Songbird (Remastered) Waylon Jennings

• 1 Songbird 03:39
• 2 The Cowboy (Small Texas Town) 02:20
• 3 I'd Like To Love You Baby 02:50
• 4 I'm Gonna Lay Back With My Woman 03:05
• 5 Wrong Road Again 02:31
• 6 I'd Hate To Go Searchin’ Them Bars Again 02:25
• 7 Brand New Tennessee Waltz 04:08
• 8 I Don't Have Anymore Love Songs 02:46
• 9 After The Ball 03:10
• 10 Dink's Blues 03:43
• Total Runtime 30:37

Info for Songbird (Remastered)

Waylon Jennings returns to the modern music landscape with the first of three completely new, previously unheard albums compiled and mixed by Shooter Jennings at Sunset Sound Studio 3. "Songbird" is a collection of recordings captured between 1973 and 1984 in various studios, produced by Waylon and Richie Albright and featuring his all-star band including Albright, Ralph Mooney, Tony Joe White, Jessi Colter and more

What a joyous surprise it is to hear brand new music from country legend Waylon Jennings. Waylon’s son, three-times GRAMMY Award-winner Shooter Jennings, explored his father’s tape recordings and unearthed enough previously unheard songs to compile three new albums. With finishing touches added by members of Waylon’s original band The Waylors, Shooter mixed the original and newly recorded material, “…in a purely analog fashion,” on Sunset Sound Studio 3’s custom 1976 DeMedio API mixing board, creating a sound that takes us back in time.

This is Jennings’ delicate version of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Songbird’, which brilliantly showcases his smooth, warm country tones, elevated by angelic backing from contemporary country singers Elizabeth Cook and Ashley Monroe. In the video, we see a compilation of footage, including The Waylors hearing the new material for the first time and recording their parts for the new songs. Additionally, there’s footage from Waylon’s birthday party back in 1981, images that, alongside the classic music, truly transport us to another time. ‘Songbird’ is the title track from the first of the three albums, due out on 3rd October 2025.

Shooter says: “What became very apparent to me was that my dad was recording constantly with his band The Waylors between tours. Just having won the David-and-Goliath battle against RCA for creative control and artistic freedom, Waylon was awarded the ability to record his music on his terms in his own studios, with his touring band, and without label oversight and without any outside influence. There was just so much inside, my mind was blown! These weren’t demos, these were songs that were cut with the intention of releasing, and as time went on, not all of them found places on the albums that Waylon and the Waylors were releasing at the time. ‘Songbird’ is the beginning of Waylon’s return to the modern world. This is the first of three gifts from me to you: the fans that have kept my father’s voice, songs and legacy alive all these years. The next few years are going to be full of some of the most exciting musical moments that the world never knew they were going to hear. I hope that these records bring the kind of joy to you that they have brought me. This project has given me an entirely new chapter in my relationship with my father and working on this music has brought a whole new understanding about how, when and why my dad made music. The hard work is there on the tapes and the passion and the soul within is as alive today as it was the day it was recorded.” Waylon Jennings, lead vocals, guitar
Ralph Mooney, pedal steel
Richie Albright, drums
Tony Joe White, guitar, vocals
Jessi Colter, vocals
Barney Robertson, keyboards
Carter Robertson, backing vocals
Jerry "Jigger" Bridges, bass
Sherman Hayes, bass
Gordon "Crank" Payne, guitar
Fred Carter Jr., guitar
Rance Wesson, guitar
Steve Hardin, keyboards
Gary Scruggs, guitar
Randy Scruggs, guitar
Barney Robertson, piano, keyboards, Hammond B3 organ
Carter Robertson, humming
Ashley Monroe, backing vocals (track 1)
Elizabeth Cook, backing vocals (track 1)
Shooter Jennings, piano
Misty Brooke Jennings, tambourine

Digitally remastered

Waylon Jennings
The American singer-songwriter Waylon Jennings (1937–2002) was an iconic figure in the so-called outlaw movement in 1970s country music. Jennings's influence loomed large among the artists who fused country, rock, and blues influences.

In the words of Andrew Dansby of Rolling Stone, “It's simply impossible to imagine Southern rock, from Allman to Van Zant, and fringe country from Steve Earle to Uncle Tupelo without Waylon Jennings.” The artistic independence that allowed Jennings to accomplish his innovations was hard-won, however. Possessing a melodious baritone voice and a relaxed, pleasantly raffish image, he spent the first part of his career within Nashville's established studio system, achieving significant chart success under the direction of the RCA label's legendary producer Chet Atkins. When Jennings became dissatisfied with music he found to lack the edge of real life, he challenged the structure of Nashville's music-making machinery. By insisting on using his own band in the studio and recording original songs as well as those penned by other renegade songwriters, Jennings achieved lasting commercial success. His 1976 album Wanted: The Outlaws, recorded with kindred spirit Willie Nelson, Jennings's wife Jessi Colter, and songwriter Tompall Glaser, became the first millionselling LP recorded in Nashville. Jennings became one of the superstars of country music during the last quarter of the 20th century, and his fan base extended well beyond the country-music world.

