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.