Shooter Jennings Takes Outside Shot at Country

Shooter Jennings wants Nashville to know he's not out to blow up country music.

Over burritos and a couple of tequila shots at a Music Row Mexican restaurant on the afternoon before his Grand Ole Opry debut, Jennings pondered his place in the genre.

"I love real country music, and I want to see country music last forever," said Jennings, son of country legend Waylon Jennings. "I don't want to bring down the system -- I want to perpetuate it."

Jennings knows his new album "The Wolf" (October 23, Universal South) isn't exactly mainstream country, but he wouldn't mind a little love from the mainstream country business. His top-selling album, 2005's "Put the 'O' Back in Country," spent 63 weeks on the Top Country Albums chart, and the single "4th of July" peaked at No. 26 on Hot Country Songs.

Since then, he hasn't charted a single, and two successive albums (one live) have sold 137,000 copies combined, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

"Of course I'd like it to do well, because I honestly am broke and I've got a baby on the way. I'm hungry," he said. "There's a whole bunch of good music in country that's out there and not being heard because of the way that the industry is."

In Jennings' view, "the country music business is a total extension of exactly what it's like in high school. There's two or three bullies, then there are a bunch of weak people that are going to join in with the bullies that will pick on you and not accept you because they are afraid to do something different. Then there's a couple that say, 'Hey, maybe there's more to this guy."'

Universal South senior vice president and general manager Fletcher Foster said that sometimes country radio and the industry at large can have a "missed perception" of what an artist really is or wants to be, and may think Jennings isn't interested in being part of mainstream country.

"That may be a reflection of some of the music he's made in the past. It may be a reflection of his father's kind of anti-Nashville establishment stance that can pass down from generation to generation," Foster said. "I think part of it is, Shooter is taking a musical journey. This is his third record, and he's still finding his voice."

Indeed, while "The Wolf" is not as rife with drug references and salty language as his earlier albums, it still owns enough edgy themes and painful honesty to put it in an alternative universe from what's typically on mainstream country radio.

The lead-off single, however, is a twang-fest version of the Dire Straits hit "Walk Of Life." Jennings sees the cover "as a vehicle so that people can adjust to my sound and voice, and go, 'I get it. Here's a song I know, and this is how they do it.' That kind of opens the door to understanding the other songs."

Still, the title cut of "The Wolf" is all about alienation.

"It's almost this feeling of coming to terms with the fact that I'll always be an outsider," Jennings said. "I will never be accepted, so I forever now will be a wolf in a pack of dogs."

Thanks to Ray Waddell