Across the Borderline (1993)

The liner notes on this cd are not helpful at all. Don Was, who I believe helped jumpstart Peter Gabriel’s career (hence the cover of “Don’t Give Up”), produces this album. He does a nice job of keeping the vocals prominent and the instruments in the background. In so many previous albums, the song selection and lyrics were excellent, but the production was flawed. In this case, though, the production is excellent, but the song selection is questionable. They are all great songs, but they just don’t seem to fit Willie. I don’t believe him when he sings them. No one should sing Paul Simon songs. No one can do them better. No one can do them justice. I do like the Dylan duet. “My American dream, comin’ apart at the seams, tell me what it means.” Bonnie Raitt steals the show on “Getting Over You.” “Valentine” works. Very pretty. Marc O’Connor plays fiddle on parts of this album, but I still prefer Johnny Gimble. “Most Unoriginal Sin” ranks up there with the cleverest of Willie’s lyrics (though John Hiatt wrote them). I love the rhyme of “apple” and “Sistine Chapel.” “If I Were the Man You Wanted, I Wouldn’t Be the Man I Am” fits Willie and his life. Lyle Lovett wrote it, but it could have come straight from Willie’s epic life by Joe Nick Patoski. “She’s Not For You” seemed out of place. Not sure why it’s here. I didn’t like the music to “Still is Still Moving to Me,” though I like the paradoxical lyrics. Willie’s always behind the beat yet always off to the next town. His voice is so slow it almost stops, and yet the wheels on the tour bus barely slow down from town to town.

Hmmm. After a second full listen, this time on my IPOD, I’m reconsidering. The duet with Dylan, “Heartland,” which the two also co-wrote, will age well with further listening. My son Jack (13) insists Willie should not do that “la, la, la, la” thing on “Still is Still Moving to Me.” I tend to agree. I still don’t think the Paul Simon songs are a good fit with Willie, but it is impressive the variety of folks he is working with on this album: Raitt, Dylan, Simon. Some call him a duet whore; I call him fearless. Unafraid of risking sentimentality, unafraid of failure. A courageous if, at times, flawed album. I predict it will grow on me.

Yesterday's Wine (1971)

“These are Difficult Times.” “Remember the Good Times.” I think you know where I’m going with this. Time is always on Willie’s mind, and always has been. “Aging with time, like Yesterday’s Wine.” “We’re yesterday’s wine,” on one hand; but on the other hand, yesterday is our wine. We get drunk on yesterday. Yesterday can be intoxicating. Memories can be richer and more meaningful than our present reality. Why is that? The version of “Me and Paul” on this album may be Willie’s best. I may be alone in thinking this, but I prefer Yesterday’s Wine to both Phases and Stages and Shotgun Willie. I love how Willie was restricted to ten tracks on this album so he made tracks 1 and 5 into two-song medleys. “Goin’ Home” is as tender and spare as can be. Willie doesn’t play guitar on this album, and he has a host of studio musicians backing him up, but they are turned down so low you can barely hear them on most of the tracks, especially this last one. I prefer Johnny Gimble on fiddle to the guy on this album. The background to “Summer of Roses” is a bit cloying, but it may be one of Willie’s prettiest vocal performances. Same with “December Day.” In some ways, Willie’s voice may be peaking in 1971. The background just sounds like tracks laid down by studio musicians without much invested in the performance. I wish Willie could have had his road band backing him up on this, or nothing at all. As always, not naked enough. Still, it’s more naked than Phases and Stages and Shotgun Willie. On a totally unrelated note, apparently trumpeter Lester Young recorded a version of “Crazy” on his album Avant Pop. “Rock of ages cleft for me.” A rock’s relationship to time. This whole album is the arc of a man’s life, so time itself becomes the protagonist. “A short time to be with you is better than no time.” “I bring you one springtime with robins.” “I bring you one summer of roses.” “I bring you one autumn of dry leaves.” Willie is bringing her the seasons. Bringing her time itself, or more precisely, the passage of time. “September wine numbed a measure of time.” Numbing time. Anesthetizing time. Sounds like Walker Percy. “As my memories raced back to love’s eager beginning.” Drag racing time. Trying to gun it and outrun time at the next stoplight. A “December Day” is a frozen, distilled moment in time. This album makes the top ten, and I can’t see it being dislodged.

