Beau Jennings is a musician, a filmmaker and a self-described morning person who does his best work in the early hours of the day.
“That doesn’t always work out for someone who is a part of a band,” Jennings jokes.
The late hours and traveling that come hand in hand with a musician’s life, often make getting an early start difficult. Still, Jennings takes what he can get from his mornings.
He said an ideal day would consist of waking up in the silent hours of the morning, going for a jog while the rest of the world still sleeps and then coming back to a steaming pot of coffee.
But he's not picky. Jennings can work anywhere — in any environment, in any scenario.
“You never really know what’ll work until you get farther down the line,” Jennings said.
Jennings has gone coast to coast, touring the U.S. when he was still the front man for the indie-rock/Americana band, Cheyenne.
He will give his audience a first look at his latest project on Jan. 29 at TEDxOU. Jennings created a documentary which retraces the travels of famous artist Will Rogers across the country, calling it "The Verdigris: In search of Will Rogers."
The whole project started when Jennings decided to record the songs for his new album in the famous places Rogers had influenced.
“After that, things sort of spiraled out,” he said. “One thing led to another, and I decided to make it into more than just an album.”
Jennings said he was able to go to incredible places during the making of "The Verdigris." He gained experiences of a lifetime, but the memory that impacted him the most was visiting the spot in Alaska where Rogers famously crashed and brought an end to his iconic life so many years ago.
An Elmore Magazine review of the album version of "The Verdigris" described the album as “at once both beautiful and haunting, echoing with the sounds of nature and the tendrils of a revisited and reimagined past."
Susan Moring, the lead organizer for TEDxOU 2016, said she worked with Jennings before and knew he would be a great fit for this year’s TEDx.
Moring said she loved the angle he took with "The Verdigris," so she reached out to him be a performer at the TEDx event.
Moring said they try to keep a good mix of speakers and performers at TEDx. She said the program also tries to make sure that most of the speakers and performers have a tie of some sort to the OU campus and community.
This year Moring said they did a good job of doing that with nine of the 10 presenters, including Jennings, by tying them back to OU.
Jennings will perform several songs from his new album and air a short segment of his documentary in the second session of the event, Moring said.
Jennings said he is still mulling over what his exact message will be when he presents his TEDx performance. He said he is just looking forward to being on campus and being a part of it all. As a first time film maker, he wants to get the message across of what exactly it takes to make it.
“I always have something going," he said.
