Born and raised on Long Island, Shannon McNally has, at various points, called New Orleans, Nashville, and Holly Springs, Mississippi, home, but it was in Los Angeles that she first came to national attention in the early 2000s with her Capitol Records debut, Jukebox Sparrows. She followed it up in 2005 with Geronimo, a critically acclaimed sophomore effort that prompted The New York Times to call her “irresistible” and the Washington Post to hail her as “a fine lyricist who often calls to mind Lucinda Williams.” With her new album, The Waylon Sessions, the prolific and wide-ranging Shannon McNally sets out to revisit the songs and spirit of Waylon Jennings, a legend with whom she has always had an ongoing fascination. The album will be released on Compass Records on May 28, 2021. (IVPR, 2021)

American Songwriter provided the very first glimpse into The Waylon Sessions with the premiere of “I Ain’t Living Long Like This” featuring Rodney Crowell, which first appeared on What Goes Around Comes Around in 1979. Hear McNally’s take on “I Ain’t Living Long Like This” here and pre-order or pre-save ‘The Waylon Sessions’ at this link ahead of its May 28 release via Compass Records in partnership with Blue Rose.

McNally knew that assembling the right band would be essential to capturing Jennings’ mix of laid-back charm and swaggering bravado, so she called AMA-winning guitarist Kenny Vaughan (Marty Stuart, Lucinda Williams) to help her assemble a team that included drummer Derek Mixon (Chris Stapleton), pedal steel legend and longtime Jennings bandmate Fred Newell, Texas keyboard mainstay Bukka Allen (Robert Earl Keen, Jerry Jeff Walker), and bassist Chris Scruggs (Marty Stuart, Charlie Louvin). Working live and raw, they tracked sixteen songs in just five days, relying on instinct and intuition to guide their decisions at every turn. As brilliant as the band’s performances are, it is McNally who breathes new life into the music here, tackling the tunes with an honesty and a maturity that transcends genre and gender. She does not swap pronouns or couch her delivery with a wink; she simply plays it straight, singing her truth as a divorced single mother in her 40s in all its beauty, pain, and power. The result is a rare covers record that furthers our understanding of the originals; an album of classics that challenges our perceptions and assumptions about just what made them classics in the first place.

The Waylon Sessions Track listing:
I’ve Always Been Crazy
You Asked Me To – feat. Buddy Miller
Out Among The Stars – feat. Jessi Colter
You Show Me Yours And I’ll Show You Mine – feat. Lukas Nelson
Black Rose – feat. Buddy Miller
This Time
I Ain’t Living Long Like This – feat. Rodney Crowell
I’m A Ramblin’ Man
Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys
Help Me Make It Through The Night
We Had It All

“My goal wasn’t to force anything onto the music that wasn’t there already. There’s a feminine perspective hidden somewhere inside each of these songs. My job was to find a way to tap into that and draw it out.” – Shannon McNally