Highwaymen: The Road Goes on Forever (1995)

This is the third and final collection by this country supergroup. I have the 10th anniversary edition (from 2005), which includes six demo-quality acoustic bonus tracks. Don Was produces this album, and Mickey Raphael is on harmonica. In the liner notes, Chet Flippo describes these four legends as the “Mount Rushmore of music” and as “beautifully battered and worn luggage.” In other words, lots of character, lots of hard living, lots of experience, lots of stories, lots of lessons.

The collection starts out with momma’s family values in tension with the devil and the outlaw nature. Steve Earle writes, “Momma said a pistol is the devil’s right hand.”

“Live Forever” could not be more poignant for these four. “I will always be around, just like the songs I leave behind me, I’m gonna live forever now.” Is art the only way to defeat time? Shakespeare thought so in his sonnets, but it flies in the face of “Funny How Time Slips Away.” It’s more in line with “Always Now” and “Moment of Forever.” Kevin Welch’s “Everyone Gets Crazy” contains the line “Time has taught me this for sure, Time is the only cure.” And yet, as I have written before, time is the blues; our mortality, our finiteness, our awareness of our limited time causes the blues. So how can time both cause and cure the blues? Does it heal itself? Does time transcend time? Time makes us crazy, drives us crazy. The interplay of craziness and time and art and love and mind and memory. They seem to be connected. It takes me all the way back to Willie’s early hit for Patsy Cline, “Crazy.” We are fools for love and time, which may be the same thing. “It is What it Is” is one of those standard fun, rowdy, outlaw tunes. “It is what it is, but it ain’t what it used to be.” The passage of time is evident here as well. All four men are looking back at their collective past together. A four-way remembrance of things past. An instance of collective memory distilled into art. Making sense of the past through music. Waylon seems as sincere as I’ve heard him on “I Do Believe.” Another example of how these crusty, grizzled exteriors have gentle, sensitive inner lives. “He keeps talking about tomorrow, while I keep struggling with today.” “The End of Understanding” is as good as Willie’s best early recordings. “Love and understanding go together.” Love and mind. “Ask too much of one and both will die. There must be an end to understanding, and I know someday I’ll reach the end of mine.” Can love be understood intellectually? Thinking about love as opposed to simply loving. Hmmm. God cannot be known, only loved. Then we have the wise, smooth, tender “True Love Travels a Gravel Road.” Not sure you can think too hard while bouncing down the gravel road. Such gravelly voices lend authenticity to this song. Johnny talks through “Death and Hell.” It’s a straight-up Johnny Cash song. “Waiting for a Long Time” features the ever-present theme of time. In “Here Comes That Rainbow Again” Kris tells a tender story of unconditional love and concludes, “Ain’t it just like a human.” “The Road Goes on Forever” is a fitting conclusion to this album, to their collaboration, and to their lives. It builds off the ideas in “Live Forever.” These crotchety, idiosyncratic singers miraculously blend together smoothly singing the choruses, as if their voices have mellowed with age. Not sure why “If He Came Back Again” didn’t make the original cut. Waylon sings with confidence and the others join with him enthusiastically on the chorus. Another gospel story. “He didn’t mean to be a rebel, the real ones never do.” “Would they even recognize him if he came back again.” In other words, those who claim to idolize Jesus wouldn’t even recognize him if he returned. Johnny’s acoustic demo of “Live Forever” is powerful. Just Johnny and his guitar and some coughing and foot tapping. He sure sounds good even in a demo. Kris cracks up at Waylon’s “I Ain’t Song” when Waylon claims “I ain’t old and I ain’t bitter, and I ain’t mad at anyone.” Waylon is clearly the bitter one in the bunch. His grudges probably killed him. Willie’s acoustic demo of “Pick Up the Tempo” is worth the price of the collection. The others join in toward the end informally. Again, it’s funny that these guys who sang in such singular ways that no one could sing harmony with them now manage to sing harmony for each other. Kris’s acoustic demo of “Closer to the Bone” has a gospel feel with Waylon on back up. Kris’s voice sounds better on this than on almost any song of his I’ve heard. Fittingly, the album ends with a 49 second version of Gene Autry’s “Back in the Saddle Again,” which these guys will never be again, with Johnny and Waylon having passed away.