Waylon & Willie (1978)

Not much time to get this one in before midnight.

I don’t know how to take the big #1 hit on this album, “Mamma’s Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.” Of course neither of them means it. So why do we love it so much? Something about giving advice we don’t mean, advice we know no one will heed? Or is there an honest trace of regret?

Interesting to be listening to “The Year 2003 Minus 25” (written in 1978) in 2010. “Time slips away till you die.” I remember 1978, and those 25 years plus 7 went by very quickly. Time indeed slips by. It is slippery, sneaky. Why is that? “I don’t give a damn…when I choose to.” That surprising, pleasurable turn of phrase.

I’ve already written about “Pick Up the Tempo” in a previous blog. The desire to manipulate time, to speed it up or to slow it down, seems to be part of the human condition. We balk at the restrictions of time. We resent them. “Some people are sayin’ that time will take care of people like me, that I’m livin’ too fast and they say that I can’t last much longer.” So Waylon and Willie will pick up the tempo and try to outrun time? Live even faster? But this seems to contradict the later line that “time will take care of itself, so just leave time alone.” If you pick up the tempo, you are not leaving time alone; you are altering it. In fact, messing with time, worrying about time, worrying it to death, seems to be Willie’s signature move. Ah, the paradox, the enigma, the sphinx that is Willie Nelson. Jefferson-like he rises above the abstractions and reconciles them somehow. “Looking for a Feeling…that I once had with you…that I’d grown accustomed to…that I lost when I lost you” is another Proustian idea. “I said when it was over that I’d Be Over You in Time ‘cause nothing lasts forever, it’s all a state of mind.” Ha! That’s the problem, not the solution. Your state of mind doesn’t help you overcome time, it creates your hang-up with time. In Search of Lost Feelings. Feelings in time. Where do they get lost anyway? They get lost in time. Does time heal or does it lose? What’s the difference? I’m a bit disappointed that, in some cases, they just dubbed Willie’s vocals in 1977 over tracks Waylon recorded in 1973. Waylon’s band provides the backing on this entire album. “I Can Get Off On You” is one of the most playful and addictive songs in Willie’s oeuvre. Waylon’s drummer and bass player clearly give this album a bouncier more playful feel than Paul English lends Willie’s other albums. I won’t comment much on “Gold Dust Woman” because it is all Waylon, but I admire him for covering a Stevie Nicks song, and it actually works. “Don’t ever cuss that fiddle, boy, unless you want that fiddle out of tune.” A Kristofferson song that fits that hippy, Hindu, cosmic cowboy philosophy of Willie’s. “We’re in this gig together so let’s settle down and steal each other’s songs.” What I had called my brother now he had every right to call on me.” It’s the golden rule Willie-style. “If we ever get to heaven, boys, it ain’t because we ain’t done nothing wrong.” The admission of the fallibility of mankind. “That picker there in trouble ain’t nothin’ but another side of you.” The non-judgmental, tolerant, accepting, forgiving Willie who brings rednecks and hippies together in Austin. We have the same mix in Asheville, but no Willie to bring them together.

What does the passage of time do for us, if anything? “I’ve got a couple more years on you, baby, that’s all. I’ve had more chances to fly and more places to fall. It ain’t that I’m wiser, it’s just that I’ve spent more time with my back to the wall.” Shel Silverstein wrote that. Days, years, seasons. What do they do for us? To us?

“I’m not here to forget you…I don’t want to get over you.” Playing music in the Juke Box to “help me remember you.” Somehow music and art helps make time stand still? Helps preserve time? We pay and play to stop time. We outrun it, we slow it down, we make it stand still. I had a good time listening to this album. Probably one of the most consistently enjoyable, upbeat, bouncy albums I’ve reviewed thus far.