Revolutions of Time…The Journey 1975-1993 (Disc 3): Exodus

Interesting that this disc covers ten years (1983-1993) in twenty songs, while the previous two discs covered fewer years in 40 songs. Of course, the last disc was all duets. I’m not sure I understand the logic behind the discs: Pilgrimage (disc 1); Sojourns (disc 2); and Exodus (disc 3). I can’t find a copy of “Music from Songwriter,” so this version of “Who’ll Buy My Memories” is new to me, and it is an excellent recording, as is this version of “Write Your Own Songs” from the same album. I also don’t own Partners yet, so “When I Dream of You” is new to me. It appears that this is an album of original recordings, not a compilation, but the strings cloy. Willie’s vocals in 1984 are quite strong. This version of “My Own Peculiar Way” surprised me. After such cloying strings on the last track, this one surprised with its utter spareness. Johnny Gimble shines on fiddle. This may be one of my favorite versions of this song. “There is No Easy Way (But There is a Way)” is new to me because I don’t own “Island in the Sea” yet (another Booker T. Jones collaboration). Actually, I just ordered it online, so I do own it, but I don’t have it in my possession yet.

Revolutions of Time…The Journey 1975-1993 (Disc 2)

The liner notes list 35 albums as “The Releases,” which I take to mean the 35 releases on Columbia from 1975 to 1993. I think I own (and have already reviewed) all but seven: Partners, Music from Songwriter (can’t find, except on DVD), Electric Horseman (too expensive), Funny How Time Slips Away (with Faron Young; can’t find it), Brand on My Heart (with Hank Snow; too expensive), In the Jailhouse Now (with Webb Pierce; expensive), Old Friends (with Roger Miller; expensive). I hope to acquire these soon, but I have spent hours on the web scouring the used CD sites and am having trouble finding them at a reasonable price or at all…Well, scratch that. I just found four of these albums on two re-released double albums, but they cost me a pretty penny. I’ll be reviewing them soon. Partners is also listed, but I can’t tell if that is a compilation, so I’ll wait to order that.

Again, I can’t really recommend this collection except for the liner notes, and the nicely linear walk through the Columbia catalog. But why buy this collection when there are five tracks from the compilation “Half Nelson.” A compilation of a compilation. You might as well buy the album itself. Since I don’t own “Music from Songwriter,” this is my first listen to “How Do You Feel About Foolin’ Around.” The line “Ain’t nothin’ realer than right here and now if that’s as far as it goes” fits Willie’s “be here now” philosophy. We have so little time, so eat, drink, and be merry. I may have to break down and order the DVD since I can’t find the CD. With only one song from most of his albums, this set doesn’t really give you a very good feel for his best stuff.

Revolutions of Time…The Journey 1975-1993 (Disc 1)

"Music establishes an order between man and time. The stripe establishes an order between man and space." —Michel Pastoureau, historian, The Devil’s Cloth, 1991

This is a handsome three-disc compilation that contains songs I have already reviewed in previous blogs. The liner notes are excellent, though, so I will focus on those while also looking at the philosophy and rationale behind the selections.

The booklet opens with a quotation from Willie: “Fortunately, we are not in control.” On one hand, Willie seems resigned to fate, a more Taoist “go with the flow” kind of guy. And yet, at other times he seems to show a more Buddhist or stoic resolve, a more disciplined facing up to hardship. Is it possible to be an easy going stoic? A carefree cowboy? A smiling John Wayne? And looking at the quotation above, it seems that Willie’s music does bring order to time, the way Proust does. So Willie is in control, if only in his art. Even when he is most behind or in front of the beat, he is most in control. Paradoxically, when he seems out of control, that is most unconstrained by the meter, he is most in control. By breaking meter he makes his own meter, which is the supreme level of control. To control free verse is the highest form of control. It is to control without seeming to control. To control without controls, to fly without instruments, and yet to fly nonetheless.

This 1995 collection focuses on Willie’s 18-year tenure with Columbia Records, from 1975-1993, from Red Headed Stranger (1975) to Across the Borderline (1993). Disc one is titled “Pilgrimage.” It contains songs from Red Headed Stranger (1975), The Sound in Your Mind (1976), The Troublemaker (1976), To Lefty from Willie (1977), Stardust (1978), Willie and Family Live (1978), Sings Kristofferson (1979), The Electric Horseman (1979), Honeysuckle Rose (1980), Somewhere Over the Rainbow (1980), and Always on My Mind (1981). The perfectly chronological sequence allows you to hear five years of Willie’s career in a condensed form. The recording information is detailed and thorough, which is not often the case on the albums themselves. Sometimes the compilations are helpful in this way. These five years represent Willie’s first big wave of superstar success, so it is interesting to capture and freeze him at one of his peaks, Grecian Urn-like. As he always tries to freeze and preserve love and time, we freeze him freezing time, a sort of double-freezing or doubly deep freezing.

It's Magic (2007)

This is another of Willie’s “favor” albums. That is, an album where he pays back an old friend by recording with him. In this case, the friend is Don Cherry. The title track appears on the compilation “Joy.” I have reviewed that track on the blog for “Joy,” so I’ll start here with track #2, “What a Wonderful World.” Don Cherry is no Louis Armstrong, but Willie’s vocals are strong. If I could edit out Don Cherry and the syrupy strings, Willie’s vocal tracks would be worth the price of admission here, but I don’t think I’ll be revisiting this album much. “Summer Wind” is all Don Cherry. No sign of Willie. Skip it. “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” opens with Willie. “She’ll laugh when she gets to the part that says I’m leaving, ‘cause I’ve left that woman so many times before.” Funny how time and lovers slip away. Willie has more than fifty ways to leave his lovers. Best track on the album so far. This is not a bad duet, despite the sickening strings. Willie’s theme of time figures prominently here. In “Green Green Grass of Home” Willie waxes nostalgic for home along with the harmonica. His vocals are actually worth checking out on this track. An interesting Johnny Cash-like talking part in the middle. An interesting counterpoint to “On the Road.” The age old battle between home and road. “Again” is a fitting song for Willie to sing. When the “now and the here” disappear. “We’ll have this moment forever, but never again.” Now what can that mean? It will never happen again, and yet we have TIVO’d it in our memory, so we can replay it forever. So we don’t have it but we do. The paradox of time and memory. Followed, of course, by a version of “Sweet Memories.” Willie’s vocals are strong, but the syrupy setting and Don Cherry’s vocals detract from the overall effect. I prefer the other versions I have of this song. “You’ve Changed” is another fitting tune. The dream is that our love would never change. Permanent love. Yet “your kisses now are so blasé.” This track is all Don Cherry, though. No sign of Willie. A shame because I would love to hear Willie sing this one. Funny how time slips away. Funny how people change. “After the Lovin’” opens with Willie. Willie complains that he can’t express his love except in a song. “And I know that my song isn’t saying anything new, but after the lovin’, I’m still in love with you.” Which runs counter to so many of Willie’s song where he’s not in love with her after the loving, and he hits the road running in search of other loves. Here time doesn’t slip away, and he does love her forever, as promised. In this case, a promise is not just a lie in a better disguise. “Try to Remember” continues the focus on time and memory. Willie’s either trying to remember or trying to forget or both at the same time. “Try to remember the kind of September…” Of course Willie would remember September. That bittersweet, melancholy month of Autumn. He dwells on the sadness, wiggles and worries it the way you would a sore tooth. It yields a sadistic pleasure. “Deep in December our hearts should remember and follow.” Not sure what he means by “follow” here. Follow what? Follow your memory back in time from December to September? The strings cloy, but the lyrics, and Willie’s choice of songs, are revealing of Willie’s overall philosophy, which makes this album worth owning. In “Give Me the Simple Life,” Willie sings:

I don't believe in frettin' and grievin';

Why mess around with strife?

I never was cut out to step and strut out.

Give me the simple life.

Some find it pleasant dining on pheasant.

Those things roll off my knife;

Just serve me tomatoes and mashed potatoes;

Give me the simple life.

A cottage small is all I'm after,

Not one that's spacious and wide.

A house that rings with joy and laughter

And the ones you love inside.

Some like the high road, I like the low road,

Free from the care and strife.

Sounds corny and seedy, but yes, indeed-y;

Give me the simple life.

I think Willie wants to believe these lyrics, and maybe he does for brief moments, but it’s a hard sell in light of his many songs about the road. The restlessness. Again, the call of home versus the call of the road. The twin siren songs pulling him apart. “I used to have a heart, now I have a song.” Maybe that’s what happened from all this pulling. These lyrics do, however, confirm his hakuna matata philosophy of avoiding worry and strife at all costs and always looking on the sunny side like Dr. Pangloss. “Portrait of My Love” may push me over the edge with the cheesiness of the strings. And this one is all Don and no Willie, and thus not for me. Despite Willie’s strong vocals, I can’t recommend this album. That last track killed something in me.

Country Music (2010)

Willie’s latest is one of his best. I hope he’ll live to be a hundred so he can record 20 more albums like this. At last count I own 93 Willie albums, and I’m not even scratching the surface of the 300+ that are out there. After only one listen, though, I can tell that this one makes my untenable top ten. Willie sings straight-up acoustic country with a crackerjack Nashville session band including bass, banjo, mandolin, pedal steel, fiddle, and harmonica. Mickey Raphael and Trigger are the only members of Willie’s road band to join him on this record. Jim Lauderdale sings vocal harmonies, which few have been brave enough to attempt. T. Bone Burnett produces this crisp, spare, no-frills recording.

