Not to say his stint in rock didn't have an impact--his solo debut, Put the O Back in Country, is meant to make as much of an outlaw statement as his father made with his own career. "Right now, country's saturated with pop acts," Jennings says. "It happened with rock too. You had Led Zeppelin, then, 10 years later, everyone was fucking Whitesnake. The machine just grabs onto something. Unfortunately, Garth Brooks made country music turn into this fucking big explosion onstage, flying around, more about the show than about the music. It lost something along the way. So I'm just saying, come on, where are the Merles, the Waylons and the Willies? Bring back the energy, the realness, the characters, the people."