Despite his passing in 2002, Waylon Jennings is back and will be releasing three new albums posthumously. This was made possible by his son, Shooter Jennings, a 3x Grammy Award winner, who recently started sorting through his father’s personal studio recordings. Although Shooter initially hoped to simply release a few of his father’s unreleased songs, he quickly realized that he had an immense amount of material. Shooter was assisted by engineer Nate Haessly, who helped him restore and go through his father’s work. Shooter explained, “What became very apparent to me was that my dad was recording constantly with his band The Waylors between tours. Just having won the David-and-Goliath battle against RCA for creative control and artistic freedom, Waylon was awarded the ability to record his music on his terms in his own studios, with his touring band and without label oversight and without any outside influence.” He continued, “There was just so much inside, my mind was blown! These weren’t demos, these were songs that were cut with the intention of releasing and as time went on, not all of them found places on the albums that Waylon and The Waylors were releasing at the time.” 

Due to his discovery, Shooter Jennings has revealed that he will release three new Waylon Jennings albums, the first being Songbird. Songbird will include ten previously unreleased Waylon Jennings songs, including one of the recently released singles. To build excitement for the album, Jennings released Songbird’s first single, “The Cowboy (Small Texas Town),” which was written by Johnny Rodriguez. The song is quiet and reflective, which perfectly reflects the late singer’s story. Regarding the track, his son shared, “It’s a beautifully simple song that tells the story of an artist from humble beginnings uniting both sides of the aisle over music and I think the first half tells my dad’s tale pretty simply. The second half really turns the heat up.” Songbird uses recordings produced between 1973 and 1984 that were then touched up by Shooter Jennings and the surviving members of The Waylors. The first of the three albums will be released on October 3 and can be pre-ordered here.