As a mainstay of the Norman music scene, singer/songwriter Beau Jennings has spent a couple decades writing songs about working class wonders and hometown heroes, and with his electrified backing band, The Tigers, he’s already become something of an Americana ambassador for his little college town that punches far above its weight.
But on the band’s newest album, “American Stories, Major Chords,” Jennings is widening his scope to consider the whole spectrum of American life by zooming way in on the people, places, and preoccupations of his Norman home, even if he says that it wasn’t his original intention to be quite so geographically specific.
Beau Jennings: I didn't have that much foresight to say “I'm going to write a record of, you know, Norman songs about Norman people.” It's just, it's where I live, it's who I'm around, and it's what I know.
And so, those are the types of things that come to me, at least in this phase in my life, and as, you know, what I'm doing songwriting-wise right now, those are just the things that that compel me to write about.
And so, yeah, just the places, the characters, the stories, they all just kind of seem to be Norman-centric this time around.
Brett Fieldcamp: These new songs are primarily stories about growing up, about crashing into adulthood and reconciling those new responsibilities with the past and the world immediately around you.
The personal details and emotions that seeped into the lyrics, Jennings says, weren’t exactly planned or anticipated, but became a natural part of the songwriting as he started to consider his own distance from his own past.
Beau Jennings: I wasn't setting out to write extremely personal songs this time around. And I don't even know if I would say they are. I mean, as I think about the songs on the record, there are some.
The song “Boston Avenue,” that's a song about a childhood friend of mine that I lost pretty young, and it's taken me, you know, like, 30 years to write about it and finally put something out. So the songs just kind of come when they're when they're ready, you know.
Brett Fieldcamp: Norman served as the backdrop for Jennings’ own journey into adulthood since he moved to the city to study architecture at OU, setting off a path that would take him all the way to London and eventually a stint living in New York, and there are shades and references to those experiences across the new album as well.
But when he began exploring the stories of modern living and modern reflection, it was the name drops and nods to his adopted home town that grounded them and helped bring them to life.
Beau Jennings: It's just more interesting to me to talk about specific places like the Bar-a-cuda or the Sooner Superette. I talk about all the specific, weird, hyper-local references. Some are just really funny to me. Some are just really compelling.
Brett Fieldcamp: Jennings and the Tigers have always placed that kind of simple, human storytelling within the context of their straightforward rock and alternative country style, but this time around, they also brought the undeniable influence of legendary roots rocker Tom Petty, whose catalog the band had recently learned and covered for a short series of concerts, offering them a crash course in the importance and appeal of not overthinking.
Beau Jennings: It’s really easy to get in your own way and to complicate things. And I really do love keeping that in the back of my brain as you're working on something like “I wonder what Tom Petty would do here.” And it usually just means “hey, man, let's just go to the chorus now.”
Brett Fieldcamp: But even with all the inspiration creeping in from classic rock influences and long-held past experiences, Jennings doesn’t feel like the songs on “American Stories, Major Chords” are looking backward or longing for the past.
Instead, they’re about the perspectives developed at this point in time, by this point in life, and about the physical landmarks that help set the scene and the neighbors along for the ride beside you.
Beau Jennings: People tend to say “I'm not nostalgic. I don't do nostalgia.” And I'm just not that way. I do think a lot about the past.
I just know that these are things that happened to me and that I lived, and I'm just writing about them. If that's nostalgia, so be it. This is just my life story, and it was time to put it down in song.
Brett Fieldcamp: “American Stories, Major Chords” by Beau Jennings and the Tigers drops everywhere October 18th, with a release show that same night at The Blue Door in OKC and the next night at Mercury Lounge in Tulsa.
For a closer look at those events and more, check out the Events page at KGOU.org.
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