Are You Ready For The Country?

Shannon McNally Does Right by Waylon Jennings in The Waylon Sessions

Shannon McNally: The Waylon Sessions (Compass Records)

Shannon McNally may sometimes be a singer-songwriter, but her true calling is as a songwriter's singer. Over her now 20 year career, she has been an excellent judge of songs that suit her voice, her style, her attitude, at any given time. Her excellent 2017 album, Black Irish features songwriters as diverse as Stevie Wonder ("I Ain't Gonna Stand for It"), J.J. Cale ("Low Rider"), and a version of Robbie Robertson's "It Makes No Difference," in which she matches the heartbroke eloquence of Rick Danko's vocal on the original by The Band.

She's even done albums dedicated to one songwriter: Small Town Talk was a tribute to the songs of the underappreciated New Orleans songwriter Bobby Charles. So what's the big deal about The Waylon Sessions, McNally's new album of songs made famous by Waylon Jennings?

Testosterone, for one thing. Even by Texas standards, Waylon Jennings evokes the Manly Man, the rugged range rider, as one of his songs goes (and which McNally has prevously performed), "Lonesome, On'ry and Mean." Bowling ball cojones. Musk, sweat, and a hard ass. McNally's approach to the Waylon songbook sounds quite natural; the results belie the obvious effort. It's not as implausible as Reese Witherspoon as Elle Woods, the SoCal sorority girl in Legally Blonde who gets into Harvard Law School. As she tells the astonished snob Warner Huntington III: "What? Like it's hard?"

But no doubt a woman covering a whole album of Waylon Jennings is a gutsy move. Making a career without playing the inside game of country music really is hard, especially for a woman from Hempstead, Long Island, now a divorced single mom living in Mississippi. She knows what she was taking on: I don't like to quote from label or PR bios, but here it is. First, her passion: "“I have always loved his defiantly existential but immediately accessible common man’s music and how it boogies.” Using "existential" and "boogie" in the same sentence. Now you can certainly believe she's still got some Long Island in her.

Second, her approach: “My goal wasn’t to force anything onto the music that wasn’t there already...There’s a feminine perspective hidden somewhere inside each of these songs. My job was to find a way to tap into that and draw it out.” I really like the way that she acknowledges men as "the complex critters they are," but she makes her declaration that this is post-#Me Too country music. With the best country music now being made by women (Miranda Lambert, Kacey Musgraves, Maren Morris, and Mickey Guyton, a black woman who recently co-hosted the Academy of Country Music awards show), why shouldn't McNally raise the ante and do a Waylon Jennings takeover?

Most of it works quite well, especially when it rocks, which is often. A few listens to "Ain't Living Long Like This," the real jailhouse rock song, I hear Shannon's warning bouncing around my head, supplanting Waylon, taking ownership. Though there are guest vocalists such as Rodney Crowell, Buddy Miller, Lukas Nelson, and Jessi Colter, their presence is hardly noticeable: These aren't duets, but close harmony moments, and McNally owns the mic.

She sings "Black Rose" (from Honky Tonk Heroes, 1973) like she just got the symbol tattoo'd on her...shoulder. There's a fine blend of tenderness and toughness on "Out Among the Stars," where you really notice how good her band of Nashville pros is. She changes the gender point of view of lyrics only when absolutely necessary: "I'm a Ramblin' Man" is sung "he's a ramblin' man," and "Only Daddy That'll Walk That Line" resists Linda Ronstadt's impulse, which was to sing it as the "Only Mama ... " This song and Dolly Parton's "Waltz Me to Heaven Tonight" are tracks 12 and 13, making them "bonus tracks," but I'm not sure what that means, exactly, or what kind of purchase you need for the bonus.

Towards the end of the album there are a few songs from the Nashville song factory farm that aren't my taste. "We Had It All" was schmaltzy even when Waylon sang it. Written by Troy Seals and Donnie Fritts, it's well-crafted, I wish I had written it. But it's more Music City than hungry Texas highway. And Kris Kristofferson's "Help Me Make It Through the Night," is a bona fide "great song," but I don't think another version is called for unless you were making a Ray Price or Sammi Smith tribute record.

