Rolling Stone Music Now NASHVILLE NOW: How Shooter Jennings Found Waylon’s Lost Tapes
Oct 15, 2025
Join Grammy-winning producer Shooter Jennings, son of the legendary Waylon Jennings, as he shares the incredible journey of uncovering his father's lost tapes. He discusses the importance of these recordings to country music and the meticulous process of restoring them for his new project, Songbird. Shooter also offers insights into the creative challenges he faced, the fascinating songs he discovered, and his personal connection to Waylon. Plus, he reveals his mixed feelings about Nashville and dreams of a Waylon-themed honky-tonk!
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How Shooter Found The Tapes
- Shooter Jennings discovered his father's archived reels digitized after Waylon's death and finally accessed them when he had proper RAID capability in 2014.
- He and engineer Nate Haseley cataloged files during the 2020 studio downtime and identified unlabeled tracks by googling lyrics.
Pandemic Cataloging Session
- During the 2020 pandemic, Shooter set up a second computer in the studio lounge and, with Nate, labeled and identified unlabeled files by listening and Googling lyrics.
- That hands-on session transformed a chaotic archive into an organized pool for album selection.
Archive Reveals Waylon–Richie Collaboration
- The Waylon archive is essentially the collaborative body of work between Waylon and Richie Albright spanning mid-1970s onward.
- Many songs were home-recorded between 1974–78 and later mined for official albums, explaining overlaps and unreleased cuts.