“Diamonds,” with the late “Rhinestone Cowboy” on guitar, is the title track of the latest in a series of posthumous Waylon albums
Shooter Jennings is continuing the rollout of previously unheard Waylon Jennings recordings. On Sunday — Father’s Day — Jennings announced the release of the new LP Diamonds during an appearance on CBS Sunday Morning.
The album, due in physical formats and to download on Nov. 13 and streaming in December, is the latest example of Waylon’s commitment not to an outlaw aesthetic but to the music.
“When somebody is gone, there tends to be…the public remembrance of them can be distorted. People can remember the outlaw part of this or fantasize what he was like, but he’s not here to represent himself,” Jennings tells CBS Sunday Morning. “But what I felt was so important was you saw how much he loved music… He connected with those songs. All he cared about was music — it wasn’t about image, it wasn’t about money, or anything beyond wanting to be great at music and play music.”
Diamonds arrives with the release of the title track, a song that features Glen Campbell on guitar.
“This track eluded me,” Jennings said in a statement. “I kept finding it across three different sessions while I was going through my father‘s work. At first, I was very confused because of the sound of the guitar as to what it was. Suddenly, upon listening to the whole thing, I realized Glen Campbell had stopped by the studio and they recorded this little gem on a late December night in 1978. The remaining members of the Waylors helped put the picture together. It quickly became one of my favorite recordings that my dad ever made and I knew I had to have a whole album centered around it.”
Diamonds, released via Son of Jessi/Thirty Tigers, follows 2025’s Songbird, the first in a series of Waylon albums that Jennings, who won his latest Grammy this year for producing Robert Randolph’s Preacher Kids, plans to release.
On an appearance on Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now podcast, Jennings talked about the ongoing interest in all things Waylon. He even said he’s been approached about opening a Waylon Jennings bar in Nashville. “There was a while where I would not do it because he didn’t drink, and I thought it was a weird thing,” Jennings told Nashville Now. “But now I’d totally do it if it was the right thing. And there have been talks about it.”