In ‘Ashes,’ Colter steps out of the shadows

Ask country singer Jessi Colter where she has found salvation and she might describe the cowboy congregation at her church, a wood-frame chapel that backs up to the mountains north of Scottsdale, Ariz. But she might just as well rattle off the names of her favorite L.A. bars, such as Molly Malone’s and Malibu Inn, because “the streets can be about salvation too, and they can be an awful lot of fun.”

In either place, you can be sure that when Colter walks by, someone will whisper “There goes the widow of Waylon Jennings.” It’s a title that carries a measure of accomplishment as well as grief: It may be hard to be an outlaw, but it’s nothing compared to being the wife of one for three decades.

“Early on, I knew I had to learn to share him with the world,” Colter, 58, says of her husband, who died in 2002 after 33 years of marriage. “The fact of the matter is that he was a loner. It was that whole cowboy mentality. He was generous and loving and he gave me all the love he had to give, but he was his own man too.”

And now Colter is, truly, her own woman. She has a new album of country music, her first since 1984, titled “Out of the Ashes,” a music meld of roadhouse and church hall -- a pretty good description of the singer herself. On Wednesday night she visited the Viper Room to play the songs with her son, Shooter Jennings, at her side and her late husband on her mind.

“After he died I was rocked and I was fighting for my life,” she said in hushed tones. She was sitting in a backroom at the Sunset Boulevard club a few hours before stage call. “I found that if you don’t keep taking steps forward, there ain’t a cut dog’s chance that you’re going to survive. Part of you is gone, but you got to hold on to the rest or you’re done. And I’ve always been a person who has lived life.”

Colter was born Mirriam Johnson in Phoenix and was playing piano in a Pentecostal church by age 11. She got her stage name from an ancestor who purportedly rode with Jesse James.

Her talent caught the ear of early guitar hero Duane Eddy and her pretty face caught his eye. He produced her 1961 single “Lonesome Road” and two years later married her. In 1968, they divorced. A year later she was at the altar with Jennings.

“I was married as a teenager and been pretty much married my whole life,” she said. “I never had that span of being single. So after Waylon left, I started hanging out with Shooter in L.A. with all of the 20-year-olds on the street, all the rockers. They were intelligent in their perspectives, and they have such great drive. I came into a real period of discovery for myself as a woman. And the new songs are about that discovery.” The album came together after Colter, having lunch with old friend Don Was, picked up a guitar and casually played some of her new compositions for the Grammy-winning producer.

“I was blown away,” Was said of the raw music he heard. He told her if “you have 10 more like that, we have an album.” The final collection is songs of honky-tonk flirtation and from-the-gut spirituality with bluesy guitar and harmonica work. In some spots it has the feel of a low-fi Bonnie Raitt and in other places the cadence of Patsy Cline singing spirituals.

Kris Kristofferson once described Colter as “the real thing -- truth and beauty ... No music is closer to the music in my soul” but, except for famous family connections, she is largely unknown to the alt-country audience she’s reaching out to with the new CD, which will be released Tuesday by Shout Factory. Was said the new music reveals plenty about its singer.

“She has always had a powerful personality but married to Waylon, I mean this was a guy larger than life, an enormous character,” the producer said. “It’s easy to get lost in the shadows around somebody like that. This is the music of her finding her way out.”

The album is driven by Colter’s keyboards and her “funky internal groove, which defies customary country music in a way,” Was said. It’s not an album that Colter could have made when Jennings was alive. “No,” Was said with a chuckle, “that would be downright discourteous.”

The reason for that are the moments of sexuality and flinty resolve that speak to the widow’s new path. The producer added: “It’s the best work she’s ever done. It’s a new chapter to her career.” Colter’s biggest solo hit was the 1975 “I’m Not Lisa,” and she was well-known to Jennings fans as part of his stage shows, for their duet on “Suspicious Minds” in 1976 and the tender “Storms Never Last,” which she wrote and which includes these lines: Storms never last do they baby /Bad times all pass with the wind /Your hand in mine stills the thunder/ And you make the sun want to shine.

With the exception of recording two albums of children’s music that were released in 1995 and 2000, Colter set aside her career almost completely as her husband’s substance-abuse and health issues mounted. The iconic outlaw singer beat his cocaine habit but, in his fading years, he lost a foot and his strength to diabetes. He died at 64.

Colter’s son, Shooter, has a growing country career of his own and resembles his father enough that he portrayed him in the film “Walk the Line.” At the Viper Room show the crowd gave a rousing ovation for the mother-son tandem as they ripped through songs from the new album. Especially affecting was their performance of “Please Carry Me Home,” a gothic gospel number the parent and child wrote together. Famed sideman Tony Joe White gave grit to the set as Colter played keyboards and Was handled stand-up bass. Colter, who looks at least 15 years younger than her age, seemed giddy looking out on the crowd, but her performance was focused and endearing.

Early in the night, before the crowd arrived, she conceded that she was nervous about the show.

“Oh yes, I’m scared to death. But I don’t care about the fall; I’m going to take that leap. Waylon would kick my ass if I didn’t do things that scared me.”

Asked what song by her husband she enjoys performing most, she answered without hesitation: “I Wonder Just Where I Went Wrong,” a lesser-known 1966 song about a lover losing faith in the only thing he’s sure of.

“God, the way he wrote songs, the way he used minor notes. Oh yes, I do miss him. His maestro, his talent.... He was a great satisfaction to me.” Now Colter gets satisfaction from watching the strange dance of single people sizing each other by the jukebox glare. “It fascinates me to watch people and also discover life myself out there. The main thing is to keep an eye on the hard parts of your own heart and to keep God in my life. The most important thing I do everyday is to learn about God, everything else is second.”

That quick conversational slide from earthy Saturday night to heavenly Sunday morning is an easy one for Colter. “You can find salvation and discovery in both as long as you’re true to yourself.”

The new album’s title song, “Out of the Ashes,” is a fitting one for a widow who was herself born in Phoenix. The song was inspired by a different Arizona locale -- Lees Ferry, where copper cliffs and a river painted by emerald algae create a vista that Colter keeps in her mind no matter where she goes.

“The black night there, it puts stars in your eyes,” she said. “I have that image in my mind always and it fell into this song. It’s a place where he can feel the things you fear, all the things that pierce your mind.”

It was time for Colter to go and get ready for the show. She nodded, dipping her cowboy hat, and shook hands. She paused and then tried to sum up everything she has learned and sung about since her husband passed away.

“You have to face things and you have to face them barefoot. You can’t run. You have to choose to live. And I’m good at that.”