Jessi Colter joins McNally on the beautifully tragic “Out Among the Stars.” The outlaw country movement of the 1970s can’t be discussed in any serious way without Colter featuring prominently in the conversation. As one of four artists featured on the famed 1976 album Wanted! The Outlaws, the first country record to sell over one million copies, Colter occupies her own place in history. She also was married to Jennings for over 30 years before he died.
Receiving Colter’s approval was paramount to McNally. When the initial recordings were completed, McNally asked her friend and celebrated songwriter Gary Nicholson if he thought Colter would be interested in singing on the record. A longtime friend of Colter’s, Nicholson thought Colter would like what she heard and gave McNally her phone number.
“Having Jessi sing on the record was such a big deal to me,” McNally says. “I wanted this record to be official, so I wanted her to like it. Any project like this, especially when you think of how big of a space Waylon has in people’s hearts, you want to go in through the front door and have everyone’s blessing. If she had nixed the idea, I guess I would’ve said, ‘Okay, what now?’”
Thankfully, Colter immediately liked what she heard of McNally’s recordings and appreciated the singer’s perspective.
“She was very intelligent about her approach to the project,” Colter says over the phone from Los Angeles, where she had spent a few days celebrating her son Shooter Jennings’ birthday. “The sounds, the drums, the beat is what caught my ear because that’s all almost impossible to really capture. For Waylon that all came from his own feel, his rhythm playing. Many have tried. I was thrilled to hear ‘I Ain’t Living Long Like This’ because after I listened, I thought, ‘Okay, this is really good.’