Country and rap wouldn’t seem like kissing cousins, but Struggle Jennings finds a way for the two rival musical forms not just to coexist but also to support each other.
Jennings, 40, will be bringing his brand of country rap to a sold-out show at the King of Clubs on May 10, with the emphasis on his latest album, “Troubadour of Troubled Souls.”
Born William Harness, the musician is the grandson of country great Jessi Colter and the stepgrandson of outlaw country pioneer Waylon Jennings.
Growing up in Nashville, Tennessee, in the ’80s, he was exposed both to their music and to rap.
“I got to go with my grandfather Waylon on tours in the summertime when I wasn’t in school and sit backstage and watch him perform. That’s what gave me the love for the steel guitar and the fiddle and different instruments that I now incorporate into my rap music. I always have a fiddle player onstage,” he said, speaking by phone from his home in Nashville.
“But rap was the story of my life. My mom was the kind of woman who didn’t want any handouts. She didn’t want Waylon’s money, she just wanted to get out on her own. So we ended up in lower-income housing a lot of the time, in apartments that were based on your income, and I was engulfed in everything that was happening in those areas.”
Some of his involvement in what was happening got him sentenced to prison for five years for drug-related charges in 2011 while living in Nashville.
“There are a lot of people who feel like they’re stuck. I was one of those people for a long time. I justified my decisions on my conditions. And I continued to live a life of crime, saying, Oh, I’m just trying to feed my family. Or whatever excuse I made to make myself feel better,” he said.
After he was released from prison in 2016, he got custody of his seven children. One of them, Brianna Harness, 21, is touring with him.
She has toured with him before and collaborated with him on an EP in 2018, but this is her first time performing as an opening act. She’ll be performing songs from her debut album, “Welcome to My Nightmare.”
Before they did their EP, “Sunny Days,” which hit No. 1 on the blues charts, she had held back a little.
“She walked around singing, but she was too shy to sing in front of me. I actually had to trick her to get her to record. I told her I just needed background vocals. Then we turned it up real loud, and it became the record. It’s been such a blessing, being able to write and produce and record with my daughter, and help her see her dreams through,” he said.
Her album and Jennings’ latest are both on his record label, Angels & Outlaws.
“I’ve been writing and producing for people that I believed in and loved for a couple of years now. It kept going to the point where it was like, I’m recording six albums for six different people now, I guess we got a record label! But you can’t pen any of them into one box. It might turn out to be blues, country, rap, jazz, hip hop, R&B. We’re just putting the emotions and how we’re feeling into the music,” he said.
Now, he’s looking forward to doing what he loves full-time.
“We did a handful of shows last year, but for a group that’s used to doing 190 or 200 shows a year, it was pretty rough. But I kept all my band employed, broke bread with them, paid the bills, got some of them working in the studio to make some income. Everybody kept their head over the water, and now we’re back out on the road.”
margaretquamme@hotmail.com
from WordPress https://ift.tt/3ugVNea
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment