One Hell of a Ride (disc 4 of 4)

Disc four of this set opens with “Write Your Own Songs” from the Booker T. Jones-produced 1984 Music From Songwriter album. Willie tells “Mr. music executive” and “Mr. purified country” to “write [their] own song[s]” if they don’t like the ones he’s writing. He warns that listening to his songs “might make you dwell on your feelings a moment too long.” He basically tells the music executives that they can’t understand or appreciate or handle his music, so they should just sit back and get rich off the music without listening to it. It’s a slightly uncomfortable mix of humor and seriousness. He’s not joking, but it’s funny. And Mickey Raphael’s harmonica works its haunting magic in the spaces between the lines.

Neil Young is an interesting choice for a duet partner on the 1984 album Partners, and “Heart of Gold” is a daring choice for a remake, but as with Paul Simon’s music, I’m not sure Neil Young’s music can or should be re-done. This version seems too cheery and upbeat. Willie usually slows, pares, strips, and breaks down a song into its most basic elements when he redoes it, but in this case he tries to pretty it up. Not sure that’s possible or desirable with Neil Young’s music.

Then Willie sings a tune with Hank Snow from the 1984 album Brand on My Heart. Hank Snow actually sounds like Dylan on this track. I guess that means Hank Snow influenced Dylan. I’ll need to look into that. This is another chance to hear Willie singing side-by-side with one of his Western Swing mentors. The theme of “movin’ on” and hittin’ the road again obviously fits perfectly with Willie’s larger project.

The rest of the songs on this disc I have already reviewed (except for “Rainbow Connection,” which I will save for a separate blog on the album of the same name).

Lastly, the best part of this whole collection is how it begins with a 1954 version of “When I’ve Sang My Last Hillbilly Song” and then ends with a 2007 version (though “sang” is changed to “sung”; is that intentional? If so, what’s the significance?). I much prefer the 2007 version, which must be a previously unreleased track that Willie recorded in his Pedernales studio, and it may be an indication of the kind of gems that await us when he starts releasing the stuff that is gathering dust in his home studio. Imagine a collection of tracks like this! This track alone is worth the price of the collection. “When I’ve sung my last Hank Williams song, I hope that someday she’ll forgive me and remember.” Forgiveness is a kind of re-writing of history, a kind of re-making and re-doing. A kind of re-incarnation. A kind of re-membering. Memory and redemption are so closely intertwined in Willie’s music. Maybe they are the same thing. Maybe memory is his redemption. Maybe art is memory and art redeems. As much as Willie has changed over these 53 years (from 1954 to 2007), he’s still singing the same songs, still singing the same way, still hitting the same themes. Still is still moving, and he both changes and stays the same simultaneously, like the seasons. This track is Willie at his very best musically, vocally, and emotionally. I can’t get it out of my head and don’t want to.