The trick is to say something interesting or compelling without making it too careful or precious.
On the press release it reads: “Beau Jennings & The Tigers’ third album (“American Stories Major Chords”) is in its own way a miracle.” What that is saying is the new album was made by a band whose sum is the total of its parts, not just a collection of musicians, instruments, amplifiers, microphones and all the other stuff needed to cut a record. This is a group of good friends making observations and telling stories with their music, a distinct feature of the American rock n’ roll tradition. It’s important to understand the curriculum vitae (CV) that Jennings is submitting to the segment of the population that believes well-crafted contemporary music from the heart is an essential part of life. Living in its absence would be like going on a long trip wondering what you forgot to pack.
Increasingly, music is being made and offered to Spotify streamers with a target audience in mind. One artist wants to reach those whose musical identity is modern rock; another wants to capture the folks who listen to folk music. Whatever you need is at your command if you’re into the blues, rock, pop, country, Americana, metal and all the little genres and sub-genres and sub-sub genres that dot the bandwidth landscape like the various boxes our politicians and social media giants like to use for separating people, so they can be catalogued and reached at any time.
The aural landscapes Beau Jennings creates for he and the Tigers to paint are coloured with chiming guitars, sweet harmonies and dusky vocals. His words not mine, but listen to his songs and they ring true. Jennings fully believes that even though it’s his name up front, this is a real band. “There’s a spirit of defiance here, too, that I can really credit to The Tigers and the energy they bring. I can zone out and write a song in black and white on my own, but one of my favourite things about the band is how they can blow it out and bring it up to full colour.”
Jennings’ music exudes confidence without losing its dash of vulnerability. Confidence comes from maturity, being accepting of who you are and unafraid to say it to the world. You can tell he works hard at his craft by the way his songs are relatable to anyone, while also containing a lyric or image that leaves no doubt his roots are in the heartland where Mellencamp and Petty have tilled the soil, letting its rich music permeate the land.
The title song from the upcoming album provides a good example of how the band stays connected even when miles apart. Drummer Dustin Ragland recently relocated to Atlanta, though he comes back for gigs when it makes financial sense. Jennings made a very simple acoustic demo and played it for Ragland, who suggested some interesting chord changes. “Most of the time we work things out as a band,” Jennings remarked, “but in this case it felt like the right thing to do giving Dustin a co-write.”
You’re invited to continue past this preface and learn what makes Beau Jennings tick. Afterwards, you’ll likely want to listen to his music. The new album won’t be out until October 18, but until then “Heavy Light,” “The Thunderbird” and the EP “Feel the Sun” are well worth checking out. At some point, you may begin to hear a whisper, becoming more persistent, causing you to wonder if some sort of magical magnet is pulling you towards an unknown yet somehow familiar place. It’s coming into focus …. there’s a band on a tiny stage, locals in the crowd, think of a thousand reasons to leave, and one or two to stay, American Stories Major Chords ….. left you a ticket at the door.
Songs with major chords usually sound happy and warm with 4ths or 5ths or a bluesy 7th. In other words, are the songs on the record primarily written with major chord progressions or does the term refer to something else?
To tell the truth, that’s kind of a joke. You’ve seen those Spirit Halloween stores, I’m sure. You go in to buy a costume, let’s say a pirate costume, and what’s included: a sword, an eyepatch, a striped shirt. Well, there’s a meme going around that if you want to dress up like President Trump, you get a combover, a red tie, whatever. So, we had a meme that said if you want to be a member of the Tigers, we have a costume. You get a Fender guitar, a tube amp and “American Stories Told With Major Chords.” Of course, not every song has a major chord. I just like the way it sounded interesting. You could interpret the word major a few different ways.
In your press information, you talk about records that are algorithmically generated with effects like autotune. I’ve read everyone uses autotune to a certain extent. Is that the case? You can sometimes tell when the end of a stanza sounds robotic or artificial. It’s hard to distinguish. Surely, you know about it?
