, no cellphone calls.”
“My drummer wrote that song – he’s a ladies man, and that is his personality 100%,” Jennings says, laughing. “It cracked me up. He had never written a song before, and I said, ‘This is really good.’ It’s definitely got a feel-good vibe to it.” The easygoing, comic relief serves as a foil to the more highly charged material.
The title track, for example, finds Jennings grappling with the state of the world, the state of contemporary music and his own artistic ambitions – not to mention the fate of Anna Nicole Smith. “The analogy is feeling like a wolf in a pack of dogs-the band and me feeling like outsiders,” Jennings says. “We’ve always cared about music on a much different level than most people do. The day I wrote it, I felt a lot of pressure and a lot of let-downs. Once I wrote it, though, I knew the album would be called The Wolf.”
“Am I country enough, or too rock & roll/And God bless poor Anna Nicole.” Jennings sings on the track. “A lot of people got on me about the Anna Nicole line,” he explains, “but I was walking past this newsstand, and all you could see was war, war, war, Anna Nicole, Anna Nicole, Anna Nicole. There’s a looming darkness when it comes to fame. If you don’t balance it out, it will eat you.”
Produced by Dave Cobb, The Wolf allowed Jennings the opportunity to live out many of what he calls his “musical fantasies.” Horn sections add muscle and texture throughout the album, as do female background singers courtesy of the Grand Ol Opry. The Oak Ridge Boys put in a powerhouse guest appearance on “Slow Train,” a propulsive song, written by Powell, about pulling yourself back together after falling over the edge one time too many.
Finally, The Wolf is an album about “independence and learning to accept yourself for who you are,” Jennings says. For all its varied moods and musical atmospheres, the album holds together on the strength of Jennings’ full-throated, open-hearted vocals – and his belief that real music cuts through all boundaries and communicates heart to heart. “I feel that my first two albums were more like what we wanted things to be like. This record is more like what things really are,” he says.
That accounts for The Wolf’s rawness and grit. “A lot of what I’m writing about is conflict, because it’s conflict that causes all the grief and all the stress,” Jennings says. “When you’re forced to deal with something, when you mess something up and it’s falling apart, when there’s something you haven’t reached yet in your life and you’re aspiring towards it – that’s where my writing comes from.”
And that’s where the fierceness of The Wolf comes from, too, and what makes it so memorable.
