Jessi Colter's 'Edge of Forever' shows undying passion for country's timeless traditions

Jessi Colter sat with The Tennessean in the lobby of the Loews Vanderbilt Hotel during a recent afternoon, filled with the excitement and verve of a new artist working with an established star and top producer on her best music yet.

However, Colter is a Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipient who is 13 studio albums into an iconic outlaw country career.

Her latest release, "Edge of Forever," is produced by Americana award-winning rock star Margo Price and mixed by another Grammy winner: country producer Shooter Jennings.

Shooter is Jessi's son with Country Music Hall of Famer and fellow outlaw icon Waylon Jennings.

"It's an exciting compliment to how I view what I do when people proudly compare my work to Margo, Tyler Childers, Charley Crockett and others," she said.

Call what she does "outlaw," though, and Colter paused.

"Outlaw is a brand-as-legacy that is an unduplicated creative moment that has proven to stand the test of time," she explained. "However, none of us who were the original 'outlaws' ever liked being branded. We were more concerned...with expanding things past clean-cut expectations."

About the branding of the platinum-selling 1975 album "Wanted! The Outlaws" which featured Colter, Tompall Glaser, Jennings, and Willie Nelson, the elder Jennings noted the following in his 1996 autobiography:

"We loved the energy of rock and roll, but rock had self-destructed. Country had gone syrupy. For us, 'outlaw' meant standing up for your rights and way of doing things. It felt like a different music; outlaw was as good a description as any."

Talk with Colter about where her creativity has remained throughout her career and there's no discussion of dive bars and wild nights. Instead, she's quick to mention boogie-woogie blues played in Southern dancehalls, Reverend James Cleveland's iconic gospel ballad "Can't Nobody Do Me Like Jesus" and rock-tinged parts of her early catalog like 1970-released Mickey Newbury-written track "Why You Been Gone So Long."

What results on "Edge of Forever" is what Colter called an "uncategorizable mixed bag" of collaborations with Price and her daughter, Jenni Eddy Jennings, never-before-heard songs that Colter and Waylon Jennings wrote in the 1970s, ballads, long-lost sheet music Colter discovered in an old briefcase and gospel-influenced, honky-tonk party tracks.

Alongside Price, she sings "I Wanna Be With You," a song Colter originally released as a solo cut on her 1984 album "Rock and Roll Lullaby."

When appearing alongside Colter, the Grammy-winning country performer noted that Price isn't a glamorous, politically progressive, socially liberated psychedelic rocker. Instead, she's a "gracious, terrific vocalist built for long-lasting career success."

Via a press statement, Price called Colter a "refined songwriter" and "wild force of nature in a Mercedes convertible," with a "strong, inspiring faith."

Their mutual admiration society is a palpable, real thing that infuses a sense of pure love into the overall release.

For Colter, the album's title track bears strong similarities to her earliest work cut with iconic RCA Records chief Chet Atkins, work with Lenny Kaye on "The Psalms," a 2017-released "psychedelic Christmas album," plus bearing her son Shooter's ability to dive into her spiritualized lyricism and invigorate its most focused core components.

She recalled the song's composition bearing orchestral similarities to her breakout, 1975 hit "I'm Not Lisa," too.

"Sometimes the rhythms in the words match the rhythms in the chords and mix with your lived-in experiences," Colter continued.

Other songs on "Edge of Forever," like "Angel In The Fire" and "Secret Place," are inspired by her opening the mysticism in her songwriting process up to the lives of her co-writers.

She experienced an "aw shucks" exclamatory moment when asked about the award-winning prowess of her album's mixer and producer: "I'm still having fun and working with people who are the people's choice, it seems!"

Times she's spent in recording studios with her son have often included impromptu sing-along interruptions when Colter belts out songs like Roger Miller's take on Ray Price's 1958 classic "Invitation To The Blues."

She's a hard-working creator, still willing to let down her hair in pursuit of the fun that exists in pure creative freedom.

Similarly, she called her son's most significant value to music a trustworthy ability, gleaned by osmosis and sitting in his teenage bedroom mastering Pro Tools, to blend multi-generational influences into re-setting a timeless bar for general excellence in the craft.

In a 2020 interview, Jennings stated, "A great record takes you on a journey that feels right."

Shooter's statement resonates deeply when held up against a quote from his mother about where her most recent album's creative process has left her along her perpetual journey to improve her craft: "Know what I am? I'm God's child and still a struggling girl singer who loves what I do and hopefully can hit the finish line as a success one day."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Jessi Colter's new album showcases timeless country music traditions