I do. You know, if I were a better singer, it might make more sense to use autotune because I would sound close to perfect. So, why not just make my voice sound perfect? The truth is my voice isn’t close to perfect, so to clean it up wouldn’t sound right. In a way, it’s a blessing not to sound like my heroes because, well … then I would sound like them. It’s made me have to search for another way.
Back to what you said in the release about the album being a miracle. In what way?
Because I think we have operated at what I would consider to be a very professional, artistically successful level. This is our third record in four or five years, and there’s not a lot of money coming in. It’s like this band is happening against all odds. We don’t make a ton of cash. Everybody is being pulled in a million different ways. All of us don’t even live in the same state. But the songs keep coming to me, and the band continues to be willing to write and record. I still have a label that is supporting me. We have a dedicated but modest fan base, so it feels right on the cusp. It could become something that we’d have to quit our jobs and devote our lives to, but it hasn’t demanded that of us yet. We have to keep our jobs so the band can keep going; it’s so difficult to make money playing music these days. The solo acts are the only ones that seem to have it figured out, how to make a living. We all have our day gigs and some of us play in other bands, some of us are married with kids. It occurred to me that it’s kind of a miracle and I’m so thrilled we can still do this.
The first song on the record is ‘Oklahoma Heat.’ (It’s in the 100’s the past week or so there.) There’s a passage towards the end where the lyrics are: “I’ll pay Caesar what is Caesar’s someone pay me what is mine.” It’s from Matthew: Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” It suggests a person wondering why he can’t receive what God receives.
That song’s not a first-person narrative. That character is a person trying to eke out a living in modern-day Oklahoma. It’s tough now. There are a number of things working against you. If you’re not well-off or set up a certain way, there’s a lot to compete against. The character came to me first. As I was writing the lines, the verses for the song, he began to take form more fully. It actually came to me when I was jogging this summer. It was extremely hot and I was flashing back to when I was a kid playing sports learning to practice in the heat. It struck me that I like this. I don’t know why. There’s just something that’s comforting about being in the Oklahoma heat, and I can’t explain it. But I liked the title, so I started writing and in my brain it kind of morphed into a character who’s dancing around the idea of being committed to loving where you’re from despite the hardships that come along with that place. The heat can be a metaphor for any number of things.
The character seems to live a mundane existence. Everything’s a struggle. He feels gipped. He has to pay so much to Caesar – the government – and there’s not much left for him.
I think that’s accurate. This may be a bit of local politics that wouldn’t be apparent to anyone else, but in the first line I talk about they’re building up the turnpike. There’s a lot of debate locally about these turnpikes they want to build through towns and neighbourhoods. We have to pay to drive the turnpike. That’s always the deal: the turnpike will pay for itself in ten years. We’ve had turnpikes for decades and never have they paid. We’ll always pay for them. There are some layers of that mixed in like in the first line I’m talking about the turnpike being built to where at the end the character is taking the turnpike home. He’s saying the government wants a little more out of me. I’ll pay to live here but, hey, I want my fair share, too.
What happens to our share, in essence. It’s like the administration’s new scheme to pay first-time home buyers $25,000 to make a down payment on a house. Where does that money come from? Well, we know the answer: It comes from you and me.
It brings up the very good question: Is that the right way to do things? Either pay higher taxes or print more money which causes inflation.
You live in Norman, Oklahoma, known as the home of the Sooners, college football aristocracy. Tell us about the song ‘Norman Nights.’
We are first and foremost a college town. Pretty much everyone came here to attend the university. Norman is a great place to raise a family, go to school. But it’s a tough place if you’re young, single and just out of college. It can become a small town real quickly. Oklahoma is a very red state. I believe it’s the only state in our national elections where every county is red, including Cleveland County where Norman is. Tulsa and Norman are places where there are dots of blue, and that’s to be expected of college towns. It’s a great place, though sometimes we get in our own way. Sometimes we think we know what’s best but that’s because the university kind of colors our thinking. All in all it’s a good place to live.
Is Norman a mid-size town, say between the size of Tulsa and a small town? I’m picturing “Friday Night Lights.” Have you ever watched that TV series?
Yes, I loved that show. By the way, Norman has around 250,000 people.