Claiming both Cherokee and Comanche ancestry, Wayland Arnold Jennings was born in tiny Littlefield, Texas, amid cotton fields northwest of Lubbock, on June 15, 1937. After a friend asked whether he was named after nearby Wayland Baptist University, his mother changed the spelling of his name to Waylon. Both of Jennings's parents were musicians who played local gigs, and his mother taught him to play the guitar. He worked as a cotton-picker during his early teens, and like other young men in his position, Jennings viewed music as a way out of a life of agricultural labor. Meanwhile, the job brought him into contact with local African Americans and their music. “I worked in the fields with black people and never paid much attention to it,” he recalled to Dansby. “They had the flats back then and I was probably the only white boy they'd let go down there when they had somebody in town playing music, because I delivered ice.”

Jennings dropped out of high school and got a job as a disc jockey at Lubbock radio station KVOW, hosting a twohour country-music show. From the beginning, he was enthusiastic about the music of Ernest Tubb, Bob Wills, and other classic figures of the genre, as well of the work of country-blues fusion pioneer, Jimmie Rodgers. Jennings formed a band, the Texas Longhorns, and met Elvis Presley during Presley's second visit to Lubbock. “I loved that churning rhythm on the bottom,” he recalled of Presley's sound. By 1958, Jennings had moved down the street to station KDAV, and while there he met Lubbock native Buddy Holly, who had just fired his band, the Crickets. Holly produced Jennings's debut single, a version of the Cajun standard “Jole Blon.” Jennings signed as Holly's bassist for a winter tour in 1958–59. When Holly's plane crashed in snowy weather on February 3, 1959, Jennings had been scheduled to be on board. According to Jennings's autobiography, Holly had joshed with Jennings, saying “I hope your damned bus freezes up again,” to which Jennings replied, “I hope your ol' plane crashes.”

With Atkins as producer, Jennings released his first majorlabel album, Folk-Country, in 1965, and he kept up a busy schedule at RCA, issuing several albums a year through the early 1970s. He was successful from the beginning and reached the top-five spot on the country music charts with the singles “Walk on out of My Mind” (1967), “Only Daddy That'll Walk the Line” (1967), “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” (1969; a cover of Chuck Berry's rock-and-roll hit), “The Taker” (1970), and “Good Hearted Woman” (1971).

By 1972, however, Jennings's upward chart trajectory had stalled, and he felt creatively restless. He wanted to record with his own band, something unheard of in the studio-dominated Nashville system of the time (and still not common). However, he had made connections with songwriters on the fringe of that system, such as fellow Texan Billy Joe Shaver. Shaver had barged in on a Jennings studio session and threatened violence if the singer did not listen to his songs. Jennings agreed to listen and the result was the 1973 album Honky Tonk Heroes. All but one song on the LP was a Shaver composition, and the lyrics dealt with such previously taboo subjects as an interracial sexual encounter and a drug arrest in Mexico. While Honky Tonk Heroes was only moderately successful, it inaugurated Jennings's outlaw period and went on to become a classic.

Although Nashville's promotional firms reacted coolly to the singer's new direction, Jennings countered by hiring New York City–based manager Neil Reshen, who booked Jennings into clubs—like Max's Kansas City in New York City—that had previously been off limits to country performers. Jennings's creative instincts were soon validated commercially. Both his 1974 single releases, “This Time” and “I'm a Ramblin' Man,” reached the top of the country charts, giving him the first two of his eventual 16 numberone singles.

Four successive Jennings albums—Dreaming My Dreams (1975), Are You Ready for the Country (1976), Ol' Waylon (1977), and I've Always Been Crazy (1978)—reached the number-one spot. Although 1979's What Goes around Comes Around stalled at number two, Jennings returned to the top with Music Man (1980). He wrote many of these hits, including the title track of I've Always Been Crazy, with its confession that “I've always been crazy—it's kept me from going insane.” Jennings also recorded several chart-topping singles with Nelson, including the ubiquitous “Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow up to Be Cowboys.”

Not only in their hard-living themes but also in their sound, Jennings's songs were innovative, standing out from the country music airing on the radio at the time. His music was influenced by rock and roll, with strong electric bass lines that gave it a four-four beat rather than country music's traditional two-step rhythm. Jennings did not discard country music's traditions, however; he obviously revered them, and he paid tribute to Wills in his lyrics for “Bob Wills Is Still the King.” In his hit single “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?,” he questioned whether the Nashville mainstream was really carrying forward the traditions laid down by country legend Hank Williams. ...

This album contains no booklet.