Don't let Shooter Jennings fool you.

Sure, he rocks. He's lean and wiry, with tattoos snaking up his arms ? his mother's name on one, a gun on the other ? and a crimson stud gleaming in one ear. He's played sold-out shows at the Viper Room and the Roxy. He's subbed for Axl Rose onstage ? twice ? with Guns N' Roses.

But look a little closer. Underneath that gun are the letters CBCS, for "country boy can survive." That earring turns out to be an eagle silhouette spreadwinged into the letter "W" ? an icon known by anyone who has listened to and loved the original outlaw, Waylon Jennings.

That same icon is etched onto Shooter's stomach, but the one in his ear is even more special.

"My dad got his ear pierced when he was ? I swear to God ? sixty, because he wanted to be like me," the younger Jennings explains. "This was the earring he wore ? and I'm wearing it now."

If that's not enough to make it clear that bloodlines run deep from father to son, then check out Shooter's debut album, PUT THE ?O? BACK IN COUNTRY. The passion on "Southern Comfort," scraped raw from the walls of some backwoods church ? the guitars on "Daddy's Farm," stacked, harmonized and slathered in deep-fried soul ? "4th of July," a crank-it-up summer celebration sweetened by a sprinkling of George Jones ? the treadshredding, back-road, hairpin spin of "Busted in Baylor County" ? and, above all, "Put the 'O' Back in Country," which jabs a finger in the eye of everything that's wrong with America's music today ? <p> Hoss, it's country music, the way it ought to be ? alive with blood and thunder, spit and spirit and Southern soul.

Waylon fought this battle in his own way, back in the day. But the sun has sunk and the shadows have spread deeper across country music since then. And as cowboy poseurs roam this dim and dreary land, Shooter sets it ablaze with an affirmation that country music ? real country music ? is back.

And this time it's not going away.

"The main thing I want people to understand is that I'm a country artist," Shooter says. "Sure, there's rock in there. I've played a lot of rock & roll. I take a lot from it. But it's country music. And I'm going to push it as far as I can because it's that important."

"I'm rollin' like a freight train, comin' straight at you/I'm playin' hillbilly music, like I was born to do/You know, it ain't country music you've been listenin' to."
? "Put the 'O' Back in Country"

Waylon Albright Jennings was born rollin'. The only child of Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter, he lived his first few years in a crib on his parents' tour bus. "I thought everybody's family was like mine," he remembers. "We'd check out of hotels and travel all night. Songwriting, shows, stage setups, the band, the crew, the bus, the trucks ? all that stuff was normal. And I loved it. To this day I sleep better on the bus than anywhere else."

Above all, there was the music ? though, strange as it seems, Shooter never thought of it as something he himself would ever do. "I remember hearing Dad's band," he says. "They were always great. I loved the way those shows felt, with the colored lights coming on. I can still really see him onstage, starting 'Luckenbach, Texas.' Night after night, I'd watch from the wings. But I never put two and two together, like, 'Maybe I'll get older and do this too.'"

Without thinking about it much, Shooter started making music anyway. By age five he was playing drums. Between tours, back in Nashville, he took piano lessons, didn't like them, stopped, then started teaching himself and enjoying it more. He picked up his guitar at fourteen and hasn't put it down since. He and his dad recorded a few things together when they happened to have some microphones set up and the tape recorder plugged in. Then at sixteen he discovered rock & roll.