As you know, FNL is set in a high school football town where the three most important things are religion, family and sports, not necessarily in that order.
Well, I’ve often made the joke that Sooner football has all the technical definitions of a religion. We have our weekly meetings game day. We have our saints, our villains, sacraments, the whole bit. I think if some archaeologists came to study Norman 500 years from now, and they were able to piece together everything they would say, how is Sooner football different from any other religious organization?
Is the Barracuda a real place, bar or roadhouse, where ‘People in This Town’ go after a game?
Yes, it’s the Bar-Acuda. We probably should have put that song on the record. It’s kind of coming from the same vein.
Besides that song, were there any others that you wish could have been on the new record but didn’t make the cut?
Yeah. There’s one in particular that I’ve tried to put on the last three records, but we’ve never been able to find the right tone for it. I still think it will see the light of day at some point. But you know, this is a band, and I like to defer to the guys. I’ve made a number of solo records where I make every decision. Strangely enough, I enjoy giving away some of the control to the guys. See what their thoughts are because I trust them. I’m in a band with them for a reason: because I like their tastes, and I like what they bring to the table.
The reason I asked is because there are three singles on your Bandcamp page that aren’t on any of your albums. Usually, an artist puts out a single or two or three, and they wind up on the album. What are those free agents doing?
There’s a million decisions to make putting together an album. But in between records, sometimes you want to have new music out there for folks to listen to. By the time you’ve put it out and promoted it, then it’s time to talk about a new record and that single might feel like old news. It’s like, let’s move on.
You said these songs are stories. They’re not about me, although some elements of my life are in most songs I write. So, where does the “you” end and the story begins?
I think all my songs start with a narrative kernel from personal experience. I need a starting point. ‘Oklahoma Heat’ is a good example. I started thinking about why that title resonated with me, and then it goes totally off the rails and turns out to be a fictional character. ‘Drivin’ Around’ is fairly autobiographical.
You’re going to have album release shows in both Tulsa and Oklahoma City in October. What about in your hometown. Is there a venue in Norman? I read about one called The Opolis.
That’s a stalwart place, the only true indie rock club in town. There are some other wonderful venues, but they’re either listening rooms or dive bar style.
In ‘Broken Angel,’ the first single, you talk about tickets to a Mets game. You spent time in Brooklyn with the band. Are you a baseball fan?
I am. Love baseball. ‘Broken Angel’ is 100% autobiographical, no fiction in there. I lived in Brooklyn for eight years, and I always thought I would write a song or record about the time spent there and I never did. The song came to me about a year ago, very quickly, and once it was written I said that song is done. It’s a rumination on the time I spent there, how it’s very alluring and exciting, a stimulating place to be but when you’re done, you’re done. It kicks you out. I remember this is a line I could have put in there, maybe as a fourth verse. We packed up our moving truck to leave and drove over the Verrazzano Bridge, leaving Brooklyn to head over to Jersey and pick up the highway going to Austin. And they charged me $62 to go to Staten Island. I thought that was hilarious. It was like this final kick in the pants. Get out. We’re done. It was just funny, as if the place was telling me “Your time is up.” Okay, see ya. I’m very nostalgic for that time, though.
What brought you to Brooklyn?
I followed my girlfriend at the time. We got married and had kids and decided not to raise them there. She was from Oklahoma, too. I met her just a couple of months before she moved to New York, and I thought it was too bad because I really liked this person. We stayed in touch and I ended up following her up there. But it all worked out for us to come back here and be with family.
I saw a picture on your Facebook page of a young girl with a horse. Is your daughter’s name Juniper? Of course, that’s also the title of one of the new songs. “I saw you stumble for a moment, Then you lept into the cure, There’s healing in there somewhere, I just know it, Juniper.” That’s a powerful lyric.
Watching somebody doing something new for the first time, it put into perspective something I’d been struggling with, too. Watching her figure it out, a new pose, a new stance. It reminds you that you can work through stuff. That’s the simplest way to put it.
There’s more about healing. You go on about dancing in the kitchen and seeing your mother shed a tear. I saw it all laid out before me, foolish dreams and petty fears.
