This is a music story, but let’s talk briefly about pizza.
There’s a pie at Hideaway Pizza called the Hideaway Special. Due to varied toppings, every slice of the Hideaway Special is a different kind of pizza.
On Sept. 4, Oklahoma music artist Tennessee Jet is releasing an album (“The Country”) that has something in common with the Hideaway Special.
Every song on the new album is country, but every track represents a different sliver of country.
There are songs that capture the vibe of traditional country music throughout the decades, from the 1950s to the 1990s. There’s a folk country song. There’s a bluegrass song. There’s Americana. There’s alternative country. There’s even a song from the gunfighter ballad category.
Which slice do you prefer? Sample ‘em all to see which ones suit your tastes.
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Tennessee Jet gained an appetite for country music when he was a kid. His parents were on the rodeo circuit, and you can guess what kind of music played on the truck radio as they traveled from one rodeo to the next.
Traditional country remains a favorite, according to Tennessee Jet, but he said he has forged his own path to create country music and bring something new to the table. This time, it’s a buffet. The new album, recorded with Dwight Yoakam’s touring band, is Tennessee Jet’s love letter to different types of country music.
“It’s the most country record that I have made,” he said, adding that his past records were all over the map. “This record was going to be a strictly country record, but within those limitations, there is an abundance of places you can go with it to make it unique, so that’s what this is all about, just to see how far I can explore the boundaries of what country music means to me.”
The boundaries wound up being way out there.
One of the tracks is “Johnny.” It’s about Johnny Horton, who — cool! — charted two No. 1 country songs in 1958 and — not so cool — foresaw his own death. Horton died in an automobile accident in 1960.
Instead of striving for a traditional country sound with “Johnny,” Tennessee Jet took an opposite path and wrote it as if Kurt Cobain was crafting the song and Nirvana was playing it. Promotional material for the album says “Johnny” sounds like a lost Nirvana B-side. It’s a spot-on description.
But does the song still qualify as country? Tennessee Jet needed a song on the album to represent alternative country. Here’s “Johnny.”
“You strive for certain things on songs you write, and you hear them in your head and sometimes they don’t turn out the way you wanted them to and sometimes they turn out better or worse,” he said. “This turned out just the way I was hoping it would.”
Tennessee Jet also melded genres with a cover of “She Talks to Angels,” a rock song that was a hit for the Black Crowes 30 years ago. Tennessee Jet turned it into a bluegrass song. If you’re going to do a cover, why approach it the same way as the original artist? You’ll wind up with a pale imitation. “But if you take it and do something totally different with it, then you can’t really compare it to the other version.”
Tennessee Jet also covered the Townes Van Zandt song “Pancho and Lefty,” a chart-topper for Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard in 1983. Tennessee Jet wanted the song on the album as a representation of gunfighter ballads “in the Marty Robbins vein” of that type of country music. Again, Tennessee Jet wanted his do-over to be a different animal.
“My take on that was, well, let’s turn it into more of the Highwaymen thing, where rather than just one or two singers do it, let’s have someone different take a verse on every verse,” he said.
Paul Cauthen, Cody Jinks and Elizabeth Cook became his Highwaymen. Nelson bandmate Mickey Raphael (harmonica) and Lady Gaga bandleader Brian Newman (trumpet) are guest artists on the cover.
“It’s really unique,” Tennessee Jet said. “It may be the song I’m most proud of on the record.”
You’ll hear a reference to the Indian Nations Turnpike on the track “Stray Dogs.” It’s a road traveled many times by Tennessee Jet, who has Tulsa ties and lives in Hugo, where his wife was raised. Maybe we should call him Hugo Jet? “I’ve been called a lot worse,” he said.
Tennessee Jet (real name: T.J. McFarland) said he lived all over the place while growing up, including Noble in his early years, but Tulsa is where he started playing music.
“The history of music in Tulsa is one I don’t think a lot of people know enough about to appreciate,” he said. “But so many great musicians and singers and songwriters have come out of Tulsa, so it’s a great place to be from.”
Tennessee Jet’s musical journey took him to California and Nashville before he returned to Oklahoma a couple of years ago.
“Hugo is interesting because there’s a graveyard where my wife and I walk a lot,” he said, referencing Mount Olivet Cemetery, final resting place of Lane Frost and Freckles Brown, plus circus performers buried in a Showmen’s Rest area. “Hugo is actually Circus City, USA in the offseason. There’s like elephants here and stuff. It’s a really unique place to live.”
From a business standpoint, Tennessee Jet said Hugo is a good, centrally located place “for a lot of the places I play.” Bonus: He is enjoying country life.
“It’s nice to be out here where it’s quiet among the trees and animals and things,” he said. “We have possums that come up to the door every night and we feed them. It has been a nice change.”
There’s one change he doesn’t endorse and you know what that is when you hear him say his new album is a push-back to what has happened to country music. He wants to put the emphasis back where it belongs. For instance: Story and “real” instruments.
“Great country music is an art form that is just as relevant as any van Gogh painting or Michelangelo sculpture,” he said. “It’s just an amazing thing and I try to treat it that seriously with that much respect and that’s what this record is all about.”
Tennessee Jet said he has eaten at Hideaway Pizza, which has locations throughout Oklahoma. When told about the every-slice-is-different Hideaway Special (it’s no longer on the menu, but you can still order it), he said you probably want to get early dibs on a slice when sharing the pizza with others because you wouldn’t want to wind up with a pineapple-sardine slice.
A pineapple-sardine slice isn’t actually among slices on the Hideaway Special. Likewise, there are some slices of country you won’t find on Tennessee Jet’s album. He said there are a couple of types of country music that don’t “speak” to him.
“It was about the things I love about country, so there wasn’t going to be any bro country songs on the record because I just hate it,” he said. “I couldn’t see myself going in and trying to record that.”
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