Willie opens with his own “Man with the Blues.” The only other version of this song I own is from 1959, and I review it on the blog for the compilation One Hell of a Ride. Willie is clearly returning to his roots, to the earliest country music and blues he knows. This is a cheerful, upbeat blues, and he follows it with another blues tune: “Seaman’s Blues,” an Ernest Tubb song. This is the first time I have heard Willie do this song, and it is a nice addition to his repertoire. His voice meanders mournfully before and behind the beat. Interesting that he opens with two traditional blues songs. “Dark as a Dungeon” is an aching coal mining song with the banjo, fiddle, steel, and mandolin tastefully weaving in and out of Willie’s voice. So far this is a beautifully dark and melancholy album. It isn’t “Spirit,” but it sets a similar tone. Willie returns to his “On the Road” theme with the fourth track: “Gotta Walk Alone.” “Don’t know where, don’t even care. I just keep walking on and on and on…It’s a long and lonesome road I’ve got to walk alone.” The road is lonely, but he seems fated, destined for it. He can’t help it. He’s “gotta.” It’s his Dharma. Or his disease. “Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down” sounds like a gospel song Johnny Cash would sing, except Johnny would mean it. Willie sings it beautifully, but I just don’t believe him. Jim Lauderdale sings harmony as well as anyone has ever sung it with Willie. I can’t think of too many Willie albums with banjos, but this album has a bluegrass feel. Willie hasn’t, to my knowledge, done a straight-up bluegrass album, which seems odd, with his penchant for testing all genres. This may be his closest thing to a bluegrass album. This is the first time I have heard Willie sing “My Baby’s Gone,” but I know it from George Jones. George sings it better, but Willie holds his own on this track. At 5:06, it is the longest track on the album and my favorite so far. He adds a little flamenco touch in the middle and also gives space for the steel, fiddle, harmonica, and mandolin to solo. “I tried to tell my lonely heart it has to go on alone, but it cries…hold back the rushing minutes, make the wind lie still. Don’t let the moonlight shine across the lonely hill. Dry all the raindrops, hold back the Sun. My world has ended, my baby’s gone.” These lyrics remind me of W.H. Auden’s poem “Funeral Blues.” It’s the pathetic fallacy, I suppose, but it works in both cases nonetheless. Willie, as usual, is trying to control time, trying to “hold back the rushing minutes.” Or rewind them, pause them, TIVO his life, Keats-style, Grecian Urn style, Proust style, Fitzgerald style, Shakespeare’s sonnets style. It’s the same sentiment we find in Auden’s “Musee de Beaux Arts,” where Icarus’s feet barely show in the giant green sea, and the farmers go about their business, no one noticing the splash. Life goes on, though our life has ended, and we want the world to stop and take notice, but the phones keep ringing, the mail keeps getting delivered, and people go about their business. It’s a sad poem and a sad song. Which makes me think, why do sad people seem to write the best music? Willie’s voice seems to get better with each track, and Lauderdale makes a good vocal dance partner for Willie’s unpredictable, improvised half-steps. “Freight Train Boogie” gives Mickey a chance to show off on harmonica, and it lightens up the somber album with a fun, up-tempo story song. “Satisfied Mind” is a wonderful lyric I have heard before, but I can’t remember who sings it. It fits Willie’s philosophy perfectly. Time and mind. The conundrum that goes back to Augustine: why do some beggars seem happy and some rich people sad? The lyrics are worth reprinting in their entirety:

How many times have you heard someone say

"If I had his money, I could do things my way?"

But little they know that it's so hard to find

One rich man in ten with a satisfied mind.

Once I was winning in fortune and fame

Everything that I dreamed for to get a start in life's game

Suddenly it happened, I lost every dime

But I'm richer by far with a satisfied mind

Money can't buy back your youth when you're old

Or a friend when you're lonely, or a love that's grown cold

The wealthiest person is a pauper at times

Compared to the man with a satisfied mind

And when life has ended, and my time has run out

My friends and my loved ones, I'll leave there’s no doubt

But one thing's for certain, when it comes my time

I'll leave this old world with a satisfied mind

Certainly Willie lived these lyrics when he lost everything to the IRS in 1991, and certainly he will leave this old world with a satisfied mind. How much of this is due to marijuana, I don’t know. And is getting satisfaction that way kind of cheating? But Willie certainly has friends, and he is certainly a good friend to many. He certainly is that one in ten with a satisfied mind. Another 5 star song. Then he does a Ray Price/George Jones song, “You Done Me Wrong.” “You got me cryin’.” Another cheatin’ and cryin’ song. But one you can two-step to with an up-tempo banjo and harmonica. Willie is back to the “Man with the Blues” and “My Baby’s Gone.” The old country, blues, honky tonk standard. Loss leads to such fullness in art. Emptiness leads to so much more depth. “Pistol Packin’ Mama” is another up-tempo song to break the somber mood. This time the woman is chasin’ the man for cheatin.’ Another autobiographical song for Willie. How many pistol packin’ mamas have chased Willie after catchin’ him with some young blonde. That mischievous fun-loving fool. So puckish but so hard to stay mad at. Willie seems to be trying out every classic country style on this album. In “Ocean of Diamonds,” Willie returns to classic themes from his oeuvre:

Some people drink champagne out under the stars

While others drink wine leaning over a bar

But all that I need, dear, to make me feel fine

Is to know that your love will forever be mine.

I'd give an ocean of diamonds or a world filled with flowers

To hold you closely for just a few hours

Hear you whisper softly that you love me too

Would change all the dark clouds to the bluest of blue

I don't drink their champagne and I don't drink their wine

So if you refuse me my poor heart will pine

I'll be so lonely till the day that I die

And as long as I live, dear, you'll still hear me cry

Here Willie simply wants to know that her love will forever be his. That desire he just can’t shake for permanent, everlasting love. If only she could be true, truer than true. But we know that she can’t, that nobody can, and that we will hear Willie cry till the day that he dies because time and love and even forever will slip away in their funny way. I knew I had heard “Drinking Champagne” before, and it turns out George Straight did this song, which must be where I heard it:

I'm drinking champagne, feelin' no pain till early mornin'.

Dinin' and dancin' with every pretty girl I can find.

I'm having a fling with a pretty young thing till early mornin'.

Knowin' tomorrow I'll wake up with you on my mind.

Guilty conscience, I guess, though I must confess

I never loved you much when you were mine.

So I'll keep drinking champagne feelin' no pain till early mornin'.

Dinin' and dancin' with every pretty girl I can find.

Havin' a fling with a pretty young thing till early mornin'.

Knowin' tomorrow I'll wake up with you on my mind.

It also sounds eerily like a Russell Smith song I can’t place. It could be “Third Rate Romance,” but I’m not sure. Here’s Willie once again trying to drink or sleep her off his mind, but he just can’t shake her. Running, fooling around, drinking, sleeping, numbing never works. He always wakes up eventually with her on his mind. She was always on his mind and she always will be. Willie slows this song down the way only he can, and he fools around with the phrasing and lets the fiddle weave in and out to make this another 5 star song. “I Am a Pilgrim” is another Johnny Cash-style gospel tune. Willie is a “stranger traveling this wearisome land, and I got a home in that yonder city, good Lord, and it’s not…made by hand.” Again, Willie sings it wonderfully, but I don’t believe that Willie believes that if he could only touch His garment it would make him whole. I think Willie’s weed makes him whole. Willie is indeed a pilgrim and a stranger traveling through this wearisome land, but I’m just not sure about his home in that yonder city. Is that really where he seeks his “satisfied mind”? Then he turns to a classic Hank Williams tune, “House of Gold.” It’s the exact same message as that in “Satisfied Mind,” but it gives a more concrete answer to the conundrum:

People cheat, they steal and lie

For wealth and what that wealth will buy

But don't they know that on judgment day

Gold and silver will melt away

And I'd rather be in a deep, dark grave

And know that my poor soul was saved

Than to live in this world in a house of gold

And deny my God and doom my soul

What good is gold and silver, too

When your heart's not good and true

So sinner hear me when I say

Fall down on your knees and pray

Jesus died there on the cross

So this world would not be lost

Sinner hear now what I say

For someday you´ll have to pay

The old conundrum: do you want to eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you die? If this life is all there is, then make the most of it, carpe diem, seize the day. And yet, if there is another city that is better than silver and gold, a city that won’t fade away or rust, would it be worth forsaking the gold and silver now? Pascal’s wager. Delayed gratification. Does Willie really believe in it? It would be hard to square it with his life, but he certainly sings it well. It’s beautiful, but it’s not like Johnny Cash’s last albums. They were truer. Willie certainly takes responsibility for the choice, the bet, in the haunting closing tune: “Nobody’s Fault But Mine.” He knows the odds; he knows what’s at stake. He knows the “Winning Hand.” And he won’t blame anyone else if he bets wrong. The question is, where has he truly laid his chips? The fiddle shines on this track. And this album is as good as it gets. Classic country and classic Willie.

The Winning Hand (1982)

At the end of this blog I will paste a helpful review from an Amazon customer about the nature of this album. I don’t know how Peter from Leicester, England knows what he knows, but I know he knows more than I do. And it just confirms that Willie’s music is sort of like sausage: it sure tastes good, but you might not want to know how it was made. Many of the Willie tracks on this album are new to me and quite good, but it bugs the heck out of me that the liner notes give you ZERO information about the recordings. I have listened to some baffling compilations, but this may be the most baffling of them all. Mash ups of previously recorded Dolly and Brenda with updated Willie side-by-side with re-issued Willie tracks? Oh well. Here goes. Willie’s first track is “You’re Gonna Love Yourself (in the Morning),” a “duet” with Brenda Lee. I could do without the cheesy strings and electric guitar solo, but Willie’s vocals are worth the price of admission. The version of “You’ll Always Have Someone” is new to me. It may be my favorite to date. The other three sound like the same recording with different mixes on different compilations. This may come from another album, but not one I have reviewed yet. The setting is spare, with fiddle and harmonica and light drums and bass. I give it a 4. I never would have thought I would enjoy hearing Willie singing “Happy, Happy Birthday Baby,” but his vocals shine. I am not crazy about the spliced together nature of this recording, but it’s worth owning. Ditto for this version of “You Left Me a Long Time Ago.” “To Make a Long Story Short, She’s Gone” cracks me up. I’d like to hear other versions of this song with just Willie, but this is a pleasant discovery. Willie’s vocals are as strong as ever. Dolly’s “Everything’s Beautiful” certainly fits with Willie’s optimistic Buddhist philosophy. Hakuna matata. Don’t worry, be happy. This is a different version of “I Never Cared for You.” Not my favorite, but interesting nonetheless. Willie sings back-up to Kristofferson on “Casey’s Last Ride.” I’d rather hear Willie sing it straight. Willie sings the second verse. Rhymes “pint of bitter” with “mirror.” Only in country. Can’t believe I’ve never heard “King of a Lonely Castle” before. This may be my favorite track on the album. “Best to pretend with a storybook end.” Some synthesizers in the background are insulting, but Willie and Trigger are in rare form, and that must be Mickey haunting around on harmonica like a local memory. All in all, this is worth owning, but I need to track down the details about the recordings. Till then, Peter from England will have to suffice:

Peter Durward Harris "Pete the music fan" (Leicester England)

“This album features four singers who could each be classed as a true original, but the album is not quite what you might expect. It features some newly recorded material, some old recordings and some tracks that mix up the two.