That’s exactly what happened. Watching your kids grow up, you know, can be very emotional.
There’s another picture of you two. She has the Travis Kelce jersey on and you have the blond wig.
Her dance class had a recital, and I was informed there would be a dad’s dance portion. The theme was Taylor Swift, which meant all the dads dressed like her boyfriend, Travis Kelce. Like most of the dads, I was resistant but I was also secretly happy to do it, and it ended up being a lot of fun.
One of the songs I like best is ‘I Know These Guys’ like the back of my hand I used to be one of them. Obviously, that goes back to younger days.
That’s probably a commentary on things I see happening locally. I see a lot of corruption, nefarious things happening within our state government. One day I was making the connection that a lot of these dudes that are elected officials are guys I grew up in church with. I’m not in that world anymore but I still espouse those values. At some point, I don’t know where things shifted but they went one way and I went another. I wondered, could I have been that guy if a few things had been different? So, I’m taking stock of the distance I perceive between us but how much gap is there really? I also just like to riff on the title.
Is ‘Boston Avenue’ a real place with memories of childhood grief?
Absolutely. In Tulsa there’s a Boston Avenue Methodist Church that’s a world-famous architectural masterpiece. My best friend in childhood went to that church with his family, and when I stayed over, I’d go, too. He passed away when we were both 14. Similar to ‘Broken Angel,’ it took me a long time to write ‘Boston Avenue.’ I’m 44 now so that’s like 30 years. It took a long time even to figure out what to say.
“And we’re back in the pews on Boston Avenue, Drawing comic books around the hymns.”
Yeah, 100%. Just what it sounds like. We would draw comic books on any scrap of paper during the whole service. I forgot, now that you mention it, that song was on my acoustic record, too. And on the new record of course.
Something else from the publicity is writing allegory songs. To my understanding, these are symbolic narrative fictions, often with a hidden meaning. What would be one example?
There’s a song called ‘The Other Side,’ which is on the first Tigers record, “Thunderbird.” I wrote it in 2016 right when the cultural divide was widening. The gulfs just keep getting wider and wider between you and people you knew or thought you knew. The talk was let’s build a wall. Okay, what’s on the other side of the wall?
I imagine songwriting must be a way of relating to the time you’re living in and the surroundings. Perhaps as a way to stay relatable to where you are in life.
You understand songs differently at different times in your life. What one meant to me twenty years ago could take on an entirely different meaning today.
When I was doing research for this interview, somehow, I went down this rabbit hole that led to songs about Oklahoma. It was fascinating finding oldies I hadn’t heard in forever: Gene Pitney’s ’24 Hours to Tulsa’; James McMurtry ‘Choctaw Bingo’; Jim Croce ‘Rapid Roy (The Stock Car Boy)’; but there was one by Cross Canadian Ragweed called ‘Boys from Oklahoma’ live at the Wormy Dog Saloon in Stillwater. Is that a real bar?
It sure is.
The song is definitely not PC.
Is it the one about the boys in Oklahoma who rolled the joints all wrong?
That’s the one. “Them (naughty word) down in Norman, They got a kinky streak, Ain’t allowed to roll their own.” I’m aware there is a huge rivalry between Oklahoma U. and Oklahoma St. – Sooners against Cowboys, Norman vs Stillwater, but they play pretty rough.
The rivalry is huge, for sure. There’s a lot of gentle ribbing, or maybe not so gentle ribbing that goes on. And they were firmly a Stillwater band. They still are, and very popular.
The band you were in, Cheyenne, was this during the years you spent in Brooklyn?
We made our first record in Oklahoma. Then, as I said, I followed my girlfriend to Brooklyn, and the drummer came with me. We found the other guys there. We had a decent amount of success, played a lot of great clubs and opened for some great people. After we recorded our third record, two of the guys moved back to Oklahoma. Right around that time, a small label offered me a deal to make a record. Somewhere inside I knew that the band Cheyenne wouldn’t be forever. If you Google it, a lot of things pop up, and in that way, it felt like it would always be problematic. I asked the other guys if we do this deal can I also make a solo record? They were agreeable to it. All these things were happening at the same time, and I saw it as my chance to make a record and that was “Holy Tulsa Thunder.” We eventually released the third record even though we were no longer playing shows, just put it online.
