Entertainment One Music Group have set a March 13th release date for Shooter Jennings' new album Family Man. 42 West sent over these details: As the title suggests, Family Man is Shooter's most personal and introspective album to date, focusing on his home life with Drea de Matteo and their two children, the endless temptations of life on the road, his Southern heritage and upbringing, and his unique position among today's country musicians.
"Working with Shooter again and representing the great new country music he is writing and recording feels great. I can't wait for music fans to hear the new songs on Family Man and get to experience his concerts in 2012. Entertainment One welcomes shooter to our music, film, and TV family!" says Van Fletcher, VP Music, Entertainment One Nashville
Shooter has worn many hats throughout his career: the self-described "son of a rebel saint," the hell-raising vigilante minister at a revival of true country music, the radical prophet using rock and roll as his medium. Now after a career where he has done everything from sharing the stage with Alice in Chains to writing songs for the Oak Ridge Boys, Shooter will finally reveal the man at the heart of it all on March 13th when he releases Family Man on eOne.
Recording in his recently adopted hometown of New York, producing himself for the first time, and playing with a group of extremely talented musicians he has dubbed "The Triple Crown," Shooter is more relaxed and confident on this album than ever before. Featuring renowned jazz pianist Erik Deutsch, guitarist Chris Masterson, drummer Tony Leone, bassist Jeff Hill, pedal steel player John Graboff, and rising roots music star Eleanor Whitmore, who contributes harmony vocals as well as playing mandolin and fiddle, the Triple Crown brings to mind such ensembles as Merle Haggard's Strangers, Bob Wills' Texas Playboys, and Buck Owens' Buckaroos, becoming an integral part of the music and adding their unique stamp to each and every note. It is his rebel DNA accompanied with his mature outlook and emotional strength of a father and a family man, which makes him one of the most exciting artists of his era.
"This album was really the first time that I took the creative process entirely in my own hands. I had formed a new band, The Triple Crown, after reuniting with an old friend Erik Deutsch, who plays keys in the band, and went into the studio, producing the album myself. We spent a month in the Magic Shop in Soho and came out with what I think is my most country record to date. I'm really proud of this record and the songs on it, as this was the first time that I wrote the entire record on an acoustic, made demos, and treated the songs as a blue print for The Triple Crown to interpret." says Jennings
The first single from the album "The Deed and the Dollar" was released on iTunes on December 20th, 2011 and is considered by Shooter to be "the perfect love song." Shooter relies heavily on his own experiences throughout the album and as a result many of the songs are very autobiographical in nature, whether he's addressing critics on "The Family Tree," paying tribute to his roots on the hard-rocking "Southern Family Anthem" ("We may be trash, but we're a family," he sings), or diving into deeply personal territory with heartfelt ballads like "Daddy's Hands," a song which was inspired by an illness in his family last year.
"Drea's dad had a stroke right after Christmas," he says, "It was really tough. We all were in the hospital from right after Christmas until late January and it was insanely hard on Drea to watch her dad in this debilitated state, but it had a double edge cut to me as it reminded me of all the years I spent in the hospital with my own dad. I'd never been able to visit that emotion until I went through it through Drea's eyes. So this song is kind of a culmination of both of those experiences for me."
Dennis Cook of DirtyImpound.com says "Amidst grinning moons and stoic black dogs, Shooter Jennings has cultivated a rose garden of homegrown wisdom, earthy and thorny and downright lovely in the right light. Real bred-in-the-bone country has always wrestled with the loner's urge to roam & rage and the lure & sweet comfort of kin, a transformation that occurs with time and the hindsight one gains on all the choices in one's wake. Family Man is Thanksgiving dinner served with lovingly jaundiced understanding, heartening but not always in ways one wants to speak about, the strangeness of our heritage comforting even when it reeks like an ashtray and teeters on the grave."