Dolly did not actually take part in the project, though I assume she gave permission for her old Monument recordings to be used. If you have heard any of her old Monument recordings, you will know what to expect - but some of the tracks here are not available in their original form. All except one of the tracks featuring Dolly were converted into duets by adding one of the other voices. Willie took part in the project but some of his old recordings were also used. I believe that Willie newly recorded all the duet parts, but the solo tracks were old recordings. I also believe that all the recordings by Kris and Brenda were new. Given all that, it is remarkable that the resultant album sounds as good as it does, but it is also no surprise that Brenda shines the brightest of the four.

This album is worth five stars for its curiosity value but only three for the quality of the music - if all four had been in the studio doing completely new recordings, the results would have been far better. Committed Dolly fans will want this for Ping pong (with Kris) and What do you think about loving (with Brenda) - these songs are (as far as I know) not available anywhere else in any form. I've seen both of Dolly's duets with Willie on other compilations, though I don't know if Dolly's solo recordings of any of those four songs were ever released. Similarly, committed fans of the other three will have their own reasons for wanting this.

Unless you're a committed fan of one of the four (or fairly keen on at least two of them), you may not find enough to get excited about. Each of them has recorded better music individually.”

Live From the Last of the Breed Tour (2007)

I’m going to focus strictly on tracks 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 15, and 16. These are the only tracks on which Willie performs. Track 7 is Merle’s “Okie from Muskogee.” Merle starts the song off, but after he sings the line “We don’t smoke Marijuana in Muskogee…we don’t let our hair go long and shaggy like the hippies down in San Francisco do,” the crowd goes crazy, I’m guessing because Willie walks on stage as Merle utters that ironic line. Merle would seem to be singing this song against people like Willie. And yet Willie proudly sings it. Willie is proud to be an Okie from Muskogee, but he is equally at home in San Francisco. The paradoxical cosmic cowboy at his contradictory best. A living contradiction. Emerson would be proud. A genius. Like Ray Charles. Unafraid of contradiction. Frost said the sign of genius was being able to hold contrary ideas in your head at the same time without losing your sanity. Eliot called it negative capability. Whatever you call it, Willie is doing it on this track. Embracing it, basking in it, smiling beatifically, Siddhartha-like. Then Willie opens “Pancho and Lefty” on track 8. Willie sounds good for 2007 and 74 years old. It’s a duet with Merle, but Willie seems to carry the lion share of this song. The guitar work features prominently between verses. Merle’s voice sounds surprisingly strong as well. Track 9 may be one of my favorite versions of “Always on My Mind.” I give it 5 stars. I have a half dozen versions, but this live one is special. It opens with just Willie’s voice and a little understated guitar and piano, then the steel kicks in and the drums and bass and Mickey’s harmonica. The song gathers momentum and rises pleasingly to a crescendo. “Ramblin’ Fever” with Merle on track 11 has a nice, relaxed yet bouncy tempo. Willie “caught this ramblin’ fever long ago.” And “if someone told you I ever gave a damn, they damn sure told you wrong.” Here’s the hakuna matata Willie. He simultaneously cares and doesn’t care at all. And you can’t believe either. And yet it’s hard to get mad at him. He seems to believe both with such gusto. His art and music somehow persuades you that both can be true, at least in his songs, on his albums. Mickey’s harmonica joins the jam toward the end of this 4:53 track. Amazing that Willie is starting to explore these Grateful Dead kind of jams so late in his career. They seem to be more of a young man’s game. Willie then joins Ray Price on track 12 for Floyd Tillman’s “I Gotta Have My Baby Back.” Willie’s gotta get drunk or he’s gotta have his baby back or both. “Alone in a tavern,” Willie is listening to “songs of memories making me blue.” The sax fits the mood of this piece nicely. It’s always good to hear Willie sing with Ray. This is, I think, the 12^th version of “Crazy” I have, and it ranks up there with the best. Ray joins Willie and Mickey’s harmonica. And then a fun version of “On the Road Again.” Willie plays with the phrasing. Mickey’s harmonica seems to be singing back up. Willie lets Merle solo on guitar. A lot of energy in this closing number. I’ve got a half dozen versions of this song, and this one isn’t the best, but it’s strong.

Picture in a Frame (2003)

Kimmie Rhodes’ vocals don’t do much for me, but Willie’s voice on this version of “Picture in a Frame” immediately struck me. It’s up front and close in a way I haven’t heard before. I love this song on “It Always Will Be.” That version is probably better as a whole. This one has too much Kimmie and not enough Willie. But the snatches of Willie’s voice on this track are priceless. Same with this version of “Valentine.” It also appears on “Across the Borderline.” The producing and mixing on this album are excellent thus far. A lot of clean acoustic guitar work and crisp vocals. “Just One Love” also appears on the other album Willie recorded with Kimmie Rhodes. This version is a much more stripped down acoustic affair, and it is superior to the original. A little flamenco guitar between verses. Thankfully, there’s more Willie and less Kimmie in this track. She tries to sing harmony with him. She sounds like a younger Emmylou Harris. Willie’s vocals are strong. This version of Rodney Crowell’s “Till I Gain Control” ranks as one of my favorites. This album is growing on me. I’d always rather have straight up Willie, but Kimmie hangs back and sings harmony and let’s Willie and Trigger take the lead. This is one of my favorite songs that Willie does. I rank all of his versions of this song high, and this is no exception. “Love Me Like Song” is a different kind of song for Willie, and this time he’s trying to sing back-up vocals. “I Just Drove By” starts out with Willie and Trigger sounding as full and strong as ever. Willie also sang this Kimmie-penned song on their last outing, “Just One Love.” Again, this one is more pared down. Just acoustic with a touch of steel. This album may have to make my untenable top ten. Another hidden gem. How many more of these unknown Willie gems are out there? He is leaving behind the most amazing trail, more of a wake, of work. I’m just water skiing over it right now. I love the title “Contrabandistas.” Kimmie takes the lead on this one. Willie hangs back. Not sure who she reminds me of. Another flamenco-inflected track. Great guitar work on this album. Willie’s “Love Will Always Be” appears as “It Always Will Be” on the 2004 album of the same name. I gave that version a 4, but this may be a 5. More spare, more stripped down in this earlier 2003 version. Again, the irony of Willie claiming that his love “will always be,” until it isn’t. Until it slips away. Only in his mind will it always remain. Then he ends with two Kimmie Rhodes tunes. Interesting how Willie seems to give the guitar solos more space on some of his later works. Kimmie takes the lead on “We’ve Done this Before,” but Willie joins in “like a wave returning to the shore.” It gets at Willie’s sense of time, like seasons, like waves, like falling leaves. Returning to the past, to memories. We’ve been here before. Déjà vu. I’ve been there, I’ll be there again. A Buddhist, stoic view. “Rhinestone Highway” may be my least favorite song on the album. Might be the strings and the slightly overproduced feel (relative to the other tracks). The other songs sounded like they were recorded in Willie’s living room, but this sounds like a studio. Too polished. And almost no trace of Willie unless he’s on guitar. My biggest beef with this album would be this last track. Why end it with no Willie unless he is trying to let her have the last word or note. Too humble and deferential as always. Willie never seems to care about getting credit. Another example of him lending his name to further someone else’s career, regardless of the negative effect on his own. Who else does this? I like the principle if not the product.

Tougher Than Leather (1983)

From the first strum of the 38-second track “My Love for the Rose” that opens Willie’s 1983 album “Tougher Than Leather,” you can tell this is Willie at his best, maybe at his peak. “Changing Skies” is as good as anything on “Redheaded Stranger.” Willie has his road band plus Johnny Gimble on fiddle; he’s producing himself in his own Pedernales studio; he’s doing a concept album on straight-up Texas Western themes; he’s got Mickey Raphael’s on harmonica; and he’s got the perfectly spare backing that he should have on all his albums. In the title track, “Tougher Than Leather,” Willie’s telling a tried and true story. One might complain that it holds no tricks or surprises, but it had the opposite effect on me. I found it pleasingly straightforward. But of course Willie is just setting us up for the curveball, the changeup, on track 4: “Little Old Fashioned Karma.” What self-respecting Texas cowboy tough guy knows anything about Eastern religion and karma? A Hindu John Wayne? A honky tonk Hari Krishna recording in an Austin Ashram? Willie makes karma sound like a little old fashioned moonshine. And yet, the cosmic sense of justice found in karma does fit with the black and white vigilante justice of the wild west. What goes around comes around, and you’ll get yours soon enough. But who could picture a guru doing the Texas two-step. Only Willie. This song seems to be almost the same tune as “Sister’s Comin’ Home.” Instead of the “jeans fit a little bit tighter thsn they did before, than they did before,” we have “just a little old fashioned karma comin’ round, a little old fashioned justice goin’ down.” And Johnny Gimble’s fiddle works its usual magic in between verses, as does Mickey’s harmonica. Sister Bobbi’s piano and Willie’s gut-stringed trigger do the same. “If you’re gonna dance you gotta play the band.” “Somewhere in Texas (Part 1)” is a 54-second gem that mentions Bob Wills and polkas and Waltzes. Just as “Tougher Than Leather” mentions the phrase “Changing Skies,” which links it back to the previous song of the same name, this short track looks forward to the next one: “Beer Barrel Polka.” So far, I can’t see any reason this album isn’t as well known as “Redheaded Stranger.” “Beer Barrel Polka” is an up-tempo solo piano piece for sister Bobbi. Willie is connecting to his dance-band roots. “Summer of Roses” slows it back down. This song also appears on Willie’s 1971-release “Yesterday’s Wine.” I think I prefer the earlier version to this one, but Johnny Gimble’s fiddle is a nice addition. Not quite sure how Willie is blending this image of a cowboy tougher than leather with all these roses and delicate, weepy fiddle and harmonica strains. Then back to the narrative filler of “Somewhere in Texas (Part 2)” with a shout out to “bad karma” and a reprise of “My Love for the Rose.” A wonderfully recursive and self-referential concept album. Willie showcases his storyteller credentials. “The Convict and the Rose” is another strong narrative track. I guess this album just doesn’t have the obvious singles like “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” And then a brief reprise of “Changing Skies.” Willie’s dreamin’ of his lover from his prison cell. “Little bird, have you heard: freedom lies, freedom lies. Love like ours never dies. Changing skies, just changing skies.” Now what can this possibly mean? Is freedom a lie? Is it just “some people talking.’” Will our love really last forever, and will the scenery just change? Or is Willie lying here when he says that love will last forever? Willie claims in the next song, “I Am the Forest,” that “I’ll always be with you, for as long as you please. For I am the forest, but you are the trees. I’m empty without you. So come grow within me…And the heavens need romance, so love never dies. So you be the stars, and I’ll be the skies. And should enemies find us, let them be forewarned, that you are the thunder and I am the storm. And I’ll always be with you, for as long as you please.” Or until time slips away, or till I hit the road again. Which could be in fifteen minutes. How long will forever last this time. And what kind of trees, what kind of love, could possibly fill Willie’s restless heart? Willie’s dark forest within (see D. H. Lawrence). And Willie ends with this wisdom: “Nobody Slides, My Friend, it’s a truth on which you can depend. If you’re living a lie, it will eat you alive…You can try it but you’ll never win. You can scream, you can shout, but it all evens out…You can run you can hide, but it’s still waitin’ inside.” Justice, Karma, right and wrong. For a man who made a career out of being an outlaw, he sings a lot about justice. “Whiskey for my men, and beer for my horses.” Willie somehow insists on both the rigid, unflinching integrity of the code of the west AND the all-tolerant, pluralistic, come-what may hippy Eastern religion attitude. How can he have it both ways? All in all, this is one of Willie’s most consistently pleasing albums, but it just doesn’t have the memorable hits to make it a great album. The story just isn’t as compelling. Every song is executed well. I can’t fault the production or the band, but the lyrics just aren’t as believable. This is rarely true for Willie, but I just don’t sense he means them. Maybe future listens will disabuse me of this initial review, but something does seem to be missing. I should like this as much as “Redheaded Stranger,” but I’m not sure why I don’t.”

