Waylon Jennings Actually Thought His “Outlaw” Title Was Ridiculous: “Dumbest Thing I Ever Heard”

The ultimate outlaw… but not necessarily because he wanted to be.

Waylon Jennings was of course a pioneer of the country outlaw movement in the 1970s, alongside his friend Willie Nelson, and while he passed many years ago now, fans still think of him as the bad*** country icon that created a style of music which truly changed the genre.

And his 1976 collaborative record with Willie along with Tompall Glaser and wife Jessi Colter, Wanted! The Outlaws, was wildly successful, becoming first country album to ever go Platinum.

Of course the term outlaw is one that still gets passed around a lot these days. Just ask Gavin Adcock and Charley Crockett about it… they’re still arguing about who is more “outlaw” and it’s been more than a week since that beef started.

But the truth is, Waylon admitted more than once that he hated the whole concept of it, calling it a marketing gimmick, and even once said that the most “outlaw” thing Willie Nelson ever did was come to town and “double-park on music row.”

Not much has changed in terms of the mainstream country music industry concocting these elaborate marketing schemes to try to get people to buy into the music… if the music is good, you really don’t need all of that, and Waylon made some of the best music of all-time. So needless to say, he didn’t need some PR person to make him “look” like an outlaw in order to sell albums.

I guess some would argue it’s a necessary evil that comes along with the music industry, but you probably won’t be surprised to learn that Waylon hated the label and thought it was just ridiculous. In an interview on the Down Home Down Under show in Australia back in the late ’80s, he admitted that just wanted to make the music he was passionate about:

“Well, you shoulda started with some of what they called me before that. I been called a little bit of everything. When I came here, I didn’t quite fit in any mold, just like I still don’t… you know?

They felt like that they had to put some kind of label on you. And I’ve really always not liked labels, you know? I think when you finally make it is when people start referring to your music as the ‘Waylon Jennings music’ or the ‘Willie Nelson music,’ or the sound. And that’s what I always strived for, not for a particular type of music.”

And Waylon isn’t alone… many artists don’t like labels, Zach Bryan, Charley Crockett, Koe Wetzel, to name a few… but the suits love labels because it makes it a lot easier for them to organize the musicians, package them properly, and make money.

But Waylon took it a step further. In fact, he called the “outlaw” title the dumbest thing he ever heard:

“And then when I thought I had it all made, they come along with this outlaw mickey mouse, you know? And I thought that was about the dumbest thing I ever heard. You know, outlaw music? What is ‘outlaw music,’ you know?”

He later admitted in the interview that it wound up being a brilliant move from a purely business standpoint because of how many albums they sold. During that interview, Waylon also let everyone in on a little secret that, when they had picked out the songs for the aforementioned Wanted! The Outlaws record, a lot of them were 10-plus years old.

And he had decided at the time that Willie needed to come redo some of his old tracks before the record got cleared to go to the label for publishing, and had him come in the studio and lay down new vocals.

That was pretty illegal for a lot of reasons having to do with publishing rights and all, especially because Willie was no longer with RCA Records, who still owned those rights and put the album out, and was signed with Columbia Records at the time:

“Now I’ll tell it, because it won’t hurt anything anyways, but I made Willie come in and re-sing some of that stuff, which was against the law.”

Sounds pretty dang outlaw to me…

New Waylon Jennings Music

The man’s honesty about everything he ever thought will never get old, and speaking of Waylon’s classic music, fans can expect to hear more of it this year. His son, Shooter, announced earlier this year that he had discovered a treasure trove of unreleased Waylon music, which he managed to turn into three separate albums that are slated for release.

The first one, Songbird, will be out on October 3rd, and features songs he recorded decades ago, during the height of his career, but for whatever reason never made it to an album or got completely finished. Shooter sad they didn’t need too much work, but he did add some background vocals and other instrumentation just to polish it up and make it ready to be put on a professional album in the modern world of 2025.

It’s obviously very unfortunate that Waylon isn’t around to be part of it, but Shooter has done an incredible job of carrying on his father’s legacy in so many ways, and is a highly sought-after and successful producer himself. Probably the best in the business right now.

So far, they’ve released two songs, including the title track and “The Cowboy (Small Town Texas).”

“Songbird”

“The Cowboy (Small Town Texas)”

You can watch the aforementioned interview here:

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