It sounds as if you feel very comfortable with the Tigers, describing them as a core group of seasoned musicians who handle the songs expertly. In a sense, the band becomes a metaphor for coming home.
After spending so many years in other places, moving back to Oklahoma and seeing how much it had changed – there’s really no other way to say it – you feel a little bit lost, like you’re starting over. Maybe where you left seems more at home now than actually being back home. That’s pretty much it: “capture what it feels like to be lost in a familiar place.” I think cultural changes growing up, looking for a place to put your roots down, that’s all a big part of what I write about. I’ve come to realize over the years that what I write is heavily dependent upon where I am. My wife likes to joke that I’m always putting in references to a gas station or a restaurant, some small club. It helps to orient me.
Maybe you can orient me. I read something about Okie Noodling? What is that?
Have you heard of the sport of noodling?
Is it somebody from Oklahoma forming homemade pasta? No? Is it a musician from Oklahoma playing freestyle, random notes just to warm up?
Actually, it’s catching catfish with your bare hands. Native Americans practiced it centuries ago in the lakes, rivers and streams. A friend of mine made a documentary called “Okie Noodling.” There’s a big tournament, a weigh-in when people come with big catfish slung over their shoulder that they caught with their bare hands. And they play music.
Are you saying the extent of your participation was the music? You weren’t in the water catching catfish? There probably are pictures.
I have been noodling. I haven’t caught a catfish yet. My friend Bradley Beasley, who is the documentary filmmaker, started the tournament. He also made a film called “Fearless Freaks” about The Flaming Lips. He is the noodling King, the guy you want to know. He’s taken me a few times. I haven’t gotten bit yet but someday soon.
Someday soon what – get bit or catch a fish? Have you ever had one in your hands before it managed to slip away?
No, I have not. I won’t do a “stolen valour” thing. But I’ve tried and I will keep trying until someday I get one.
I was listening to the “Six Stories” EP. One of the songs is ‘Start Swinging,’ which brought to mind the TV series “Brockmeier.” Hank Azaria plays a disgraced Major League baseball announcer. I made a note to ask which is your favorite baseball team.
St. Louis Cardinals. My granddad was a fan. My dad grew up a fan. I have very vivid memories of being in the backyard as a kid, hanging out with the Cardinals game on the radio. I couldn’t be a fan of another team. It just wouldn’t work, even if Oklahoma City got a team – which there have been rumblings about – it would be interesting, but I’d still be a Cardinals fan. That’s just the way it has to be.
Do you know what I remember from growing up in Massachusetts? The Boston Red Sox not winning a World Series for 86 years until they swept the Cardinals 4-0 in 2004. Oh, and they beat the Cardinals again to win the 2013 World Series.
It was terrible. Both times. From what I understand, way back before there was TV, it was either Red Sox/Yankees on the radio or in the Midwest, Cardinals/Cubs on the radio. When my granddad was growing up in Tulsa in the ‘20s, the Cardinals were the team. There were no Royals or Rangers, so Cardinals’ fandom in Oklahoma, that’s very old school. If you were going to pick a team to root for now, it would probably be the Rangers. It’s only two hours away.
After another 15 minutes of baseball gab, we get back to music.
On the topic of songwriting, you’ve defined it as “getting out of your own way” to write a song. Could you explain what that means to you?
Don’t overwrite a song. Don’t assign more meaning to it than is apparent. You get a kernel of an idea and start writing …. I don’t know how to articulate this but along the way maybe you think, oh, now I’ve got to start cracking this to mean this message or to mean this thought. Again, I’m not sure you can explain this, but I think you can start directing an idea before it’s ready to be directed. There’s a certain art to letting whatever line or phrase or idea you have just exist. It can become more powerful than if you put too much artifice on it, try to make it fit this narrative or that statement. It can be more effective that way.
You’ve also talked about “making one true statement.” Is that something like having a palette cleanser like sorbet so there won’t be any leftover flavours from the appetizer when the main course arrives?