The Ghost (Part 3) (2005)

Of course Willie would “Blame It On the Times.” Time itself is to blame. Time is our curse, our fall, the result of original sin. “Yesterday’s gone and there’s No Tomorrow in Sight,” but “I hope we can salvage a few memories.” And yet, Willie often has yesterday in sight. Salvaging memories is a way to keep yesterday always in sight. Yesterday is better than tomorrow, more reliable, more permanent and predictable and controllable. Only Willie would think he needs a “new way to cry.” “All my tears have fallen, I can cry no more. I’ve cried so much since you have said goodbye. The pressure keeps on fillin’ up within my heart. It grows and grows, but still my eyes are dry. Though my heart is breaking, tears refuse to start, so I’ve gotta find a new way to cry. I’ve gotta find a new way to relieve the pain. It just can’t stay forever locked inside. And until I forget you and can smile again, I’ve gotta find a new way to cry.” I’m not sure what was wrong the old way. He’s made a career of crying. Maybe the blues and honky tonk replaces the public mourners, the psalms. It is a way to grieve. It is a new way to cry. To relieve the pain. It’s what the courtly love tradition was. It’s what Petrarch and the troubadours were doing. Inventing new and better and more efficient ways to cry. “Maybe in time you’ll change your mind and decide to love me again.” There it is again: time and mind. “I’ll just hang around till it’s over and hope it never ends.” Foolishly hoping that time won’t slip away. Foolishly believing the old lie that you’ll love me forever. Foolishly hoping that forever will last longer this time. Ironically, time does change minds, but usually for the worse. And why should we believe that Willie will really stay around. How can he stay around when he’s always on the road? He claims that he’ll never leave her, that he’s stubborn that way. Sounds like “Broken Promises” waiting to happen. He even breaks promises he makes to himself. “A broken promise always means someone will surely cry, and I know who that someone will be.” Really? It seems about fifty-fifty. Who’s always leaving whom? “Happiness Lives Next Door,” always next door, always around the bend, always out of reach, always elusive. And yet it is always tantalizingly close, next door. Never down the street or the next town over. Always next door. So “Let’s Pretend we’re strangers for tonight. Let’s pretend we never hurt each other.” Let’s lie to each other about our love. “Let’s pretend our love is just beginning, make believe that it was true love at first sight. And even though our love has never really ended, let’s pretend we’re stranger’s for a night.” Willie says he needs a new way to cry, but “[He’s] Going to Lose A Lot of Teardrops” this way. “While you make up your mind” I’ll just wait “forevermore.” Crying all the while. “Perhaps in time our love could still be.” Willie will just wait forever, play the patient housewife. “I’ve been trying so hard to forget you, but this chore of forgetting I find has me burning both ends of the candle, and fighting a battle with time. What I’d give just to sleep for a moment, but it’s a luxury that I can’t afford, for I know that I would just dream about you, and my tears would start falling once more.” Willie’s career is a battle with time. Burning both ends of the candle is his way of harassing time, trying to force its hand, its healing hands. And yet forgetting time is such a chore, almost as hard as remembering it. Hard to stop it from slipping away, and hard to give it the slip. This song sounds like one of his demos with just vocal and guitar. Probably the sparest on disk 3. This version of “Go Away” sounds similar to the version on the Complete Liberty recordings, but without the annoying back-up do-wop singers. “Go away…and let me cry alone.” “I’d be crazy if I took you back again, but this foolish heart…” Crazy plus foolish = crying. “It’s not right for me to love you…I wish I were far away from you.” And yet happiness is next door. I have four excellent versions of “What Can You Do To Me Now,” and it’s a toss up which one’s best. One of Willie’s sparest most haunting songs. “You broke my pride and made me cry out loud.” Willie cries uncle to time and love. Willie has gone to the dogs, faced his own death and mortality, and it has made him stronger, Buddhist, stoic. Ditto for “She’s Not For You.” I have four versions, and all are excellent. “She told you she found heaven in your eyes. We’ll I think it only fair to warn you, that sometimes she lies.” Sometimes? Some-Times time slips away. “She just looks for greener pastures now and then. And when she grows tired, she knows old faithful will take her back again.” “I’m used to feeling blue.” That could be a song in itself: “Used to Feeling Blue.” I used to feel blue, and now I’m used to it. Like Buddha, like Marcus Aurelius. To philosophize is to learn to die, to be used to the blues. But is this just another word for being numb? “What a Way to Live,” and yet what is the alternative? What other way can you live? This song also appears on “Me and the Drummer” (I prefer the version on that album). “I’m so ashamed of my eyes ‘cause they still cry for you after they both watched my hand wave goodbye to you. I’ve told them time and time again, that this will never do, and I’ve told them how you always laugh at teardrops. I’m so ashamed of my arms for missin’ you. Last night I woke up just in time to see them reach for you.” Willie’s ashamed at his tears, but he hasn’t been shamed enough in 50 years to stop. He keeps right on cryin’. If at first you don’t succeed (in grieving), cry, cry again. The back-up vocals make me cry. “Shelter of My Arms” is another spare recording. Dreams and memories will “carry me through eternity.” They are all I need. I know “it’s just a dream that soon will end.” And yet my dreams and memories are real enough, realer than reality, and more eternal. “You come home just long enough to laugh at me.” I still love you as before, and yet I don’t care? How can I love and not care?

The Ghost (Part 2) (2005)

The liner notes say these tunes come from the late 1950s and early ‘60s. Kurt Wolff also adds, “It’s a treat to know there’s still material out there for most of us to uncover and hear for the first time.” Amen. I’m over 80 albums in and still hearing stuff for the first time. Willie’s oeuvre seems bottomless. These liner notes, though, are maddening in that they don’t tell me where these recordings originally appeared. I have a half dozen versions of “Half a Man,” but this may be one of my favorites. Piano, bass, snare, and Willie’s voice. A touch of steel, but no acoustic that I can discern. Vocals are even stronger on this version of “The Last Letter.” This song appears on the early Liberty recordings, but with syrupy strings. This recording is spare with steel, snare, bass, piano, and a touch of acoustic. An understated combo that lets Willie’s vocals shine. I’ve got to find out what albums these recordings are coming from. This is my first taste of “Pride Wins Again.” “One time she loved you, and though you still feel the same, love is always the loser when pride plays the game.” Another song of love and time and lies. The fickleness and impermanence of love. Why can’t it last? This one’s a bit more up-tempo with almost a ragtime piano and a marching snare mixing with the steel. This is also my first exposure to “Building Heartache.” “When you say you love me, we both know it’s a lie, and just a dream from which I must wake, and each sweet word you tell me, is a heartache in disguise.” Promises are lies in disguise. When you say you’ll love me “always,” we both know it’s a lie. Yet we keep telling these sweet lies and keep believing them, too. Why? “Face of a Fighter” is another first for me. Willie faces lost love the way Rocky Balboa faces Apollo Creed’s fists. And he suffers the scars and heartaches like a fighter absorbing blows. He won’t go down, though he’s hanging on the ropes. “Pages” may be my new favorite Willie song. It’s a hidden gem. “Last evening I turned back the pages of time, and tore out the chapters when you were mine. I attempted to cut out the memories of you. And paste in some new ones far better and true. True. I searched through the chapters referring to hearts, for the one with the caption ‘till death do us part.’ I ripped at each letter and I tore at each word. I screamed at your memory and nobody heard. But your memory’s determined and chances are few of my ever finding a replacement for you. It desperately clings to the floor of my mind. And fights for its place in the pages of time.” Wow! Willie is like the government in “1984.” He wants to re-write the past. Cut and paste the good parts. Like Jefferson with his bible, Willie wants to edit the story of his life. This may be the most direct and blunt statement of Willie’s view of time. In this song he screams at memories. Shouts at time. Mostly piano and vocals with a little guitar. This is Willie as Simon and Garfunkel. Willie’s vocals are as stark as can be, but the guitar and piano are kind of funky and jazzy in the background. An odd but pleasingly off-kilter combination. This version of “I Hope So” is close to the one on the early Liberty recordings, but I don’t think it is identical. But then where the heck do these recordings originate? This is turning out to be one of my favorite albums for Willie’s vocals and the understated accompaniment. This version of “Everything But You” also appears on “Night Life: Greatest Hits and Rare Tracks (1959-1971).” I’ve got everything but you, which means I’ve got nothing. “They give me memories that last a day or two.” But I want love that will last longer, like Keats’ Grecian Urn. This version of “A Moment Isn’t Very Long” also appears on “Crazy: The Demo Sessions” (see my review on the blog for that album). Another version appears on “Me and the Drummer.” Here it appropriately follows a memory that lasts “a day or two.” “Some Other Time” is another first for me. “I’ll forget you and start my life anew. But not just now. I won’t forget you. ‘cause I’ve spent too much time loving you. I know I could forget you if I wanted to. But there’s still 10,000 dreams I dream of you. Some other time I’ll stop remembering the love that came my way.” Willie wants to turn his memory on and off like a light switch, but every one of his songs is about how this doesn’t work. Much as we would like to cut and paste and control memories to suit our needs, it never works that way. Again, I swear I’ve reviewed “I Feel Sorry” before, but I only see it showing up on Love and Pain (the same version as this). Only Willie could feel sorry for the guy whom his latest lover left for Willie. Willie’s been on the other side so often, he feels sorry for the guy, but not sorry enough to repent. Like Claudius. Like being “Always On My Mind,” it doesn’t count for much. This version of “You’ll Always Have Someone” appears, with different mixing, on “Love and Pain” and “Night Life.” That word “always” is so problematic and so central to Willie’s thinking. Always is always a lie, and yet Willie says it as often as he disbelieves it. I’ve reviewed a different version of “Any Old Arms Won’t Do” on “One Hell of a Ride” from 1968, but this version must be earlier. The key idea is that Willie wants a perfect love, like Petrarch and co. Anything less than perfect, unconditional, eternal love, agape, won’t do. “Slow Down Old World” also appears on “Who’ll Buy My Memories,” and that version may be my favorite, but this one’s worth owning. “And So Will You, My Love” is new to me. “Nothing lasts forever except forever and you, my love.” “Your memory’s always near. Wherever I am found. Your memory’s still around.” Another “always” song. This version of “Things to Remember” also appears on “Crazy: The Demo Sessions.” Ditto with “Undo the Wrong,” except it’s called “Undo the Right” on “Crazy.” “Home is where you’re happy,” and yet Willie’s always running away, always on the road. So if he’s happy on the road, the road is home. Wherever his lover is becomes his home. And yet isn’t that one of Willie’s fundamental problems? True homes can’t always be happy. It’s the problem with the “pursuit of happiness.” It implies that you run away from unhappiness, but that’s a form of cowardice, an avoidance of responsibility. “Why Are You Picking On Me” also shows up on “City of New Orleans.” “I’m well aware of this game you’ve learned, to love me and leave and show no concern.” And yet awareness means nothing, because I will still keep playing.

