Shooter Jennings

Having a musical legend you call dad can be a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, you don’t have to go on American Idol to get the industry’s attention. On the other hand, you kind of have to spend your whole life selling records in the old man’s shadow, even when your records are as good as Shooter Jennings’ — you know, Waylon’s kid? Of course, it’s not as though Shooter’s gone to any great lengths to distance himself from that iconic DNA. His first album was named Put the “O” Back in Country, a tip of the hat to daddy’s outlaw days. He played his dad in Walk the Line. The highlight of Electric Rodeo, his second album, is a Waylon tribute. And then there’s that experimental album he’s been building out of tapes he made of Waylon in the ’90s, back when Shooter was really into Nine Inch Nails (and not just Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt”). As he explained in Rolling Stone, “It sounds like Zeppelin mixed with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon mixed with Waylon. There’s some songs that are country, but there are some songs that are just out there.”