Me and Paul (1985)

E.M. Forster distinguishes between pattern and rhythm in prose: “this seems to me the function of rhythm in fiction; not to be there all the time like a pattern, but by its lovely waxing and waning to fill us with surprise and freshness and hope.” He prefers Proust’s more organic structure (rhythm) to James’s more fixed structure (pattern). If E.M. Forster listened to country music (a big if, I know), I think he would like Willie’s looser, more flexible rhythm, full of “surprise and freshness and hope.” Willie, like Forster, seems to use rhythm to both create and transcend pattern, form, order.

My favorite songs on this album, interestingly, are two Billy Joe Shaver songs: the driving (of course) “I Been to Georgia on a Fast Train” (even Willie can’t slow down a fast train) and the playful “Black Rose.” The devil made him do it the first time, but the second time he did it on his own. A classic country turn of phrase.

“I Let My Mind Wander” could sum up Willie’s entire career. His music, his vocals, his sense of rhythm all have that Thoreau-like sense of wandering, sauntering. And yet it is a cerebral wandering, a wondering kind of wandering. And then there is the connotation of the word wander which means wander off the paths of righteousness, straying from home, from commitments. Willie has his road band with him (his wandering band): Bobbie, Mickey, Paul, and co. Still, better versions of many of these songs appear on other albums. I would buy the whole album just for “Black Rose.” And the pictures of Paul on the back cover.