WAYLON JENNINGS SPENT A LIFETIME DISTRUSTING OTHER PEOPLE’S ANSWERS ABOUT GOD. THEN HE WROTE HIS OWN. Waylon grew up in the Church of Christ in West Texas, hearing the kind of fire-and-brimstone preaching that stayed with him long after he stopped going to church. He never liked being told exactly what God was supposed to look like, who was going to heaven, or who deserved hell. That tension followed him for years. Then, in the 1990s, Waylon sat down and wrote “I Do Believe.” Jessi Colter later said the song surprised her. Waylon rarely expressed his faith that openly. But the message was unmistakable: he believed in God — just not through fear or somebody else’s rules. His faith was personal, imperfect, and entirely his own. Before the Highwaymen recorded it, Waylon played the song for his friend Will D. Campbell, the unconventional preacher and writer. Campbell listened and gave him two words: “That’ll preach.” The Highwaymen released “I Do Believe” on The Road Goes on Forever in 1995. It was never a major hit. Waylon later said he thought it might be the best song he ever wrote. For a man who spent his career refusing to let Nashville tell him how to sing, it made sense that he eventually refused to let anyone else tell him how to believe. Waylon Jennings never needed someone else to write his answer about God. Eventually, he wrote it himself.

Waylon Jennings and the Faith He Would Not Borrow

Waylon Jennings did not spend his life chasing neat answers. He grew up in West Texas in a Church of Christ family, where religion could sound severe and certain, full of warnings about heaven, hell, and who was supposed to belong where. Those lessons stayed with him, even after he stopped letting other people define his faith for him.

That push and pull followed Waylon Jennings for years. He became famous for refusing to be boxed in by Nashville, and in a different way, he also refused to be boxed in by simple religious language. He did not seem interested in repeating someone else’s version of God just because it came wrapped in tradition.

By the 1990s, Waylon Jennings finally put that tension into a song. He wrote “I Do Believe,” a quiet statement of faith that sounded less like a sermon and more like a man speaking honestly from the center of his own life. It was not flashy. It was not defensive. It was direct.

Jessi Colter later said the song surprised her. That makes sense. Waylon Jennings was not known for openly declaring his beliefs in an easy, public way. When he did, it carried extra weight. The song did not sound like fear. It sounded like conviction shaped by experience.

Before the Highwaymen recorded it for The Road Goes on Forever, released on April 4, 1995, Waylon Jennings played “I Do Believe” for Will D. Campbell, the preacher and writer known for thinking differently from most churchmen of his era. Campbell listened and gave the song a simple response: “That’ll preach.”

“That’ll preach.”

That was the kind of approval Waylon Jennings probably respected. Not polished praise, not a lecture, just a recognition that the truth in the song could reach people.

“I Do Believe” was never a giant hit, but it did not need to be. It lived as something more personal: a late-life confession from a man who had spent decades resisting easy labels. In the end, Waylon Jennings did not try to sound like anyone else’s idea of a believer. He wrote his own answer, and he meant it.

For a career built on independence, that felt completely right. Waylon Jennings spent a lifetime distrusting other people’s answers about God. Eventually, he wrote his own.

RANDY TRAVIS WENT ALMOST NINE YEARS WITHOUT A NO. 1 — THEN A GOSPEL SONG GAVE HIM ONE MORE. By the early 2000s, Randy Travis no longer ruled country radio the way he once had. His last Billboard country No. 1 had come in 1994 with “Whisper My Name.” Then he heard “Three Wooden Crosses.” Written by Doug Johnson and Kim Williams, the song told a story of faith, death and redemption. Randy was so struck by its final twist that he stopped his treadmill, rewound the cassette and listened again. Country radio responded too. In 2003, “Three Wooden Crosses” reached No. 1 — Randy’s first in almost nine years and ultimately his 16th and final Billboard country chart-topper. It also became the CMA Song of the Year. The song came from a gospel album. But it carried Randy Travis back to the top of country music. Sometimes the song nobody expects is the one that gives a legend one last No. 1.

Ten months after Waylon Jennings died, Jessi Colter sat at a white piano in Phoenix and sang a song about wanting just one more night with someone you love. Waylon died at their home in Chandler, Arizona, on February 13, 2002. He was 64. He and Jessi had been married for more than 32 years. Then, on December 30, at a gathering thrown by Waylon’s family at Phoenix’s Rhythm Room, Jessi went to the piano and played Elvis Presley’s “One Night.” A reporter there noted that the choice did not feel accidental. Earlier that evening, Jessi had said it was time to say goodbye to sorrow. For decades, she had sung beside Waylon, survived the hardest years with him, and built a life around the man behind the outlaw image. Now his chair was empty. And instead of singing one of Waylon’s songs, Jessi chose one about wishing one night could somehow be enough.

Billy Joe Shaver’s final performance happened in a kitchen. The last song he sang was “Live Forever” — a song he had written with the son he had already buried. In April 2020, with COVID shutting down stages, longtime guitarist Jeremy Lynn Woodall came to Billy Joe’s home to record a small performance. No crowd. No spotlight. Just Billy Joe in his kitchen, singing the song he and Eddy Shaver had written years earlier. By then, life had taken almost everything it could. A sawmill accident had cost him two fingers and part of another. In 1999, he lost both his wife Brenda and his mother to cancer. The next year, Eddy died. Then in 2001, Billy Joe suffered a heart attack onstage at Gruene Hall and survived bypass surgery. Still, he kept going. He had written or co-written nine songs on Waylon Jennings’ Honky Tonk Heroes, helping give outlaw country some of its most important words. About six months after that kitchen performance, Billy Joe died from a stroke at 81. Then, in 2022, Willie Nelson, George Strait, Miranda Lambert, Steve Earle and others recorded his songs for a tribute album. Its title was Live Forever. That kitchen performance wasn’t prophecy. It was something even better. Billy Joe Shaver had spent his whole life proving the song true.

WAYLON JENNINGS SPENT A LIFETIME DISTRUSTING OTHER PEOPLE’S ANSWERS ABOUT GOD. THEN HE WROTE HIS OWN. Waylon grew up in the Church of Christ in West Texas, hearing the kind of fire-and-brimstone preaching that stayed with him long after he stopped going to church. He never liked being told exactly what God was supposed to look like, who was going to heaven, or who deserved hell. That tension followed him for years. Then, in the 1990s, Waylon sat down and wrote “I Do Believe.” Jessi Colter later said the song surprised her. Waylon rarely expressed his faith that openly. But the message was unmistakable: he believed in God — just not through fear or somebody else’s rules. His faith was personal, imperfect, and entirely his own. Before the Highwaymen recorded it, Waylon played the song for his friend Will D. Campbell, the unconventional preacher and writer. Campbell listened and gave him two words: “That’ll preach.” The Highwaymen released “I Do Believe” on The Road Goes on Forever in 1995. It was never a major hit. Waylon later said he thought it might be the best song he ever wrote. For a man who spent his career refusing to let Nashville tell him how to sing, it made sense that he eventually refused to let anyone else tell him how to believe. Waylon Jennings never needed someone else to write his answer about God. Eventually, he wrote it himself.