Shooter Jennings is one rugged individual, much like his dad was. (That "dad," by the way, was none other than the iconic Waylon Jennings). Shooter's debut CD, "Put The 'O' Back In Country," has just been released on Universal South. And while Jennings doesn't have that distinctively low singing voice his dad had (at least not yet), his scratchy vocalizing certainly carries with it a familiar familial outlaw spirit.

Jennings is the only child Jessi Colter and Waylon had together. And since he's the offspring of two certified musical rebels, one just expects his music to be equally confrontational.

The title track of his new release includes a snippet of George Jones' "He Stopped Loving Her Today," which adds an exclamation point to exactly what Jennings believes to be real country. The disc also features a song about a drug bust, called "Busted In Baylor County." Yep, he's a chip off the old block, all right.

"He always told me, 'Don't try to be like anybody else because you won't ever be,'" replies Jennings, when asked what - if any - advice his dad gave him. And these aren't fluffy 'do as I say, not as I do' words either, since Waylon also practiced exactly what he preached."He also gave me a lot of good advice about this (music) business," Jennings continues. "(Like) watch your ass, play your cards right, and make sure that you're in creative control. As long as you've got creative control and artistic freedom, then that's all you'll need."

Colter, by the way, is the only one that warns him about the evils of the music business and has expressed second thoughts about his involvement in it.

"My mom always says that to me, 'Are you really sure you want to be in the music business?' But she's cool about it. They (mom and dad) know the course. They know what you're in for. But at the same time, they understand the passion behind it. My dad was really supportive of the music because he just loved music. And he was supportive of me playing it because he knew I loved it. I think that excited him."

Shooter realized that music was his calling, the moment he discovered the magic that could be created in a recording studio.

"I played drums since I was real young," he recounts. "Then I picked up piano a little bit later. And I would always mess around with it. And I loved music. I loved buying music and listening to it. But it didn't click for me until I was like 13 or 14. I went into a portable studio, and I started recording on tracks. And I was, like, 'This is great!' That's what got me excited. And here I am about 10 years later, sitting in New York City about to play a show."

The love of singing and playing came first, and then the recording buzz happened next. But the whole songwriting end of it all is still a work in progress.

"I still don't think I have the skills," he admits about the songwriting art. "I remember the first couple of songs I wrote were pretty bad. But I just remember being excited about it. Just excited creating - creating songs and music. The thing that really fired it off for me, and made me the most excited, was when I could create my own stuff. The fact that Tony Brown (one of Universal South's senior partners) is letting me do what I want to do and putting my record out - whatever it is I do - that's awesome to me. That's the biggest gift and the best thing in the world."

Jennings is with Universal South, mainly because this is a label that understands and appreciates his unique intersection of country roots and rock and roll spirit. He started out wanting to be a rocker and even played in rock bands. But the man just can't help it that his familial country roots run so deep.

So what made Jennings "ready for the country," so to speak? Did he just decide to change directions?

"It wasn't as black and white as that," he explains. "It was more kind of like, I had this rock band, and I loved it. And I loved doing that, and I was younger when I started it. I had it for seven years, and we really worked hard in LA. Whereas in Nashville, I was kind a big fish in a little pond, but in LA I was definitely a little fish in a big pond."

"But as I started getting older, I started appreciating country music a lot more and getting more excited about it - getting more excited about the lyrics and the storytelling. And I started cutting this other record with these other guys. And I didn't really say, 'Hey, now I've gone country.' It was really kind of like I wanted to make all the music that I loved, including the rock and roll and the country. I really wanted to bring it all into one thing."

"I really didn't think Nashville was going to embrace it like they have. I really thought they were going to fight against me and just say, 'Oh, this is too rock and roll.' I was really surprised and excited when I felt like they were into it. Now we're on CMT and all that, and it's exciting."

Sure, he vowed never to become a country singer once - but never seriously.