Country Favorites: Willie Nelson Style (1966)

This may be Willie’s fastest album. “Columbus Stockade Blues” almost sounds like the turntable has been speeded up. Of course, Willie manages to seem relaxed even as he is speed singing like an auctioneer. “I’d Trade All of My Tomorrows (For Just One Yesterday)” further confirms my Willie-Nelson-is-the-reincarnation-of-Marcel-Proust theory. The fact that he is willing to trade, to bargain, to gamble with time. The fact that he prefers the past. In “Go On Home,” he sings, “You’re watchin’ your watch, and I know what’s on your mind.” Watching time. Time on your mind. Thinking about time. Time and Mind. These are the two big ideas in Willie’s music. I still can’t believe Willie’s sad songs. “Don’t You Ever Get Tired (Of Hurting Me)” just doesn’t work because I can’t imagine Willie staying hurt very long. It’s the same reason Hindu literature cannot be truly tragic. Reincarnation does not allow it. And how can the same guy who sings the dainty “Fraulein” be one of the Outlaws, the Highwaymen? Yet this album somehow works. I actually really like it. Willie’s voice is front and center. His voice is so young and full and gentle. Maybe I just like it because it is from 1966 and is so different from his modern stuff. The cookie cutter background music doesn’t bother me as much as the strings on Shotgun Willie for some reason. No information on this repackaged version of this album. No idea about musicians, recording dates, composers. I’ll need to research this further and report back on this album at a later date.

Shotgun Willie (1973)

I want Willie as naked as I can get him, and on this disc, he is most naked on “My Cricket and Me,” “A Song for You,” and “Save Your Tears” (both versions, but the alternate version on track 22 is even more naked than track 12). I actually prefer the studio version of “Shotgun Willie” to the live version, but the studio version of “Whiskey River” is too slow; even my son Jack commented on that as we were listening to it on the way to his guitar lesson. Turns out this disc was not recorded at Muscle Shoals (as Phases and Stages was), but the funky beat on “Devil in a Sleeping Bag” is about as R&B as Willie gets. The second alternate version of “Whiskey River” (on track 23) is so slow it actually becomes more interesting. It is another one of Willie’s limbo moves where he seems to be daring his band to see how slow they can go. He seems to be stretching the beat like silly putty. Willie plays his vocals like a steel guitar, stretching certain notes till they cry uncle. Overall, I didn’t like this album as much as I wanted to (again, because of the strings), but there are 4 or 5 songs that are among his best, his saddest, his rockin’-est, his nakedest. And when he sings, “each night the local memory comes around,” I can’t help thinking of Proust and how he was haunted by memories. How he courted them. Courted his own haunting. Willie and Proust might come to blows over who had the “hardest workin’ memory in this town.” Hardworking memories. That sounds like the title of a book about what Marcel Proust and Willie Nelson have in common. Someone should write that. Maybe someone already has. Maybe someone already is.

Phases and Stages (1974)

This album was recorded at Muscle Shoals, famous for its R & B sound. Even as slow as some of the songs are on this concept album, you can still hear more of a funky beat than you get on Willie’s other albums. “The jeans fit a little bit tighter than they did before” is one of my all-time favorite lines, ranking right up there with “Shotgun Willie sits around in his underwear.” Having recently turned 40 myself, I can sympathize with the woman in this song trying to go out honky-tonking and acting like a single person at 40. Johnny Gimble on fiddle continues to impress me. Noticeably absent are Willie’s road band members: Bobbie Nelson, Paul English, Mickey Raphael, and Bee Spears. Funny how the studio musicians and the road musicians are so different. Imagine U2 doing that. Touring without the Edge. “(How Will I Know) I’m Falling In Love Again” with Gimble’s haunting fiddle in the background may be as pretty a song as Willie has in his oeuvre. Not sure why he has all the cheesy Nashville Sound strings in “I Still Can’t Believe Your Gone.” That’s probably the most disappointing version of an otherwise good song that I can think of. There is some fine guitar picking toward the end of the song, but the strings just drown everything out. “It’s Not Supposed to Be That Way” is one of my favorite songs, lyric-wise. “Be careful what you’re dreaming, soon your dreams will be dreamin’ you.” Again, though, the strings ruin an otherwise great song. You need to look elsewhere for better versions of this song without strings. It’s like Charlie Parker with strings. Just wrong. A friend of mine said the album Charlie Parker with Strings killed him. That’s how bad and wrong it was.