Well, I can’t take credit for that. I was sharing some advice I’d read from Hemmingway. He wrote if you find yourself stuck, just write down a true fact, like “I’m ill today. My wife’s mad at me. I feel hopeful today.” Then you might say, “Why do I feel hopeful? Well, I just got a raise. Why did you get a raise? I cheated at work and nobody knows.” And you can find an interesting story that way.
“Thunderbird” feels like that classic rock ‘n roll record. Summertime songs. Beach Boys. Not played and sung like them obviously, but the idea, good vibrations.
I think we were aiming for a Tom Petty kind of thing. The Beach Boys to me I see as very specific, a piano-driven thing. But, yeah, driving down the highway.
‘The Comeback,’ one of the songs on “Heavy Light,” also has that driving down the highway, top-down feel with the harmonica.
I think so many bands were influenced by Tom Petty. To a degree, our band, at least in the moment, we’re looking for our version of heartland rock. That’s what I love. I mean, I like a lot of different music, but if we could find our own new version of that it would be great.
Let’s talk some about “Verdigris.” At the time I listened to the album, I didn’t realize it was also a documentary film on Will Rogers. So, I found it on YouTube and began watching it last night. Started at landing a plane. Rogers died in a plane crash in Alaska. It was 1:00 in the morning so I had to skip around but saw enough that I’ll definitely have to watch it all. The part in the barbershop where you show the barber a picture of Will Rogers and say cut my hair like that, it’s priceless.
It’s funny. That feels like another life to me at the moment. We released that about ten years ago. It occupied a big chunk of my creative energy making it. It came after Cheyenne and before we got the Tigers going. It involved a lot of travel, a lot of research making that film. It’s very hard to sum up everything that record meant.
What interested you in Will Rogers, outside of him being a unique character?
I grew up in a town just a few miles from where Will Rogers grew up. As a kid, I would visit the Will Rogers Museum in his old home town. Years later, I’m living in New York, wanting to make a name for myself, and I think I landed on that as a topic no one else was going to write about. In New York City everybody’s cooler, better, better-looking, there’s no way to stand out. So, subconsciously I was probably looking for something only I could do. I remember flying home to visit my folks, and there was a Will Rogers book on the coffee table. He’d always been this character in the back of my mind, but I thought, wait, I don’t really know much of anything about this guy. I just started writing songs, and it became this vehicle for exploring my connection – keep in mind I was living in New York at the time – to my home state and how it had shaped me using Will Rogers as a conduit.
There’s an interesting scene where you are on the balcony of the New Victory Theater playing the song ‘Scattered Lights.’ After WWII many theaters throughout the country changed their name to Victory in honor of America’s role in defeating the Nazis. What makes the scene cool is panning the camera to show the incongruity of a McDonald’s across the street from the theater.
I don’t know how much of the film you saw, but there’s a backstory to that scene. The whole concept was to write some songs about Will Rogers and film them in places around the country where he went. He used to do what could be called a precursor to the “Tonight Show” on the rooftop of that theatre. Everybody wanted to attend, even presidents would go and he’d make fun of them. I thought that if I could get on that rooftop, how amazing would that be. There was so much bureaucracy and red tape because Disney has a lease on the building. I decided to film me going into the theater, and they’re like, “Sir, sir, you can’t ….” There was so much endless stuff to go through. It almost works better by showing how I couldn’t get up there. We can’t explore our history because everything is owned by whoever … some corporate entity.
Tom Paxton wrote a song called ‘Along The Verdigris.’ It’s a tributary that spills into the Arkansas River.
Really. I’m going to look this up; I never heard of that piece. I met Tom at a Woody Guthrie Folk Festival. Here it is. In my ignorance, I thought I was the only one who ever wrote a song about that river.
Among the many things Will Rogers did, one was being an architect. I’ve read you have done architecture as well. What in particular?