"(I did) when I was a little kid," he confesses. "But that doesn't count. Because when you're little, you don't want to do what your parents did. And then you get older, and you realize, 'Boy, I'm pretty good at this!'"

These days, it's not so unusual to see Jennings' meld of rock with country, so his label doesn't really need to treat him like some kind of a unique case.

"I don't think they're doing anything special," he says. "I don't think they're trying to do anything different from what they do for anybody else. I think they're just trying to get my personality out there. My whole thing is that I'm a kid who loves rock and roll, and who loves his Seventies music. I love the Seventies country and rock and roll. I think it's all great, and I feel there are a lot of kids out there like me. And I feel like there is a whole generation of people that understand country in a whole different way and the old real artists, like the Waylons, and the Willies and the Merles and the Hank, Jr.s and the Johnny Cashes and the Jimmie Rodgers and the Hank Williams, Sr.s, you know?"

"There's a generation who appreciate that and appreciate those ' people telling their stories and the real deal. And I think what I want to do, and what the label wants to do, is just appeal to that audience, because I believe it exists. They're not being catered to, you know what I mean?"

However, his country music debut may have been delayed significantly, had he been asked to join one particular LA band that he once auditioned for.

"I sang with all those guys (from Guns 'N Roses)," he says. "It was basically Velvet Revolver. It was before they got Scott Weiland. They were auditioning singers and auditioned another guy and stuff. And then they asked me to do a show with them. I ended up doing a couple of shows with them. They asked me to do them, and it was awesome. It was crazy. I moved to LA because I loved that (Guns 'N Roses) band so much. And I was really excited about being in a rock band. But after I did that thing, I said, 'Well, I think I'm done with rock and roll right now.'"

Just like his dad, Shooter also has a wild side. He's certainly not been the perfect little church boy. But at the same time, he's smart enough to have avoided becoming yet another music business casualty."I feel like I've calmed down a lot," he explains. "We (speaking of his prior group Stargunn) were definitely the real rock band, so we were definitely wild and everything like that. But now that I've gotten a little older, I think I've settled down because Stargunn was a wild experience. Those guys were great, but drunk all the time, and that kind of stuff. Now I try to take it a little bit easier."

It's no secret that his dad battled substance abuses. But Waylon never took a heavy hand with Shooter when it came to teaching his son about this chemical dark side in the music business.

"He talked to me about drugs because he took drugs," Shooter says frankly. "He was on cocaine a lot in the Seventies, and whatnot. Basically, he just said it like this: 'I'm not going to tell you not to do it, and I'm not going to tell you that it's bad.' Because, he said, 'If I didn't have a family and all that, I'd probably still be doing it.' He said, 'When you have people that depend on you...when you live in a cave, you can do it. But when people depend on you, it affects them, and it's not fair to them.' It was a very good way of putting it. It definitely put me in a place where I was very balanced about it. Because a lot of kids whose parents say, 'Don't do drugs. It's bad, it's bad, it's bad.' They want to do it really bad. So he put me in a position of like, hey, 'You're probably going to mess around with all that stuff. But you need to know you can't do it and control yourself'."

Jennings had the distinct advantage of hanging out with other kids that knew exactly what it was like to be the daughter or the son of a music legend.

"Johnny, Willie and Kris' kids, I got to know a lot," he explains. "When I was younger, they (his dad and his dad's artist friends) were doing the Highwaymen thing, and we were all out on the road together at the same time. We so we all kind, in a way, grew up around each other. And we still connect. I still connect with different ones from time to time. I was talking with Amy Nelson just the other day. They're great people, and we're the only people in the world that understand each other because we've all been through the same thing. The same kind of gypsy life, that normal people don't really understand."

And does it concern Shooter that he'll forever be compared to his father's great accomplishments?

"No. I mean, I'm proud of that stuff. I feel like what I do is my own because I've been working at it for so long. It doesn't bother me. If they compare me to him, that's great. If they say I'm not as good as him, I'll agree."

No doubt about it: Shooter is a one honest, straight shooter, just like his old man.