The Ghost (Part 1) (2005)

The liner notes describe this disc as “a collection of laid-back Nelson recordings from the 1960s and ‘70s.” I’ll need to do some research to figure out where these recordings actually come from. To that end, here is the track list:

1. I Let My Mind Wander

2. December Days

3. I Can’t Find the Time

4. I Didn’t Sleep a Wink

5. You Wouldn’t Cross the Street

6. Suffering Silence

7. I Just Don’t Understand

8. Rainy Day Blues

9. Night Life

10. The Ghost

11. Following Me Around

12. End of Understanding

13. Will You Remember Mine

14. So much to Do

15. Is There Something On Your Mind

16. Healing Hands of Time

This version of “I Let My Mind Wander” is new to me. I have four others, but this ranks up with the best. Willie’s vocal, steel guitar, and an understated bass, snare, and piano combine to form the near-perfect setting for his melancholy lyrics. This version of “December Day” is as understated as Willie gets. What other artist gets measured by how understated he is, and yet Willie seems to be competing with himself to see how understated he can be. Like the Rothko’s Chapel guy, Morton Feldman, always trying to get his orchestra to play softer. Willie always wants to get more spare, more stark, more raw. And yet, there is a limit to how spare a recording can be. At some point, you can’t strip any more away. You can’t get any more naked. You can always add more clothes. Addition is infinite, but subtraction is finite. Willie seems to be battling this limitation. I reviewed this version of “I Can’t Find the Time” on “Love and Pain,” same with “I Didn’t Sleep a Wink.” “You Wouldn’t Cross the Street” also appears on “Me and Paul,” and “Me and the Drummer.” Interesting that there seems to be a connection between these three albums. “Love and Pain” is a mere compilation, but the title is suggestive. Not sure who came up with the title, but it does capture Willie’s music, the intersection of love and pain, which is the battleground of time and memory. This is the only recording I have of “Suffering in Silence.” Willie encourages her to “suffer in silence like me,” and yet Willie’s whole career is suffering in public, making suffering into art. The steel guitar almost sounds out of tune, if that’s possible. As if crying and weeping could be out of tune. “Speak no bitter words. The world offers no sympathy. Though trouble surrounds you. And you long to be heard.” This is Willie’s stoic, Buddhist philosophy. “I’ll give you a lesson in living.” Willie’s whole career is giving this stoic, Buddhist lesson in living. A guide to escape the wheel of suffering. “Suffer in silence and smile” like the beatific Buddha. Ah ha! I figured out where I’d heard “I Just Don’t Understand.” It appears on the reggae album “Countryman.” I love the “do you mind.” Willie is obsessed with mind. “Mind your own business.” “Mind your manners.” “Always on my mind.” Mind has so many meanings and connotations. Mind can mean pay attention. Our mind is the organ that focuses our attention beyond pure instinct. Memory is the thing animals lack. Elephants aside, animals use memory for survival, for us, it just as often brings pain as we contemplate the past and future. We don’t have the blissfully ignorant ability to live only in the present. It is our blessing and curse. It is the subject of every Willie Nelson song. Could it be that consciousness, which is the human condition, is simply the awareness of time, the awareness of the past and the future? Here he combines “mind” and “understand.” Do you mind, as in, will it bother you, and that’s exactly what our minds do: bother us, plague us, worry us. “I’m a worried man” is another favorite reggae song of Willie’s via Johnny Cash. Our minds don’t understand, and we can’t understand our own minds (see Walker Percy’s “Lost in the Cosmos”). We can’t make up our minds; we are made up by the hardwiring in our minds. In “Rainy Day Blues” Willie asserts that you can’t outrun the blues. A world without rain and blues is a utopia, that is, a no-place. It doesn’t exist. This version sounds very similar to the 1959 version on The Early Years collection of Liberty recordings. The mix is very different, but the recording may be the same. So maybe I need to get all compilations because the mixes vary so much that they become almost different songs. The mixing makes a huge difference. Sort of like craft beers in cans versus bottles versus kegs versus growlers. The containers matter. The temperature, the glass. It’s part of what makes “Stardust” so great. I have about a half dozen versions of this song, but I’ll have to do a side-by-side comparison to rank them accurately. This one ranks up there with the best. Great to hear a sax along with Willie’s vocal. I now have almost a dozen versions of “Night Life,” but this is the same one from The Complete Liberty Recordings. “The Ghost” may be the sparest recording on a very spare album. This sounds like one of his early demo recordings. Just Willie’s voice and Trigger. “The ghost of our old love appears…It laughs while I listen for the breaking of day.” Not only do our memories haunt us, but they laugh at us, mock us. Time itself seems to be mocking our finitude. Life itself, the human condition itself. Hamlet.

Interesting that “Following Me Around” follows the song “The Ghost.” Her memory haunts Willie like a ghost in both songs. Why does memory do that to us? Why does it haunt us? Why do we compare it to a ghost? “She always follows me from town to town. At least her memory’s following me around. And whenever I clear my mind so she can see, I feel her love come rushing into me. And I know that I will never be alone. It looks as though her memory’s found a home.” Here Willie combines notions of memory with home. Restless memory’s come home to roost, but it’s a peculiar homecoming. Homecoming as haunting. A haunted homecoming. Memories stalk us, won’t leave us alone, worry us. The horns on this one seem a bit inappropriate. I think this version also appears on “Naked Willie.” The horns are removed on “Naked Willie,” though. And ITUNES says it is a 1970 recording. The only other version of “End of Understanding” I have is on The Highway Men: The Road Goes on Forever (1995). I prefer the 1995 version (and have blogged about it on the blog for that album). “Will You Remember Mine” also shows up on “Sweet Memories” (of course) and “Who’ll Buy My Memories.” This may be my favorite of the three. Spare as can be. Willie’s vocals are at their best. And I don’t know if it is Mickey Raphael, but a harmonica makes a fitting appearance. “So Much to Do” may be the same version as appears on The Complete Atlantic Recordings. This is the only version I have of “Is There Something on Your Mind.” You’re always on my mind, but what’s on yours. I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours. Her heart and mind are separate. “Is there someone from the past you can’t forget, dear.” A ghost? A local memory? Someone “following you around”? Everyone seems to be haunted, chased by, memories in these songs. “I can’t compete with memories.” Memories of love are stronger than real love. “While there’s still time, is there something on your mind?” And yet memories are outside time, beyond time. This version of “Healing Hands of Time” seems the sparest of them all. It could be the same one as that on “Country Willie—His Own Songs.” Hard to tell. A different mix, though. Raises the question, though, how can time haunt and heal at the same time. A haunted healing.

Love and Pain (1996)

Not sure what to make of this compilation album. I can’t believe it contains only the second version of “Let My Mind Wander” that I own (the other is on “Me and the Drummer”). The very thin liner notes state only that these nine songs were recorded in Texas in the mid to late 1960s. Not real helpful. This first song is spare and uncluttered, though. “December Day” appears to be the same version that appears on The Ghost (which also has very unhelpful liner notes). The mix is totally different, though, and I think I prefer the mixing on this one. Pretty much solo acoustic. A great example of Willie’s early vocals. I guess this would be the earliest version of this song, several years before the one on “Yesterday’s Wine.” This version of “I Can’t Find the Time” also appears on “The Ghost.” Willie’s theme of time features prominently. “They tell me in time I’ll forget you, but somehow, I can’t find the time.” Sounds like Willie’s Remembrance of Things Past. “You always end up on my mind.” Hmmm. Sounds like “Always on My Mind.” Here’s another song where Willie wants to forget her, but he can’t shake her memory, can’t outrun it or give it the slip. Half the time time slips away from him, and half the time he’s trying to give time the slip. Neither ever works. Very enjoyably spare recording. I’m not sure this is really Willie singing on “I Didn’t Sleep a Wink.” If it is, it is the most unusual vocal performance. Sounds nothing like any of his other recordings. It’s a blues tune, and he must be trying to sound like someone else. Same version is on The Ghost. “You Wouldn’t Cross the Street” also appears on The Ghost. Same with “Suffering in Silence.” I’m seeing a pattern here. I think I’ll just review these tunes when I review The Ghost parts 1, 2, and 3. That is obviously the set people should order, not this one. And yet, the mix for these nine songs may be better on this compilation. “I Feel Sorry for Him” and “You’ll Always Have Someone” and “I Just Don’t Understand” are all on The Ghost. I could swear I’ve listened to and reviewed “I Just Don’t Understand,” but it doesn’t show up in ITUNES or in my archive of blogs. I know I’ve heard the line “Would you mind too much if I don’t understand.” Or something very close to it. After 80+ albums, my memory may be breaking down. I’ll get to the bottom of it eventually. The short of it is, don’t buy this album. Get The Ghost parts 1, 2, and 3.