I dabbled mostly in historic preservation. When I was in New York, we did some work that wasn’t very glamorous, these old co-ops and condos in the boroughs. We’d be sent out to ride the scaffolding up and down the sides of the buildings, marking what was wrong with the stonework and windows, report back and send guys out there for repairs. The most memorable job was an Indian boarding school in Oklahoma. It was a very spooky place and felt like bad things had happened there. We were there to make plans for restoration of how it used to be for the Chickasaw Nation.
Looking through your Facebook, I found a poem written about your wrestler grandad turned surgeon, Merle ‘Cut’ Jennings, after he passed away. Was the nickname Cut coming from wrestling or surgery?
My granddad and his brother were the first set of twins to become NCAA wrestling champions. They did it twice in 1941 and 42. His nickname actually came because they were small and the babysitter couldn’t tell them apart except that my granddad had cut his ear. So “Cut” stuck.
I never would have guessed that.
When he died in 2010, one of his old wrestling teammates, Mandy Johnson, who became a professor at Tulsa University and a poet, wrote that poem.
You give the impression that home and community are very important to you. For example, there is another picture of you wearing a Norman Dirtybirds jersey.
I started the Norman Dirtybirds. There was no baseball team in Norman and sandlot baseball is very big now. Baseball teams were starting in Dallas, Tulsa, Austin, Oklahoma City. I wanted to play so I had to start a team.
My father used to use the expression dirty bird when he wanted to say someone was a lazy, good for nothing person.
The story behind that name is there is a Lake Thunderbird behind town, and there is a lot of red clay in central Oklahoma. The water gets red and it stains the birds who look for fish on it. I thought, there’s the perfect name for a local sandlot baseball team.
It’s hypothetical time. If you were to have someone else sing with the Tigers while you stepped back and played rhythm guitar, who would that be?
To sing my songs or his? Man, that’s a wild question.
It’s my version of the usual question about who influenced you or who do you sound like.
I’ll give you someone. I used to play in his band. He’s a singer/songwriter from Tulsa named Tim Miser. You can find some of his music on Bandcamp or even Spotify. I’ve always loved his songwriting and voice, too. I think a lot of what I do stems from me trying to be Tim Miser. That’s not going to mean anything to hardly anyone, but he’s like one of my secret heroes that for one reason or another never got off the ground. But I just always looked up to him, and if he ever wanted to come out of retirement and sing with my band, that would be so cool.
You are going to play two album release shows in Tulsa and Oklahoma City, October 18th and 19th, which people can check out on beaujennings.com. How much of the country will you play in support of the album?
Like I said before, we all have full time jobs. Both my kids are heavily into soccer now. The guys play in other bands at times. So, we’ll play a lot of regional places: Oklahoma and Texas, out to New Mexico, Kansas, Arkansas.
Reckless Kelly is a band I really like, and it always used to be frustrating because they rarely played outside of Texas. Then one year, they came to Tennessee and now they tour in more states.
You have to be able to make money, so touring has to make sense. I am going to Nashville in November but who knows if we’ll ever go to New York or L.A. We just can’t break the bank to do it.
Before I forget and we run out of time, there’s one song of yours I wanted to be sure to ask about. ‘I’m Reaching Lord’ for some answers? What can you say about the song?
I’d say it’s like one of those songs that is about a bunch of things at once. It’s not a song you would write in Nashville where you stay close to the message and topic. I like that kind of rambling, searching songs. Musically, I wouldn’t call it a blues, a little bit maybe, kind of a new direction for us. I also like a song you can put a cowbell in.
Will Rogers wrote: “Live your life so that whenever you lose it, you’re ahead.” If someone asked you for advice on that, what would be your answer?
Try to see things from someone else’s point of view. If you’re a songwriter, that can be helpful if you want to write from another perspective, even if you don’t necessarily agree with it. In general, I think that’s one of the most important things we can try to do. It’s hard. I found it with my parents. There are these divides that come up and why are they there?
Does it ever cross your mind now that you’re on the flip side of 40 to consider what this choice to devote part of your life to making music has brought to you and those you care about?
I think my creative journey is really just a way to make sense of and document my overall life journey – I see them as intertwined. My main goal is to stay true to the creative instinct because I think everything else in life can flow from that.