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Tribal Gathering

One of the strangest shows I ever attended was at the Jones Beach Theater in 1984, when Neil Young and the International Harvester Band played with Waylon Jennings as the co-headliner, as far as I was concerned, though he was the opening act. I arrived early to park near the box office and claim my ticket. I was newly divorced and didn't have a date, unless you consider my pint of premium vodka carefully poured into an empty Poland Spring bottle and handful of joints. I brought a sandwich to eat in the car for dinner. As it turned out, the accompaniment was suitable, since this concert was a true Gathering of the Tribes, a symbolic unification of the greasers and stoners, the hillbillies and hippies of the 1980s. Half the vehicles in the parking lot as it filled were trucks (this was before the SUV era) with New Jersey, Connecticut, even Pennsylvania plates. Long Island was very open to country music concerts: the top national stars played not only Jones Beach, but the Westbury Music Fair and Nassau Coliseum, and people drove from all over to come to see these acts.

The other half of the parking lot was cars full of potheads for Neil Young.

Jones Beach is a New York State Park, and so the state police and park police were out in force. No tailgate parties. No open liquor containers, even to indulge in your own vehicle. The Waylon people with cases of beer were particularly put out. One guy parked near me complained about getting ticketed for drinking a beer in his own car. I gave him that "cops, man, doing their job" shrug, and probably said something like, "yeah, bummer man." Just like Lebowski: Bummer, man. That's a bummer. The show was pretty damn great, as I recall, but I don't recall much, especially how I managed to safely drive home.

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Waylon, Please Don't Kill That Kid

Did I ever tell you about the time Waylon Jennings threatened to kill me? I didn't know it at the time, but I knew the vibes between us were not good, man. The setting was, if I recall, a suite at the Algonquin Hotel in 1976, and the wit did not fly. Wanted: The Outlaws, featuring Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Jessi Colter, and Tompall Glaser, had crossed over from the country charts, or at least broke the million sales threshold, then a rarity in country music. RCA Records was trying to promote it further, so Waylon and Willie and Wayne met in a hotel suite, with Stu Ginsburg, the affable and capable publicity chief for the label.

I had just started at Newsday, and I had the Creem magazine cockiness that I could make interviews work with a few general questions and questionable charm. I was happy to talk to these guys for Stu, I knew the superficials about the "outlaw" movement in country music, that Willie had moved back to Texas from Nashville. But I hadn't listened much to the album, or know much about Waylon's stature. At some point early in the discussion, I must have hurt his feelings, because he disappeared for quite a while, and the patient, kind, and loquacious Willie Nelson kept the conversation moving to prevent me from feeling embarrassed by my ignorance and lack of preparation.

After some time, Stu wondered where Waylon had gone, and he found him in one of the bedrooms of the suite. What Waylon was doing was told to me sometime later by Stu.

Waylon was sitting at a table, with a big hunting knife and a rock of cocaine bigger than a Liz Taylor diamond. As Waylon was cutting the coke, snorting the lines he was slicing, he was saying, "I want kill that kid. I want to kill that kid."

Stu said, "Waylon, who do you want to kill."

Waylon said, "I want to kill that kid, Wayne."

Well, why did Waylon wanted to kill Wayne?

Waylon shook his head. "I don't know, I just think I want to kill him."

Stu now stepped into the publicist role. "Waylon, please don't kill Wayne."

And Waylon said, "Why?"

The way Stu told me, he paused for effect. To let me know it took him awhile to think of a reason why Waylon shouldn't stab me. It seemed like a reasonable question.

Finally, Stu said: "Because Willie wouldn't like it. Willie would very upset if you killed Wayne."

And Waylon shrugged. "Yeah, you're probably right. Willie wouldn't like it."

Meanwhile, I had said my farewell to Willie, and probably said something like, "say goodbye to Waylon for me."