Heavy Hank: Songs of Hank Williams (2006)

The picture of Willie and Larry Butler from 1958 next to the one from 2006 is worth the price of this album. As with the last album I reviewed, Willie is clearly paying back an old friend. This album is very similar in all aspects to Memories of Hank Williams Sr. (2000). The band and Willie’s vocals are great, but I could do without Larry Butler. The opening song is a perfect choice for an album like this. “Since she left I’ve been half crazy. I feel some heavy Hank coming on.” Again, love makes you crazy, and it makes you need honky tonk and the blues. “Take these tears from my eyes and let me see just a spark of the love that used to be…take these chains from my heart and set me free.” These are chains of memories. And yet how can we ever be set free from memories? The steel guitar tears your tears right out of your eyes. The fiddle does the same. “All my faith in you is gone, but the heartache lingers on.” It appears that “May You Never Be Alone Like Me” is identical to the version on Memories of Hank Williams Sr. Hmmm. So what is this album? A re-hashing of the other album with a few new tunes? Identical versions of “Wedding Bells” and “Hey, Good Looking” also appear on both albums. “Jambalaya” is unique to this album, though, and the fiddle shines. Again, what I wouldn’t do to have an album of all these classic Hank tunes with just Willie and this band. Willie, steel, fiddle, Hank. Now that’s a recipe for Jambalaya or gumbo if I ever tasted one. Willie “can’t keep the tears from [his] eyes” in “My Son Calls Another Man Daddy.” Tears, tears, tears. No one cries like Hank and Willie and that weepy steel guitar. “Why Should We Try” is a great question that Willie seems to be asking in many of his songs. “We’ve been livin’ a lie…we were just victims of a half-hearted love.” “The vows we made are only to break.” Here we have the themes of lies, halves, and promises. “The dreams that we knew can never come true.” “False love like ours soon fades like the flowers.” Is he saying nature itself is a lie, a seductress, a fleeting, evanescent flirt? Is life itself a cheat? It makes us feel like we will live forever and then we get old. Sounds like Hamlet. To be or not to be? Why bother? Why try? Why live? This strikes at the existential core of Willie’s and Hank’s music. “My heart fell at your feet. I can’t help it if I’m still in love with you.” “A picture from the past came slowly stealing, as I brushed your arm and walked so close to you, and suddenly I got that old time feeling.” Funny how time slips away, but funny also how it sneaks up behind you and shouts “Boo!” When you want it to stay, it slips away, but when you want it to stay away, it shows up like an unwanted guest. Willie sounds great on “Mind Your Own Business.” The tune and the lyric fit his voice and his sensibility like a glove. Hank and Willie are clearly musical soul mates. I could do without the back-up singers. This collection ends with Hank’s “I Told a Lie to My Heart.” Which raises the question, why do we lie to ourselves about love? Lies, lies, and damned lies. How many of Willie’s songs (and those he covers) are about the lies we tell each other and ourselves? How much of art itself is devoted to this? Fiction?

Memories of Hank Williams Sr. (2000)

This was actually better than I thought it would be. It is clearly another example of Willie paying back an old friend. Willie joined Butler’s band in 1958, so Butler clearly helped Willie get started in the business. Larry Butler had always dreamed of making a Hank Williams tribute album, so Willie helps him do it. Willie’s vocals are wonderful. The setting is spare, featuring a fine fiddle and a classic steel guitar. But Willie only sings half of every song, and Larry Butler doesn’t do much for me. If you could remove Butler’s vocals and just listen to Willie sing these songs with this band, you’d have quite an album. It’s great to hear Willie sing Hank straight up. Of course Willie loves singing about tears and being “so lonesome [he] could cry.” “Half as Much” reminds me of “Half a Man.” “If you only loved me half as much as I loved you.” I’d settle for the crumbs of your love. Just half of your love. It seems that much of Willie’s music deals in halves. Paradoxes on the one hand, and half measures on the other. Love cut in half, separated. Unrequited love is half-love, which is worse, more painful, than no love. It is a case where ½ is worse than zero. Less than zero. Because the half taunts and teases you with the half you don’t have but desire even more because of the taste, the half, you have. Does he really mean “May You Never Be Alone Like Me”? He sings, “I believe the lies you told to me when you whispered, dear, I’ll worship thee…I gave up my friends, I left my home when you promised to be mine alone, and now you’re gone and our love can never be.” Here, again, is that wry, sardonic tone from “Funny How Time Slips Away.” You promised to love me forever, but forever didn’t last too long. This would be the opposite of Jo Dee Messina’s “Somebody’s gonna give you a lesson in leaving.” Or maybe it is the same. I hope someone does you wrong the way you did me wrong. I hope someone will show you how short forever can be. “Move it On Over” shows how fickle love can be. Big dogs replacing small dogs. Partners changing at the drop of a hat. And so it goes. This reminds me of Murasaki’s The Tale of Genji. The endless soap opera of fickle love, fleeting relationships. “Wedding Bells” tells of a scorned lover being invited to his former lover’s wedding. “Dear, I hope your happy just the same.” Does he really? “Those wedding bells will never ring for me.” This is another one of those songs where Willie is trying to convince himself, half-heartedly, that he doesn’t care. “Please let me pretend that I am there.” Let me marry you in my mind. “Your Cheatin’ Heart” says it all. Hank Williams is the Plato of honky tonk. All of country music is a footnote to Hank. This is a “you’ll be sorry” song. I’m crying now, but you’ll be crying soon. What goes around comes around. It’s like the imprecatory psalms in the old testament. We want our enemies, those who have done us wrong, to feel the same pain we feel. You’ll “crave the love you threw away…the time will come when you’ll be blue. Your cheatin’ heart will tell on you…tears [will] come down like falling rain. You’ll toss around and call my name. You’ll walk the floor the way I do.” And then he sings, “Why can’t I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold, cold heart”? “And so my heart is paying now for things I didn’t do.” Mind games of the heart. Heart and mind and their interaction. That’s Willie and Hank in a nutshell. Hearts trying to convince minds and minds trying to sway hearts. “I can’t stay here any longer ‘cause my sweet love ain’t around.” “My Sweet Love Ain’t Around.” “Hey Good Lookin’” has Willie sweet talkin’ a new love. Trying to coax time and love to slip away from some other fool. Seducing forever. Funny how we always think the next new thing will be the best forever. Newness is the very opposite of timelessness, and yet we crave it as if it were the same thing. Our very craving leads us astray, away from forever. Fittingly, then, Willie ends in a pool of tears in “(I Heard that) Lonesome Whistle.” He sings, “All I do is sit and cry.” The cryingest cowboy who ever lived. As much as I don’t care for Larry Butler’s vocals, the fiddle and steel, Willie’s vocals, and Hank’s lyrics make this one worth owning.

The Promiseland (1986)

I never appreciated the title of this album until today. Of course America has always seen itself as the land of opportunity, the land where dreams come true. The American dream. Much of Willie’s music clearly plays into this boundless, mythic optimism. “Living in the promiseland. Our dreams are made of steel. A prayer of every man is to know how freedom feels. There is a winding road across the shifting sand.” Dreams made of steel, resistant to all cynicism and doubt. Some call it naïve and foolish. As Don Henry sings, “Dreams weren’t meant to come true, that’s why they call ‘em dreams.” And yet, in America, people expect dreams to come true. Against all odds. So Willie’s music is full of hopefulness, and his life is a true rags to riches story, and he has lived it out in gratitude, always trying to pay back friends and fans for all the help he’s had along the way. Willie’s music is about freedom, and about the “winding road over the shifting sand.” In songs like this, he seems to believe in the promise, in the future. And yet so many of his other songs are about how promises never come true, never last. Willie seems to have a love/hate relationship with promises. He seems to be supremely optimistic and skeptical at the same time. Again and again I have to ask, how is this possible? And yet there he is. For 85 albums and counting, still living out the paradox, and smiling beatifically through his tears. The strings detract from the seriousness of this song, as always, but the quality of the lyrics and the vocal performance make me forget them for the most part. Mickey’s harmonica sounds like it is in an echo chamber. It’s so good to hear Johnny Gimble’s fiddle open “I’m Not Trying to Forget You.” Another example of Willie opening with a new hit penned by someone else and then turning to one of his own classics for a new interpretation. Mixing the old and new. Recursive. Actually, now that I look at my collection, it seems my only other version of this song comes from Spirit (1996). I much prefer the version on Spirit, but maybe this 1986 version is the first recording of this song. In any case, it is the only Willie-penned song on this album, and the re-curring themes of time and memory predominate:

I’m not trying to forget you anymore.

I’ve got back into remembering all the love we had before.

I’ve been trying to forget someone that my heart still adores.

You’re just someone who brought happiness into my life.

And it did not last forever, oh, but that’s alright.

We were always more than lovers, and I’m still your friend.

And if I had the chance I’d do it all again…

And the best day of my life is still when you walked through my door.

