When Jake Worthington performed at the Grand Ole Opry recently, he brought a special guest with him —a bit of family history, as he played his late grandfather’s guitar, while standing on the famed six-foot diameter oak circle embedded in the center of the Opry House stage.
“My papaw was a big reason why I got the itch for a song,” Worthington tells Billboard, noting that his grandfather raised him on the sounds of George Jones, Merle Haggard and Ray Price. “He played dance halls in Texas, and he was a singer-songwriter. My dad has had [the guitar] for a while, and it wasn’t about maybe two months ago, he said, ‘Hey, you need to take this home.’ So ever since I’ve had it, I’ve been using it. To be playing the Opry, I thought it was appropriate.”
On the La Porte, Texas native’s (just southeast of Houston) second album When I Write The Song, out today (Sept. 12) on Big Loud Texas, Worthington also brings bit of history to the fore, with his throwback sound that feels pulled directly from dusty honky-tonks and barrooms that inspired Texas country greats such as George Jones and Willie Nelson. Alongside contemporaries including tourmate Zach Top, Worthington has played a key role in reinvigorating modern country music with a sterling shot of old-school country sounds.
“I like my music to sound like live music,” Worthington says. “And to me, it’s not a specific sub-genre of a type, It’s just country music to me. For the last good while, it seemed almost d–n near impossible to get anybody behind that idea, within country music. And I think I’ve never been more inspired with the world of music right now. I think it’s still the Wild West, and I like that it’s hairy and it’s a ‘Nobody’s going to do it for you’ type of thing. I just want to make music that I love and something I believe in, and I can only hope folks take to it.”
His new album continues to showcase Worthington’s growing star power as an ardent devotee of country music’s timeless sounds. His warm vocal, an instrument he can effortlessly bend to his will in old-school singing reminiscent of Jones or Mark Chesnutt, anchors Western swing in “My Home’s In Oklahoma,” ‘90s country-esque sounds in the humorous “Two First Names,” and somber, honky-tonk self-reflection on “I Only Drink When It Rains.” Fiddle, steel guitar, piano, and acoustic guitars flow throughout the album.
Worthington is a currently nominated for entertainer of the year at November’s Texas Country Music Association Awards, while the new album’s “It Ain’t The Whiskey” is nominated for the TCMA’s country single of the year accolade.
Worthington has been signed with Big Loud since 2021 and when Miranda Lambert and Jon Randall teamed with Big Loud to form Big Loud Texas in 2023, they quickly brought Worthington into the fold.
“I feel like it just garnered me more champions within the company,” Worthington says. “I feel really grateful for that.”
As the album’s title nods to, Worthington had a hand in writing nearly every song on the album. The lone exception is a song Lambert wrote with Jesse Frasure, Dean Dillon and Jessie Jo Dillon.
“She told me the story that she had gotten the write with Dean and they had tossed ideas out and nothing was happening. I guess it started raining and Dean is pretty well known to just go light a cigarette, walk away and come back with brilliance. I guess he lit a cigarette and said, ‘Hello, shitty day,’ and Miranda had said, ‘I want to write that.’”
Lambert sent the song to Worthington, who immediately decided to record it and asked Lambert to sing on it.
“When it’s all said and done, there will never be no one like her, and I feel really fortunate that I’ve gotten to see that firsthand. I just thought, hearing her sing, ‘She’s one of the best singers I’ve ever heard in my life,” Worthington says.
Country Music Hall of Famer Marty Stuart joins him on “I’m The One,” which has its own piece of guitar history embedded in the recording.
“Marty’s the coolest guy out there, and he is a steward of country music,” Worthington says. “When we did the [recording] session, he had brought the Clarence White Telecaster [which belonged to late Byrds musician Clarence White] and that’s cultural architecture right there. They had put me in the vocal booth with Marty and they had an old reverb. I was singing, and he had the Clarence White going and you could feel the air off the amp, like I was getting baptized in it.”
Worthington says Stuart also brought to the session a Martin D-45 guitar once owned by Hank Williams, Sr. “It had this bow tie inlay at the top by the bridge. Marty’s the type of guy that’ll be wearing a $50 gig bag around his neck, and it’s got a million-dollar guitar in it. It could be Jimmie Rodgers’ guitar, it could be Merle Haggard’s guitar.”
The tender, piano-led track “I Feel You,” featuring harmonies from stellar vocalist Mae Estes, was written by Worthington with Roger Springer and Jacob Weinschenk — though Worthington says it also led to an eyebrow-raising, humorous situation when he played it for his wife Sophie.
“They really got started on that. I’m writing it with them and I’m just smelling the brownie points,” he recalls. “I’m thinking, ‘Sophie’s gonna love this because they are true feelings and things that I probably don’t say enough.’ I got home to play it for her, she’s listening to it and I’m thinking she’s just going to be knocked out by it. She goes, ‘Who the f—k’s got auburn hair?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, s—t. That’s Jacob’s wife.’ So for me to sing it, we had to change that lyric to ‘golden.’ So that was a fun little part of that.”
Worthington also has his wife Sophie to thank for bringing in Estes to sing on the track. “I recorded it and realized the song needed a strong female harmony vocal. I called Sophie and got her thoughts on it and she goes, ‘If you don’t call Mae Estes right now, you’re about the dumbest son of a b—ch.’ So that’s what I did. I called and left Mae a voicemail at 3:30 in the morning and asked her to sing on the song. She said yes before she even heard it. I had already put my vocal down on it, but it was important to me to sing it together, so I canned that s—t and she came into the studio and we sang it together.”
Off the studio, Worthington has been soaking in his new role as dad to the couple’s daughter Whitley, born nearly a year ago. “Me and Sophie are very, very lucky people. We have a healthy, healthy, beautiful baby girl,” says Worthington.
He also notes his daughter is already showing some love for classic country: “She loves Merle Haggard. I mean, that girl could be just having a hissy fit, but Mama puts on a YouTube video of Merle Haggard live on [Austin City Limits], that little booger will flip around and find that music and just be mesmerized by it. And I sing her the same old songs I heard as a kid, ‘Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down.’ And I would sing [Wynn Stewart’s] ‘It’s Such A Pretty World Today.’”
As he releases his sophomore project, Worthington is bringing his brand of country music to fans as direct support on Zach Top’s Cold Beer & Country Music Tour, and opening slots on Jon Pardi’s Honkytonk Hollywood Tour.
“This is the second chapter in a book that I hope has a whole lot of chapters,” he says.
