NASHVILLE, MAY 19, 1979. JESSI COLTER WAS IN LABOR. WAYLON JENNINGS WAS 200 MILES AWAY, TUNING HIS GUITAR FOR A SOLD-OUT SHOW HE REFUSED TO CANCEL. THE BABY CAME AT 2:47 IN THE MORNING. WAYLON HEARD ABOUT IT FROM A PAYPHONE BACKSTAGE AND LIT A CIGARETTE BEFORE HE SAID ANYTHING. They named him Waylon Albright Jennings, but Waylon called him Shooter from the first time he held him. The boy grew up on tour buses and in dressing rooms, sleeping under coats while his father played until 2 AM. Waylon was not a soft father in those years. He was on cocaine. He was on the road 280 nights a year. Shooter has said in interviews that he sometimes went six weeks without seeing him, even when they lived in the same house. Then 1988 happened. Waylon got clean. He looked at his nine-year-old son and saw a stranger he had helped raise from a distance. He cancelled tours. He stayed home. For the last fourteen years of his life, he taught Shooter guitar at the kitchen table, drove him to school, sat in the bleachers at Little League games where nobody knew who he was. Shooter has told one story from those years that he has never told the same way twice — about a night Waylon woke him up at 3 AM with a guitar in his hands and a question that took the boy twenty more years to understand. What Waylon asked him that night, and what Shooter finally answered, is the part of the story that explains the rest. What did your father give you late — and did you ever get to tell him you noticed?
The Question Waylon Jennings Asked Shooter at 3 A.M. Nashville, May 19, 1979. Jessi Colter was in labor, and Waylon…