Willie vacillates between trying to forget the past and trying to preserve it permanently. Here he admits that his most perfect love was in the past (ala Proust and Gatsby), and yet he is not afraid to revisit it in his memory, more like calling up an old friend. In previous songs, the local memories haunted him. Here they are literally “fond” memories. Pleasant, not painful, to recall. This song strikes a rare middle ground in terms of his attitude toward the past. He’s not trying to forget or remember, he is just letting his memory operate as it will. Sometimes forgetting, sometimes remembering. He is accepting that love comes and goes, like seasons, like waves, and time does the same. He seems at peace with this. Interestingly, Gimble plays fiddle on both versions of this song. Bobbie is noticeably absent on piano, but family band members Bee Spears and Mickey accompany other studio musicians on this album. Then Willie slows it way down with another D.L. Jones tune, “Here in My Heart.” Randy Travis does this song as well. “You could be anywhere in the world tonight, but I’d still have you here in my heart.” Willie returns to his more possessive, controlling view of memory. Willie’s vocals and Gimble’s fiddle get to share center stage on this song in a way that you rarely get to hear. The back-up singers come on a bit too strong, though. Mickey’s harmonica weaves in and out tastefully. And then we have a Floyd Tillman song. “I get the craziest feeling. I guess it’s ‘cause I’m losing you.” “Maybe if I lost my mind, then maybe I’d learn to forget.” “I get the craziest feeling. I wish it would leave me alone. But it just goes on and on. That crazy feeling you’re gone.” “Before I was born I never had cares, and I won’t have cares when I’m gone. But until that day they take me away, I’ll do my best, but it’s hard to go on…” The word “crazy” shows up again and again in Willie’s music. Love is crazy, time is crazy, memories are crazy, minds are crazy; in short, the human condition is crazy. So how do we respond? Willie tries everything: tears, drink, the road, fooling around, stoicism, Buddhism, you name it. He tries it all. Earlier he said he wasn’t trying to forget her; here he wishes the memories would leave him alone, quit hassling him. “Wake me when it’s over” he’s sung before. Here he is willing to lose his mind if it will help him forget, and yet he suggests he may already have lost it. It’s the catch-22 of love. You’re crazy if you remember, and you’re crazy if you forget. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. A fool if you do and a fool if you don’t. So Willie does both all the time. He somehow does and doesn’t at the same time. He blends doing and not doing. And that’s crazy. Paradoxical. “No Place But Texas” could contain Willie’s paradoxes. The “Wide open spaces” and the “wild and free” mentality. Texans are strong and tough, and yet “They still cry when they hear a sad song.” I’m liking the spare background on several of these tracks which give Willie’s vocal and guitar and Gimble’s fiddle and Raphael’s harmonica room to roam. The back-up vocals continue to grate, and Mickey’s harmonica sounds oddly like it’s in a cavern. “You’re Only in My Arms (To Cry On My Shoulder)” sounds like it could be on “Stardust.” Willie has to work tears into every album. The crying cowboy, although she’s the one crying her way into his heart this time. Lots of great Gimble on this track. This album is proving to be one of Willie’s most consistently pleasing. Willie picks up the pace with “Pass it On.” I think Willie really believes this song, but it comes off sounding more trite and cliché than almost any song I can recall him covering. There’s no story here. It’s mere preaching. Just love everyone. Easier said than done. Willie makes it sound too easy. Then “Do You Ever Think of Me” has Willie wanting to be remembered. He wants to preserve his memories of others, but he also wants them to preserve their memories of him. He wants a kind of double eternity. Mutually ensured eternity. “When you whisper ‘I can’t live without you’, do you ever think of me. And in your eyes’ disguise those same old lovin’ lies you tell so tenderly.” This is “Funny How Time Slips Away” all over again. You say you could never live without me, but never comes so soon. And you live without me just fine. But when you then go tell someone else that you’ll love them forever, do you ever think of me? In “Old Fashioned Love” Willie sings, “I’ve got that old fashioned love, there it will always remain like an ivy-clinging vine, clinging closer all the time through the years…just the same.” “Dry land may turn to sea, but there’ll be no change in me, I’ve got that old fashioned love in my heart.” Ha! Is he serious! Changeling of changelings. It’s like a chameleon saying he’ll never change colors, at least not till he moves. What can a bus and ivy have in common? One is always moving, and one never moves. Willie’s ideal would be an ivy-covered bus. Ivy clinging tighter and tighter to his bus as it speeds along, never stopping. Willie paradoxically longs for unchanging old fashioned love, and yet he stays on the road running away from permanence as fast as he can. “Basin Street Blues” is one of the happiest blues tunes. If Buddha sang the blues, he would sing it like this. Happy blues. Blissful blues. This album makes my Untenable Top Ten for its spare, uncluttered arrangements (despite the cloying strings and back-up vocals at times), for its showcasing of Gimble and Raphael, and for Willie’s strong 1986 vocals and thoughtful song selection and sequencing. Again, it sounds a lot like “Stardust” at times. Willie ends with the instrumental “Bach Minuet in G,” which doesn’t do much for me. Not sure why it’s here or how it fits thematically or musically with the other songs.

A Horse Called Music (1989)

This album features two Beth Nielson Chapman-penned songs. The big hit is obviously her “There’s Nothing I Can Do About it Now.” I reviewed that song on my blog about The Essential Willie Nelson collection. It also appears on the 2006 Live From Austin Texas. Amazing that out of 85 albums I own so far, I only have two versions of this song. Here’s another song written by someone else which sounds like it could be autobiographical for Willie’s life. It combines Willie’s twin obsessions with the road and with time. “The highway’s come full circle to a place I scarce recall.” I could do without the strings (I always can), but Willie’s vocals are clear, nuanced, and credible. He seems to believe this song. Willie has his family band along with some additional studio help. The line “The highway never ends” could be a motto for Willie’s life. The speaker in this song takes a walk down memory lane and feels the full weight of nostalgia and regret. Right up Willie’s alley. “I Never Cared for You” is one of only three Willie-penned tunes on this album. This one has a flamenco tinge, and it would be interesting to compare this version to the two other versions I have (on Teatro and Me and Paul). Of the three, I much prefer the version on Teatro. I’m struck by the contrast between “You Were Always on My Mind” and “I Never Cared for You.” Which is it? How can both be true? How can we ever believe either? He tells both lies to himself so often. The strings in Skip Ewing’s “If I Were a Painting” are just too much to bear. But the lyrics resonate. They transcend their syrupy setting. “Don’t paint the tears, just let me remember me without you in my eyes.” “It’s only the frame that holds me together, or else I’d be falling apart.” “If I were a painting I wouldn’t feel, and you wouldn’t be breaking my heart.” Again, the themes of memory and lost love and wanting art to somehow transcend both. [The desire to be a stoic, a Buddhist, who doesn’t let feelings, desires, get to him.] It is only the frame, the limit, the structure, the meter, that holds Willie together, and yet he’s always hitting the road, the highway, and breaking meter, singing behind the beat, so he can fall apart beautifully outside the frame, the family, home. His art is the record of that beautiful failure to hold it all together. This confirms my theory that people only have the energy to “hold it all together” in life or art, not both. There isn’t enough time to hold both together. Both require so much time and care and maintenance. It seems you have to sacrifice one for the other. “Spirit” is another song that anticipates the albums Teatro and Spirit. The strings cloy, but Willie’s vocals stay front and center. It’s interesting that this late in his career Willie is still allowing producers to add syrupy strings to his tracks. The lonely speaker of this lyric “rides the horizon” like so many outcasts and outlaws in Willie’s songs. I swear I have heard and reviewed “There You Are” on one of the 85 albums I own, but I can’t find it in a previous blog or in my ITUNES. Maybe I just know it from the radio. I had just started listening to country radio right around 1989, so I may have it ingrained in my mind from then. Some might find this to be a cheesy pop tune, but I’m a sucker for this. It reminds me of “You Were Always on My Mind.” As always, I could do without the strings, but the steel guitar and Willie’s vocals are as good as they get. “Your memory is the only thing that hasn’t changed.” Willie returns to his tried and true formula. “I close my eyes and there you are…here I go back into those memories, where you are still in love with me.” If this isn’t Proust, I don’t know what is. Or Gatsby. The desire to control the fickleness and fleetingness of time and love by closing one’s eyes and using memory and art to freeze perfect love in the Grecian Urn of our minds. “Mr. Record Man” is another example of Willie re-doing older material on new albums. The lonely man in this lyric (and Mickey’s weeping harmonica) follows nicely after the previous song. Willie shows such thoughtfulness in his choice and sequence of songs. This gives his albums a wonderfully recursive feel. He’s always circling back through time, through styles, through songs, through mentors, through influences, through producers. Just like nature and waves and seasons. Always the same and yet always new. I love Beth Nielson Chapman, and her second song on this album is as good as the first. This is the first time I’ve heard Willie sing “If My World Didn’t Have You.” “It all has a balance like sunshine and rain. You share with me the blues and the breaks.” Willie couldn’t make it without her, and yet he’s leaving her all the time. What he means is, I need the idea of you, the memory, to keep me going. I need Daisy or Odette. A real person won’t do. No real person could sustain me. In “A Horse Called Music,” Willie sings, “I guess it’s all better that we just let it slide.” Hakuna matata. Let it be. And yet he rides away with a “tear in his eye.” Another crying cowboy. There’s a John Wayne, Lone Ranger theme to this album. Willie’s spare vocals at the end of the song are as good as he gets, and his voice is still young and strong in 1989. This is my first listen to Willie’s “Is the Better Part Over.” It opens like a movie score with strings galore. Then it cuts to solo acoustic. What a song to end an album with. “After thinking it over, wouldn’t you rather have the ending nice and clean, where love remains in all the closing scenes?” “Why hang around for an ending that’s laden with sorrow? We’ve both been around, we’ve both seen that movie before. And as much as I love you, I can’t love while fearing tomorrow. If the better part’s over, why should we try anymore?” “Are we down to not quite saying what we mean?” Willie hates singing on the beat, he bristles at restrictions and laws and family ties. And yet he likes form and structure and closure when it comes to endings. Again, why can’t we freeze life at the better parts, skip the annoying commercials, fast forward, TIVO the great love scenes. Wouldn’t it be nice? And yet we wouldn’t be human. Think what we’d lose? There’s a pathetic quitting, giving up, avoiding hardship element to songs like this. Is this the price of Buddhism and stoicism? It’s fine if you’re the stoic, but God help the stoic’s wife or child. Willie seems to what love with no strings, with no risk, and yet that’s no love at all. That’s like gambling without betting real money? No risk of losing money, but no chance of winning big either. Nothing ventured nothing gained. This album is very close to making my Untenable Top Ten, but I think it just barely falls short. It’s honorable mention. I will revisit it often with pleasure and may change my mind with further listenings. There are certainly some gems here you won’t find anywhere else.

