Straight Shooter

He's a cowboy without a Stetson, a shaggy dude who looks like Rob Zombie's stunt double and sounds like heartache or hellfire, depending on the mood.

"Am I country enough or too rock 'n' roll?" Shooter Jennings asks on the title cut of his latest disc, "The Wolf." "I can't weather this feeling like I don't belong."

That's because he doesn't.

This was underscored last week, when the Academy of Country Music Awards took place here in Vegas. It's one of the biggest parties of the year for the Nashville set.

Of course, Jennings wasn't invited. Probably wouldn't have shown up if he had been.

"When it comes to Nashville and the way that they operate, I'm still very much an outsider to them," he says. "They can't get down with the fact that I don't do things their way."

He certainly doesn't dress the part, with a Harley rat's love of leather.

"I look stupid in a cowboy hat," he chuckles. "It would not be me to cut my hair and cover up my tattoos or whatever they do."

Jennings is a natural born maverick, the kind of guy with diffidence hardwired into his DNA. He's the son of Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter, the king and queen of the outlaw country movement that they helped kick-start in the mid-'70s.

But Jennings didn't immediately gravitate to the family business.

"My dad's music was very important, but I didn't connect with country music until I got older," he says. "I grew up listening to MTV. Guns N' Roses blew my mind when I saw them on TV for the first time. My whole journey has been pursuing music that I thought was cool. I idolized Tom Morello way more than any country guitarist. But I'm trying to bring my world into country, and bring country people into my world."

And "The Wolf," Jennings' third studio album, is his most compelling blend of those two worlds yet.

On one hand, it's his most traditional-sounding record in places -- country mainstays the Oak Ridge Boys guest on "Slow Train," a hard-driving, honky-tonk foot stomper that practically rattles the floorboards beneath your feet, and Jennings never has sounded more like his father than on "Blood From a Stone," a bittersweet, delicately spun ballad about making a break from the past that leaves a lump in your throat every time.

But the album is also Jennings' most diffuse. He delivers the verses of album opener "This Ol Wheel" in a near-rap cadence, Spanish-sounding horns pop up on "Old Friend," and a good portion of the disc throbs with a serrated rock 'n' roll edge.

"With this record, I wanted to experiment with the songwriting and experiment with traditional instruments in nontraditional ways," Jennings says. "I think that opens up doors. For me, every time I cut a record, it's like I've added a new set of colors to my tools, and then the next record, I can use all those colors, mix them up, do weird stuff.

"To me, the music is very secondary in Nashville, it's all about the songwriting," he continues. "I'm down with songwriting, but it's very important to do interesting things with the music. I think what's always set rock 'n' roll apart from country was that there was much more emphasis on the creativity of the music. That's what I really love about rock 'n' roll and what I draw from."

As such, Jennings' discs consistently pulse with that outlaw sense of abandon, even when he's borrowing the least from the country tradition.

After all, guys like his father, Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard always have been defined as much by an attitude as a sound, and if Jennings' impulsiveness costs him some party invites, it won't cost him any sleep.

"I feel like I'm in a good position," Jennings says. "My last record was pretty much the most country record that we've cut. Now, I feel like we can take it to polar opposite extreme and go even crazier and just really screw with them," he says with a laugh. "It's almost more fun to screw with Nashville than be a part of it."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.