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Music Review – Shannon McNally - The Waylon Sessions
A cool project from a performer that appears in our area from time to time.
Thought this was an interesting idea for a record…
Shannon McNally is an accomplished singer/songwriter in her own right, but this time around she has decided to release her interpretations of a baker’s dozen of Waylon Jennings tune which has just been released as The Waylon Sessions.
Her collection of tunes ended up being not so much a tribute as it is a recontextualization; a nuanced, feminine rendering of a catalog long considered a bastion of hetero-masculinity.
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That’s not to say McNally has a softer, gentler take on Jennings’ songs—in fact, just the opposite. Over and over again, she manages to locate a smoldering intensity, a searing hurt buried deep within the music’s deceptively simple poetry, and she hones in on it with surgical precision on this new album.
The album features special guests like Jessi Colter, Buddy Miller, Rodney Crowell, and Lukas Nelson providing some assistance, and boasts a stellar cast of studio musicians to capture a new spirit with these tried and true outlaw gems. Managing to capture Jennings’ mix of laid back charm and swaggering bravado are guitarist Kenny Vaughan who helped her assemble a team that included drummer Derek Mixon, pedal steel legend and longtime Jennings bandmate Fred Newell, Texas keyboard mainstay Bukka Allen, and bassist Chris Scruggs. Working live and raw, they tracked sixteen songs in just five days, relying on instinct and intuition to guide their decisions at every turn.
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Stand-out tracks for me on this release are “I Ain’t Living Long Like This” with Rodney Crowell, “You Asked Me To” with Buddy Miller, and the sublime “Waltz Me to Heaven” that closes out the proceedings – It’s thirteen tracks of perfection!
As brilliant as the musical performances are, it’s McNally that breathes new life into the songs found here, tackling the tunes with an honesty and a maturity that transcends genre and gender. She doesn’t swap pronouns or couch her delivery with a wink; she simply plays it straight, singing her truth as a divorced single mother in her 40’s in all its beauty, pain, and power.