Me and the Drummer (2000)

I have also seen a version of this album called Tales Out of Luck. ITUNES lists the date of these songs as 1998, but the CD I have says 2000. A reviewer from Amazon writes:

After his minimalist experimentation with Canadian producer Daniel Lanois on Teatro and the somber and introspective Spirit, Willie and company are back to basics…Willie's strength has always been…his ability to seamlessly fuse his jazz oriented vocal styling with simple, understated country sensibilities. His unique phrasing and the way his vocals lag behind the beat provide the listener with the perspective that he is singing to you and you alone.

I thought that was well put. Spirit and Teatro are two of my top ten albums, and now I am prepared to add this to that list as well, which makes 1996-2000 a sweet spot in Willie’s career when his voice has that aged character but has not started to lose some of its oomph (as seen on Two Men With The Blues and American Classic, both recorded eight to nine years later). The adjectives somber, introspective, and wistful seem apt, and “jazz-oriented vocal styling” fused with “understated country sensibilities” strikes me as a compact way of describing Willie’s distinctive sound.

It took me awhile to realize why Jimmy Day’s steel sounded so good on this album. The Offenders must be the name of Willie’s pre-Raphael band (like pre-Raphaelite); that is, his pre-Mickey Raphael band. The lack of that prominent harmonica voice allows the steel to take center stage. This may be Willie’s best pure country album. With Jimmy Day’s steel and Johnny Gimble’s fiddle, and Willie’s voice still strong, this set of Willie’s classic early tunes makes my top ten. Almost every song relates to his themes of time, love, memory, and mind. I have written about many of these same songs in earlier blogs, but “I Let My Mind Wander” and “No Tomorrow in Sight” each could make a case for his definitive philosophical statement.

The dice in the hollow spine of the CD case adds a nice touch to these Tales Out of Luck, recorded at Willie’s Pedernales studio.

Marcel Proust could have written these lines, or written every song Willie ever wrote:

I let my mind wander

And what did it do?

It just kept right on goin'

Until it got back to you…

Can't trust it one minute

It's worse than a child

Disobeys without conscience

It's drivin' me wild…

Try to keep my mind busy

On thoughts of today

But invariably memories

Seem to lure it away

My lonely heart wonders

If there'll ever come a day

When I can be happy

But I can't see no way

'Cause I let my mind wander

Willie wonders about love, but his mind wanders while he is wondering. He can’t control his own mind any more than he can control time or love. Even if mind and memory can control time and love, it is to no avail because we can’t control our own minds; they wander like disobedient children. This version of “I Let My Mind Wander” may make my top ten WN songs if I ever create such a list.

The lyrics to “Something to Think About” plumb the depths of Willie’s meta-obsession with thinking about thinking:

You’re wondering just what I’ll do

Now that it’s over and done

Well that’s something to think about

And I’ve already begun

Willie lets his mind wander, but his lover is wondering, too. He’s thinking about what she’s wondering about.

In “No Tomorrow in Sight” Willie sings:

I hope we can salvage a few memories

To carry us through the long nights

The clock’s striking midnight, yesterday’s gone

And there’s no tomorrow in sight

It’s like “Yesterday’s Wine.” Memories are our salvation. We are somehow estranged from both yesterday and tomorrow, so we must live in the eternal present of our own memories.

In “A Moment Isn’t Very Long” he sings:

For a moment I almost forgot you

But a moment isn’t very long.

So he wants to extend the amount of time that he can forget. He wants to expand his forgetfulness. But his moment of forgetfulness doesn’t last long, and then he remembers. Time either moves too fast or too slow, but never just right, never just as we would want it to. Do we even know how we would want time to flow? Could we ever be at home in time at any speed? 78, 33, 45? 4-4? As Dylan says, Time Out of Mind.

Forgiving you was easy

But forgetting seems to take the longest time

I just keep thinking and your memory is forever on my mind

You were always on my mind (though you thought I had forgotten about you). And yet forgetting you has taken me so long. I keep thinking about you; your memory is always on my mind. I am so thoughtless, when I forget you, and yet you fill my thoughts.

In “What a Way to Live” Willie sings:

A lonely man with lonely time to kill…

The paths my memory takes

Just make my poor heart ache

I think of her, I guess I always will

On one hand, I’m trying to remember better so she’ll know she is always on my mind (so I won’t hurt her). On the other hand, I’m trying to forget her faster so she won’t know I ever cared about her (and she won’t be able to hurt me any more). We simply desire to control time, to speed over the bad parts and slow down for the good parts. And yet we can’t control the tempo, we can’t TIVO life. We must dance to whatever tempo time sets for us.