Shooter Jennings
It could be argued that Shooter Jennings followed his father’s footsteps by tracking his own path apart from them. With a dad as legendary as country singer Waylon Jennings, it would have been a guaranteed route to a degree of notoriety for the scion to take up where pop’s career left off. But the elder Jennings’ insistence on independence from Music Row’s cookie-cutter business and stylistic strictures has earned him a place as one of his genre’s original outlaws. At Shank Hall on Thursday night, the junior Jennings manifested defiance on his own terms.
The apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree in some ways, though. When he’s in a mood to menace, as in “The Gunslinger,” the undercurrent of his father’s ornery growl remains evident. And when he wasn’t seated behind an electric piano for a few numbers among his encore-free set, the tone he caressed from his guitar bore some resemblance to the fluid, Bakersfield-indebted flavor that anchored many of his father’s 1970s and ’80s singles.
Cribbing his papa’s history and gumption to call out commercial radio country’s current pretenders to the throne on “Outlaw You” may be a touch too on the nose, but it was also easily one of the night’s most rousing numbers for the throng gathered in front of the stage. His own, lone flirtation with hitmaking—2004’s “4th of July” (from his debut album titled as an eff-you to the Nashville establishment, Put the O Back in Country)—wasn’t given any special attention, placed in the middle of his performance, generating singing along and some applause as it began.
The three songs he and his fiddle-inclusive, four-member band played from his forthcoming eighth studio album, Shooter, sounded as if they could reverse the not-quite-yet-40 Jennings’ radio fortunes, though. “Rhinestone Eyes” and “Fast Horses and Good Hideouts” would be worthy, downtempo successors to the breakthroughs made over the past couple years by artists such as John Pardi and John Michael Morgan to pull popular country away from dunderheaded bro-ism and quasi-R&B. “D.R.U.N.K.” could find favor among the fans who helped make stars out of Luke Bryan and Brantley Gilbert, despite its more traditional country underpinnings.
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Jennings concluded on a melancholy note, casting the country-pop of Danny O’Keefe’s “Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues” into his own somewhat wistful, somewhat somber mold. It did allow for the band to jam a mite before the lights went up on a satiating night of country path-finding.
Alt-country stalwarts The Bottle Rockets were supposed to have opened for Jennings, but one member’s family emergency allowed crazed Milwaukeeans The Grovelers to pick up the slack. Where aggro rockabilly, pummeling surf rock, snotty garage punk and vein-popping punk of the hardcore variety converge is where the band’s sweet spot lies. They mined that epicenter with giddy, intense vigor through a slew of skewed tunes. Lead singer Skip played his occasional harmonica solos into the earpiece of a rotary telephone’s handset for a goofy gimmick (though perhaps of some practicality, as his mouth harp is on the small side), while mutton-chopped guitarist Graff showboated like an adrenalized peacock. They made for a fun prelude to what would have already been a fulsome evening of music.
