Original rock’n’roller Wanda Jackson has released another preview of her upcoming Encore album, to be released on August 20 on Big Machine Records/Blackheart Records.
The new track is “Two Shots,” which like its predecessor, her country-tinged version of the Johnny Tillotson hit “That’s What Love Is,” features a rocking figurehead of a later generation, Joan Jett. She and her band the Blackhearts are frequent contributors to Encore.
The new track adds the further collaboration of genre-crossing singer-songwriter Elle King, and is written by David Ryan Harris, and Tanner Elle Schneider. King is currently enjoying success on the country charts and airwaves as the featured artist on Miranda Lambert’s “Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home).”
Jett also features on the album’s “Treat Me Like A Lady,” while “Can’t Keep A Good Girl Down” features Angaleena Presley and Candi Carpenter. Jackson co-wrote half of the album herself, with such collaborators as Presley, Lori McKenna, Will Hoge, Luke Laird, and Sonia Leigh. The album also features such tracks as Christopher Casello and Robin Lynn Grant’s opening “Big Baby” and Jett’s composition “You Drive Me Wild.”
Jackson, now aged 83, recorded Encore just before announcing her retirement after an extraordinary 64-year career. The album serves as an apt final chapter to the career of an artist who, as the album publicity observes, has “for seven decades…made fringe sing, bodies swing and the mind do untold things.”
Alongside Jett among the prominent contributors to Encore is Jackson’s longtime co-producer Kenny Laguna, and venerable producer-engineer Thom Panunzio (John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, Dr. Dré, Stevie Nicks, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan). Also on board are Jackson’s granddaughter and manager Jordan Breanne Simpson and Alden Witt.
Sometimes described as the “original Riot Grrl,” Jackson told Record Collector magazine in 2007: “The first time I heard myself sing, I cried and cried. I didn’t think I could ever be a singer if I sounded like that. But I kept doing it because I loved it. It was my passion.”
Pre-order Wanda Jackson’s Encore, which is released on August 20.