Jenny Tolman enlisted country great Jeannie Seely for “Who’ll Be Your Fool” a sweetly retro new song from the deluxe edition of her debut album, There Goes the Neighborhood. The doo-wop-y waltz is just the thing to play out of the jukebox in the malt shop of Jennyville — the fictional town in which Tolman’s songs take place — during a tender moment.
Written by Tolman, her producer and now-fiance Dave Brainard, and Bill Whyte, “Who’ll Be Your Fool” finds its protagonist wondering who her beau will find comfort in next. “Who’ll be the one to give you their all? / Love the world out of you / End up feelin’ so small? / Who’ll be your fool when I’m gone?,” goes the chorus.
“I’ve actually been wanting Jeannie Seely to be the mayor of Jennyville!” Tolman told The Boot in 2019. “She’s a Jennyville character for sure. She was the first woman to ever wear a miniskirt on the Opry [stage]! Did you know that?”
“Who’ll Be Your Fool” is one of three new songs on the recently released deluxe edition of There Goes the Neighborhood, which Tolman originally dropped in 2019. The other two new songs are a cover of “Still Gonna Die,” written by Shel Silverstein and performed by Waylon Jennings, Mel Tillis, Bobby Bare and Jerry Reed as Old Dogs, and “Tabitha,” one of the first songs that Tolman ever completed, when she was 18 years old.
“Selfishly, I wasn’t ready to give up on this album — I knew there were so many people who hadn’t even heard of it — so Dave and I came up with this idea to add three new songs to the original 13-track album and promote it as a deluxe version,” Tolman shares in a press release. “For all the people who have never heard the album, there’s plenty here for you to discover, and for the people who have heard the album, there are three new songs I’m excited to share with you.”
Since the release of There Goes the Neighborhood, Tolman has also released another new song, “Invent a T-Shirt.”
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