Songs for Tsunami Relief (2005)

A student gave me a $50 Barnes and Noble gift certificate which I instantly used on-line to pre-order Willie’s latest album which comes out on his birthday this April 20th. I also ordered three other albums I don’t have yet. Do you think I have a Willie problem?

This is a recording of a benefit concert Willie hosted in 2005. Willie sings the last seven songs on the 18-song set. Willie opens with a solo version of “Living in the Promise Land.” He is starting to sing and play guitar like Jerry Garcia, with slow, trippy, meandering solos. Then he goes into a version of “Whiskey River” that won’t crack my top ten probably, but it’s worth owning. It sounds like Mickey Raphael is accompanying on harmonica, but of course the liner notes are no help. Truth be told, my favorite song on this album may be Natalie Maines’ version of “Travelin’ Soldier.” I’m a sucker for her haunting voice. I wish she had a duet with Willie. Then Willie moves into a brisk version of “Still is Still Moving to Me.” More and more Willie seems to be emphasizing his guitar work over his vocals. This version opens with his guitar and Mickey’s harmonica dueling it out. It’s great to hear a recent live version of “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” and this one ranks up there as one of the more interesting, with a meandering guitar and a mournful, subdued harmonica. This version of “The Great Divide” starts out as slow as the Grateful Dead’s “China Doll.” Only Willie can play songs this slow, with a little rousing flamenco-inflected guitar run toward the end, to a packed audience. This track is noteworthy mostly for the guitar work and the harmonica. Then comes a ho-hum version of “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” but what version can compare to the Waylon and Willie live version? On my third listen, though, I notice that this version gets kind of funky toward the end, and Willie is clearly having fun playing around with this old standard. Then he invites Patty Griffin on stage to sing “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground,” and after her first note my 13 year-old son says, “If I were Willie Nelson, I would never sing with someone like that because she sounds so much better than he does.” Of course, I disagree; and Willie clearly is a bigger draw and a bigger seller than Patty Griffin, but my son has a point. Willie is fearless about singing with vocalists who can, on some level, blow him vocally out of the water. And yet his voice somehow manages to remain more interesting, it has more character, more subtlety, more nuance, than more powerful and more finely calibrated voices. That’s why I’m blogging about him and not Patty.