Wow. This is really interesting. Tracks 12-21 were recorded in Nashville with Willie’s road band (mentioned above). The “Bloody Mary Morning” version on track 15 is smoking. I like the way the back-up singers kick in during the chorus. It sounds like a live performance. It captures the band’s live sound. I think I like this group’s version of “No Love Around” on track #16 better, too. Still have the syrupy strings on “I Still Can’t Believe You’re Gone.” Overall, I think I like Shotgun Willie better, but the previously unreleased tracks 12-21 with the road band are worth re-visiting.

Live at the Texas Opry House (1974)

Recorded on June 29th and June 30th of 1974, this disc combines songs from both sets from the Saturday and Sunday concerts. Tracks 1-11 originally appeared on The Classic, Unreleased Collection (1993). It is one of three from The Complete Atlantic Recordings, which also includes Phases and Stages and Shotgun Willie. Interestingly, Willie turns 40 years old while working on this music, which is the age I have just reached myself. This concert may contain the best version of “Whiskey River,” the Johnny Bush song that Willie has made his signature song. This album also has the distinction of being one of two (the other is Red-Headed Stranger) that my wife will willingly listen to. “Whiskey River, take my mind” reinforces the introspective, contemplative theme I keep hearing in Willie’s music. Even in this most upbeat and dance-like of his tunes, he is talking about his mind. His mind, it seems, is always on his mind. Thinking about thinking. The cosmic cowboy was meta before meta was cool. The band is on fire in this concert, especially on “Truck Drivin’ Man.” Willie’s version of “She Thinks I Still Care” cannot compete with George Jones’s, but it’s better than James Taylor’s. Willie just can’t ever be as sad as George Jones. And when he tries to be sad, it isn’t believable because you know Willie can’t be that sad. He’s too Hakuna Matata. Johnny Gimble on fiddle plays my favorite solo on the Funny/Crazy/Night Life medley from set 1 of the Sunday show. After the solo, Willie says, “That’s just how I wrote it.” And that’s how perfect it sounds. Like a sonnet snapping shut. I will also be paying attention to Jimmy Day on steel guitar.

It occurs to me, listening to “Walkin’,” and it’s opening line—“After carefully considering…”—that one way to define Willie’s music is recklessness recollected in tranquility (with apologies to William Wordsworth). Who else can rebel by walking? It almost has a Gandhi-like quality to it. Thoreau, Tolstoy, Ruskin. With the exception of Ruskin, these were some rough characters, outlaws and rebels in their way, extremists, and yet they preached “civil” disobedience. Non-violent resistance. Willie does the same thing when he “breaks meter” by singing behind the beat, instead of racing ahead of it.

This collection is also notable for having alternate takes of several songs. It offers the listener the opportunity to compare multiple versions of the same songs (in some cases, three versions): one studio, one live, and one alternate take.

