Tommy Townsend

Country music needs a solid kick in the pants. And Tommy Townsend is the right guy to deliver it.

It’s happened before, you know. Forty-odd years ago an earlier gang of troublemakers had to knock some sense into the slicked-up boot scooters who had taken over the dance floor. Their names are legend now — Waylon, Willie, Kris. Their impact revitalized a genre that had lost touch with its rowdier roots.

Townsend’s connection to these forebears – and Waylon especially - dates back to a family vacation when he was about 13. While driving to Panama City, Florida from northeastern Georgia, his uncle popped in an 8-track of the album Ol’ Waylon; by the time they reached the beach, Townsend was hooked. 

Shortly after that, his parents took him to hear Jennings perform live, at Lanier Land Music Park. After the show, Mom and Dad talked their way past the Hell’s Angels security guards and into the backstage area, where Tommy was introduced to the man who would become his inspiration and mentor.

Townsend was soon welcomed into the Jennings fold. He befriended Waylon’s wife Jessi Colter, their children and members of the Waylors. They took him out on the road and even brought him up onstage now and then to play with the band. Tommy and Waylon spent time alone together too, talking about lessons learned from life and conveyed through songs.

The Waylors’ bassist, Jerry Bridges, and Waylon himself co-produced Townsend’s first solo session in the 90s. The music never saw the light of day, beyond performing the songs live and sharing it here and there. Tommy kept the songs in his back pocket, always knowing it would eventually find a home.

Music industry vet Chuck Rhodes recently re-activated the widely respected Audium Records, and Tommy felt like the label would be a perfect fit. Rhodes flipped over the music and immediately signed Tommy and his 10-song Southern Man album. Singles are being released beginning in February with the album hitting late spring.

“Watching what Chuck and Bob Frank were doing with Audium, I knew that could be the perfect home for me and especially the Southern Man album,” said Townsend. “Their excitement for the album and for my music is exactly what an artist thrives on, and I look forward to this being a long and prosperous relationship.”

While Tommy has never denied Jennings’ impact -- in fact, he acknowledges it gratefully — Townsend used it to nurtured his own artistry. These two facts of his musical life run separately: Since 2008 he has honored his musical hero by singing with Waymore’s Outlaws, whose lineup included former Jennings sidekicks Bridges on bass, the late Richie Albright on drums and steel guitarist Fred Newell. In 2014 they hit the road, opening for Waylon’s son Shooter Jennings and then backing him through his set as well.

The more time they spent together on the road, the more Shooter recognized his friend’s uniqueness and sensed that he was ready to step out from his Waylon shadow. “He heard that I did his dad’s songs in my own way,” Townsend says. “That’s what Shooter liked about what I was doing with the band. Jessi Colter told me the same thing: ‘You’re not trying to sound like Waylon. You’re doing the songs in your own way.

After a series of shows, Shooter expressed an interest in producing an album on Townsend focused on Tommy’s electric rhythm playing. They began gathering songs, beginning with Brandi Carlisle’s “The Eye,” which Jennings heard as a great vehicle for Townsend’s voice. By December they had assembled a diverse list of originals and covers, unified by Townsend’s ability to deliver them with passion and insight, and started recording what is now Turn Back The Clock.

On this exceptional, much-needed solo debut, Townsend recorded Steve Young’s “Renegade Picker,” the Holly Williams-penned “Drinkin’,” Gordon Lightfoot’s immortal “Sundown” and Waylon’s courtly, achingly romantic “Belle Of The Ball.”

Townsend’s writing chops shine on two cuts. Heat simmers throughout his sensuous “Longest Day Of Summer” from the opening line: “Steam rises off the highway after a summer rain. She’s burnin’ up beside me, wiping the sweat away.” And more than any other song on Turn Back The Clock, “Plug The Jukebox Back In” spells out Townsend’s diagnosis for all that ails country music nowadays: “It’s an endangered species, a new dying breed, replaced by computers, iPods and CDs … Let’s welcome the future without losing the past.”

And so it is, a perfect return to where Townsend began, to learning from the masters in order to chart his way across a landscape thirsty for musical nourishment. “I wanted Turn Back The Clock and Southern Man to do what Waylon did for me … and Conway Twitty, Vern Gosdin, Keith Whitley and Hank Junior. Take all of them, add a little Willie, throw them in a pot, cook ‘em up and what you get is me.”

A feast for the ears and for our country soul.