Moment of Forever (2008)

Willie’s thinkin’ again. “I started thinking. Thinking about things that might have been.” The most Proustian of country singers. The most cerebral, internal, introspective, and wistful of Texas wordsmiths. “Over You Again” feels a bit like Teatro, but it ends with a trippy, Phishy, jam-band finale. This collection opens with a 5:37 track and closes with a 9:47, so you know something’s up. The title track, “Moment of Forever,” says it all. Kris Kristofferson knows Willie better than he knows himself. Wanting a moment to last forever, or wanting forever to happen all at once, to be condensed into an instant, that is the desire that haunts Willie’s oeuvre. As stark and spare and honest as Willie can be. Not sure what to make of “The Bob Song.” I admire the audacity, but I have no idea what it means or how to classify it. “You swing from your tree and I’ll swing from mine.” Live and let live. Tolerance and acceptance and openness is the word. “Louisiana” has convinced me that Willie should do an entire album of Randy Newman songs. They fit Willie like a glove. I think Willie can sing them better than Randy. He can talk them like Randy does, but he can do more with his voice than Randy can, so he can make them more interesting, more nuanced, more melancholy. Not sure why I don’t like Willie’s version of “Gravedigger” more than I do. I love this Dave Matthews song. I have three versions—one acoustic, one studio, one live. All three are better than this one. And Dave does a great “Funny How Time Slips Away” in concert. Not sure why Willie doesn’t make this work on this album. “Keep Me From Blowin’ Away” is a five for sure. I haven’t heard something this honest and heartfelt since Spirit. Could this be a sign of good things to come? I like this team of Kenny Chesney and Buddy Canon as producers. I hope Willie works with them again soon. Mickey Raphael is the only musician I recognize on this album. “When my mind remembered the days that just crumbled away.” Memory tries to keep the days from crumbling away. This 1971 Paul Craft song fits Willie in 2008. “Takin’ on Water” doesn’t do much for me, but it fits thematically with “Louisiana.” “I gotta get my heart to higher ground.” Love as natural disaster. “Always Now” and “Moment of Forever” may be the best song titles to capture Willie’s obsession with time. Perhaps in 2008 Willie has finally figured out how to stop time from slipping away. If you realize that always is now and now is always, then no time can ever slip away. “Nothing ever goes away/ Everything is here to stay/ And it’s always now.” “It’s more than just a memory.” Really? More than a memory? How can that be? In some ways this song undoes every song Willie ever wrote about time slipping away and memory trying to retrieve it. All this, it seems, was grasping for straws. If it’s always now, then time slipping away is just an illusion. Kenny Chesney wrote, “I’m Alive,” but it fits Willie perfectly. Just thankful to be alive. Thanks to fate, the stars, the present, today, now. In “When I Was Young and Grandma Wasn’t Old,” written by Buddy Cannon, “Memories take [Willie] back again”:

It makes me happy that I can still go back

My memories are so clear

Of how it used to be when I never dreamed

Of ever lookin’ back from here.

That’s pure Willie: dreamin’ of a future when he’ll be reminiscing about the past. Looking forward to look back. Preemptive nostalgia. Missing things before they’re gone. Deja vu in reverse.

“Worry B Gone” is written by a collection of Nashville’s finest: Gary Nicholson, Guy Clark, and Lee Roy Parnell. I used to see Gary Nicholson a good bit at the Bluebird. A regular for their famous “in the round” nights. I love Larry Paxton’s upright bass on this track. Trigger is in fine form as well. A good old fashioned drinking song. Never heard it called Worry B Gone, but the Whiskey River certainly runs through Willie’s repertoire. A way to numb the pain of the past. “Well I can’t suffer fools wastin’ my time.” And yet drinking is somehow making good use of time? I thought Willie wasn’t writing much anymore, but he clearly wrote a few in 2008. In “You Don’t Think I’m Funny Anymore,” he writes, “I used to fake a heart attack and fall down on the floor, but even I don’t think that’s funny anymore.” The thought of time slipping away like that isn’t funny anymore because you have so little left as it is. When you are young you have time to spare, to kill, and you can laugh as it slips away, but not when you’re 77. It ain’t no joke. And then he ends with Dylan’s “Gotta Serve Somebody.” I like the use of horns, a funky rhythm section, and a B-3 organ, but I think Dylan does this 1973 song better. The last 2 minutes of this track is a recording of Willie messing around with Trigger practicing “You Don’t Think I’m Funny Anymore” in the studio with the crew cracking up in the background.