Willie sings, “After taking several readings, I’m surprised to find my mind still fairly sound” (in “Me and Paul”). The sound in his mind is sound? And then later, “After carefully considering…” Isn’t the definition of a free spirit, an outlaw, a rebel, someone who doesn’t carefully consider, someone who doesn’t carefully weigh the pros and cons, someone who doesn’t take several readings to find out which way the wind is blowing? And here we are with that paradox again. Willie clearly does both. He carefully considers and he is inconsiderate at the same time. How did art ever get associated with freedom? Any great artist is careful in that they care about words, or notes, or details. How can you take care and take risks at the same time? In the latest New Yorker Gilbert writes about her latest book about marriage. She says she is like an infant who can only sleep in a moving car. This reminded me of Willie hating Branson (“he now sings “Branson was the roughest” instead of “Nashville”) because he missed the bus. He missed being able to drive off every day and leave whatever messes you created behind and start anew. And yet, isn’t this the definition of infantile? The reasons infants can only sleep in moving cars or while being rocked or while sucking a pacifier is because they are not mature enough to calm themselves. Isn’t the definition of an adult one who can calm themselves? Although one might argue that adults simply replace their pacifiers with more sophisticated crutches or idols. Ariel Levy blasts Gilbert for wanting to have it both ways: freedom and commitment. And maybe that’s the defining paradox of Willie’s life and music, too. Can home really be on the road? Can we really escape the inertia of commitment or the gravity of time by always moving? I’m looking forward to Phases and Stages tomorrow, and missing the vinyl because with vinyl the woman’s view is on side A and the man’s perspective is on side B. With a CD or an MP3 you lose this nice physical distinction. Interestingly, sales of vinyl records are up. They are old enough that they are becoming hip again. People are starting to miss the physicality, I think, of the albums in sleeves with liner notes you can actually read without glasses. I wonder if it will happen to newspapers after they die, too. They will return as novelty items? Maybe it takes time for us to realize what we lost when we switched to the new technology.

The Sound in Your Mind (1976)

So I have a new candidate for my top ten. I can’t imagine a more consistently good WN album than this one. Mind and time continue to dominate his songs. “The Healing Hands of Time” and “If You’ve Got the Money, I’ve Got the Time” fit into Willie’s Proustian focus on time. “The Sound in Your Mind” and “A Penny For Your Thoughts” are examples of Willie’s focus on thinking, reflection, contemplation. And when Willie gets contemplating, it’s as if he can’t play slow enough. I have heard that Morton Feldman couldn’t get his orchestras to play soft enough, and I can imagine Willie fussing at his band to play slower. Has there ever been a more soft-spoken, slow-singing outlaw? Craziness remains a theme as well, as seen in “I’d Have to Be Crazy” (does thinking too much about time make you crazy?). This may be the most surprising WN song I have encountered on 30 or so albums. There appears to be some backwoods preacher chanting faintly in the background at one point. It startles me every time. It’s almost as if some random sound just wandered into his song like a daydream drifting in and out of his mind. I’ve listened to it half a dozen times today, and I still never know where the lyrics or the tune is going. It never loses its ability to surprise. Like Monk, Willie resists predictability in his phrasing, but this may be his most unpredictable of all. It deals with the same idea as “Crazy,” but it’s more trippy and less lonesome. Almost a wry version of “Crazy.” This album features the standard band: Rex (percussion), Bobbie (piano), Paul (drums), Mickey (harmonica), Bee (bass), Jody (electric guitar), and Willie on acoustic. This, to me, is pure Willie Nelson. The vocals are front and center, there is a full band, but each instrument is clear and distinct. It reminds me of polyphonic music where the different voices interweave but do not blend (as in homophonic music). Maybe I like this because I like keeping my food separate on the plate. I like to be able to see and taste each item individually. My wife likes the live version of the Funny/Crazy/Night Life medley from the 1974 Texas Opry House concert better than the slowed down version on this album, but I disagree. I like both. I marvel at Willie’s boldness in opening the album with the plaintive “That Lucky Old Sun.” And think of what I just wrote there. He makes a bold statement by opening in such a mellow manner. It’s a kind of musical martial arts, juke box judo. Willie has the beatific, beatnik, Buddha smile on this album cover. The cosmic cowboy, the honky-tonk hippie. The music is contemplative in both the intellectual and the spiritual sense. And what is the sound in your mind anyway? Normally we have thoughts and ideas in our minds. But sounds? What does a mind sound like? Sounding the depths. And to my mind, The Sound in Your Mind, at this point, makes my evolving top ten list of WN albums. Here are six I can’t see being dethroned, but we’ll see:

Crazy: The Demo Sessions
Stardust (1978)
Storytellers (1998)
Spirit (1996)
Who’ll Buy My Memories (released in 1991, but recorded earlier)
The Sound in Your Mind (1976)