Stars and Guitars (2002)

Sheryl Crow doesn’t add much to “Whiskey River” on this live album from 2002. Toby Keith tried to make this version of “Good Hearted Woman” sound like the classic live version with Waylon, but he can’t quite pull it off. The fans aren’t as enthusiastic as they are in the classic version, but I like how Toby says, “Willie” the same way Waylon does on that famous version. The sense I get from that classic version, though, is that it was a Waylon concert and Willie walked on stage and surprised the crowd. Not sure if that’s true, but that’s what it sounds like. You don’t get the same energy here. Rob Thomas, the author of “Maria (Shut Up and Kiss Me),” actually gives Willie room to sing on this live version. The horns and back-up vocals don’t do much for me, but the vocals make this worth owning. “Mendocino County Line” is such a great song for Willie’s voice, and Lee Ann Womack is a great duet partner for Willie. The song gives Willie just the right kind of space he needs for his vocals to stretch out and roam. The strings are a bit much, but Willie’s voice is in rare form. I’m a sucker for the studio version of this song, and this one rivals (or surpasses) the hit version. Willie, of course, takes some liberties in spots, which makes it interesting. “Always On Mind” with Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora doesn’t work. I’m glad Bon Jovi respects Willie and wants to sing with him, but I won’t return to this version much. Willie’s solo vocals are actually quite good, and the crowd gets into it, but I’d like to edit out the duet partners. “Night Life” with Ray Price (who made it a hit before Willie did) is one of the highlights of this disc. I like hearing Willie sing with Ray because it lets me hear where Willie got so many of his vocal licks. Ray, like Thelonius Monk, can do so much with the spaces between notes. The piano, sax, and steel work in and out of the vocals unobtrusively, and the backing on this track is so much sparer than the others that the vocals feature more prominently. This may be my favorite track on the album. Keith Richards’ “Dead Flowers” is an interesting selection. I’d like to hear Willie sing this solo. Ryans Adams, Hank Williams III, and Richards dominate this song too much for my taste, but I’m intrigued by the lyrics of this bluesy Stones tune. “Lonestar” with Norah Jones is another interesting choice of song and partner. So far we’ve had Whiskey River, Night Life, Dead Flowers, and Lonestar. I’m too tired to connect the thematic dots between these songs, but I think there’s a pattern. Willie’s vocals are superb, and Norah gives him room to operate. Another spare production with just guitar, drums, bass, and organ. Aaron Neville’s “Stardust” borders on absurd at times. Willie seems to be sitting this one out. This does point out an interesting phenomenon, though. Neville isn’t covering Hoagy Carmichael; he is covering Willie’s 1978 version of Carmichael’s song. Only Willie can cover a song so thoroughly that people then cover his cover. I’m a sucker for Willie’s rendition of “Don’t Fade Away” with Michael Knight, but I may prefer the studio version to this live one. I give this one 4 stars, though. This version of “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” with Patty Griffin pales in comparison to the one on “Songs for Tsunami Relief.” The steel steals the show on this spare track, and Willie only joins in during the last minute. I’d like to hear more of him. True to his humble nature, he lets his friends steal too much of the vocal spotlight. Steven Stills’ classic “For What It’s Worth” is another bold choice. I’d still rather hear the live CSNY version on the acoustic “Four Way Street,” but Bill Evans’ sax makes this one interesting. Willie’s funky, slowed-down version of this 1967 Buffalo Springfield hit intrigues me. Sheryl’s not bad. Matchbox Twenty actually makes something new out of “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.” They actually slow it down and stretch it out instead of speeding it up. That’s the secret to Willie’s music. It often gets better when you slow it down. You can actually get more out of it that way. You can savor each word and syllable and beat. This version gets jazzy and trippy. I wouldn’t have thought it possible. Vince Gill pulls an Aaron Neville and basically sings “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” by himself. This exemplifies the problem with these Willie Nelson and Friends Concerts: too much friends and not enough Willie Nelson. They should be backing him up, not the other way around. “Till I Gain Control Again” is one of my favorite Willie songs (even though Rodney Crowell wrote it). I wanted to like this version more than I did. I thought Emmylou Harris would be perfect, but her vocals actually seem a bit off here. I much prefer the version on Willie and Family Live, though Willie’s vocals and the steel guitar shine. Jimmy Cliff’s reggae classic “The Harder They Come” with Ryan Adams provides a pleasing contrast to the previous ballad. How many people could pull off a transition from Emmylou Harris to Jimmy Cliff so easily? The family band actually disappointed me a bit with “On the Road” and “Move it On Over.” They seemed a bit flat instead of providing the rousing finale for the show I was hoping for. Mickey, as always, pulls his weight on harmonica, and Bill Evans’ sax shines, but these last two just didn’t do much for me.

Outlaws and Angels (2004)

This is Willie live with friends in LA in 2004. He opens with a rousing rendition of Billy Joe Shaver’s “Georgia on a Fast Train.” “On a rainy, windy mornin’ on the day that I was born in my old sharecroppin’, one-room country shack. They say my mamie left me the day before she had me. Said she hit the road and never once looked back. I’d just like to mention that my grandma’s old-age pension is the reason why I’m standin’ here today. I got all my country learnin’ milkin’ and a churnin’, pickin’ cotton, raisin’ hell, and balin’ hay.” Though Billy Joe wrote it, it clearly describes Willie’s life. His mama left him early in his life, and his grandmother raised him. Joe Walsh and Toby Keith accompany Willie on this opening tune. Clearly this song fits into the “on the road” nature and theme of Willie’s life and music. It also shows the blending of sinner and saint, outlaw and bodhisattva, that runs through Willie’s life and work. “I got a good Christian raisin’ and an eighth grade education.” Of course someone born to a mother with a wild streak and raised by a good Christian grandmother would be a hybrid of both. Willie’s life and work strive to reconcile these twin extremes. Merle Haggard then joins them for Merle’s “Ramblin’ Fever,” another quintessential “on the road” song. Gotta keep moving so you don’t bog down. “Ain’t no kind of cure for my disease.” Can’t let “no woman tie me down.” It’s like a fever that Willie can’t fight or control or outgrow. It afflicts him like a disease. He is the passive victim of forces outside his control (like his mother leaving him). This version of “Shotgun Willie” with Kid Rock is not my favorite, but I admire Willie’s audacity in giving it a shot (pun intended). Not sure why they keep chanting “Shotgun Bobbie.” Are they referring to his sister, or is Kid Rock’s real name Bobby? Kid Rock is clearly the outlaw today, so he is a fitting partner in that sense. I like the funk of this version. Not sure who the woman on back-ups is (liner notes list three possible women), but she belts it out with Kid Rock. The harmonica must be Mickey Raphael. The liner notes simply say that the house band and the family band are both there and help out on different songs (though it does mention that Mickey is in both bands). And then, of course, a gospel song with Al Green. Right after Fast Train and Ramblin’ Fever. The yin and yang of Willie’s life. “Rainin’ in My Heart.” We will see on this album the themes of rain, storm, and midnight. “My love for you is an eternal one.” And yet it rains. “Why can’t it be like it used to be…Somebody ought to stop the rain…Lookin’ at the Sun, it’s rainin’ in my heart.” “It seems like only yesterday we were so in love. We were lookin’ at the sun but somehow it keeps rainin’ in my heart.” It’s “Funny How Time Slips Away” all over again. Why can’t love be true and last forever. Rain and the storm and midnight and the fallen world of autumn and seasons and change and time ruins perfect love, and yet leads to such beautiful emotions and songs. Why does pain yield great art? Why do we suffer into beauty, suffer into truth? “Stormy Weather” with Shelby Lynne is a five. Her voice is angelic. “Just can’t get my poor self together.” “Since you went away the blues walked in and met me.” I just pray that the lord will let me sit in the sun once more. “Doesn’t he have the prettiest hair you ever seen?” Shelby asks the crowd. I saw the video of this performance on YouTube, and Shelby is flirting big time with this 70 year-old man. I love Carole King, and “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” fits perfectly with this theme of “Why can’t love last forever” songs. “Tonight you love me completely” (ah, but what about tomorrow? Will it last? I think not, though I hope so.) “BUT…will you still love me tomorrow?” “Is this a lasting treasure, or just a moment’s pleasure?” This applies to Willie’s view of love, but also to his overall view of life. Is there more to life than just the physical pleasures of the here and now? This is the existential question that lies behind all of Willie’s music. Is this all there is? Or do we see glimpses of more? Glimpses of eternity? Glimpses of deeper, more lasting joy? “Can I believe the magic of your sighs?” “Tonight with words unspoken, you’ll say that I’m the only one.” But then time will slip away, and you’ll find another faster than you can blink an eye. “I’d like to know that your love, is a love I can be sure of.” Wouldn’t we all like to be sure of an eternal love? And this leads to the gospel music that follows and that Willie ends the show with (“I’ll Fly Away”). And it’s back to Augustine’s “Our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.” But Carole, like so many others, steals the song from Willie and won’t give him space to sing. Shelby let him sing, but Carole blasts him off the stage. And after a few gospel tunes and a woeful folk ballad, of course Willie has to return to his “on the road” theme with “Still is Still Moving to Me.” This is not one of my favorite Willie tunes, but I like this reggae version with Toots Hibbert better than the straight up versions. And it’s great to hear Willie perform with rock stars (Joe Walsh and Keith Richards), gospel stars (Al Green and The Holmes Brothers), folk stars (Carole King), and Country stars old and new (Merle and Toby). He moves easily between and among them all. He is not of them and yet he is at home with them all. Gregg Allman’s “Midnight Rider” continues the “on the road” theme. Al Green, Carole King, Kid Rock, and Toots all have to scream to achieve the emotional impact that Willie achieves with a whisper. Ironic. Willie performs musical ju-jitsu. Somehow he uses the listener’s own emotional momentum against them. Like a vocal slingshot he swings their own yearnings back upon them. His voice merely re-directs their own desires. This version with Ben Harper has more of a soul/gospel/blues feel with a back-up chorus and an electric lap slide guitar solo (and, of course, Mickey’s harmonica). “Ain’t gonna let ‘em catch me, no.” Just keep runnin’ and outrun the blues. “Pressure Drop” with Toots and Ben Harper doesn’t do much for me (possibly because I don’t understand the lyrics). “Pressure’s gonna drop on you.” Is this a revenge song? “I’ll Never Be Free” is an ironic song for Willie to sing. Someone who lived his life so free and recklessly yet admits that he has been a slave in so many ways. A slave to freedom. Freedom can be a tyrant. It’s not as good as “Stormy Weather,” but Lee Ann Womack tries. “No one can satisfy this longing in me.” “How can I be free when I still remember.” Memory enslaves us. “Just like a chain bound to my heart. Your love remains when we’re apart. Each kiss I gave to you…made me a slave to you.” Reminds me of Luther’s “Bondage of the Will” and the notion that within bondage comes true freedom. “Opportunity to Cry” may be my favorite Willie song, and this is not one of my top five versions of this song, but I love the audacity of this version with the Holmes Brothers that Willie claims is a “blend of blues, funk, and soul.” It sounds like Otis Redding singing Willie. Just as Ray Charles turned soul into R & B., Willie turns traditional honky tonk cheatin’ songs back into gospel tunes. So Willie started out singing in church, then he went country and Hank Williams, but then he comes back to gospel. Same with Johnny Cash. He comes full circle in so many ways. He broke free from Nashville, but then he goes back to recording with the very studios that he fought to escape. But this time he does it of his own volition, as in Wordsworth’s “Nuns Fret Not Their Convent’s Narrow Room.” Los Lonely Boys’ “Cisco Kid” doesn’t do much for me. Again, not sure what the lyrics mean, and Willie sits this one out. Then Merle and Toby join Willie for “Pancho and Lefty.” Toby can’t hang with his heroes, but it’s touching that he tries. It isn’t one of my top five versions of this song, but it’s worth owning. “Overtime” with Lucinda Williams is a five for sure, but I’ve already reviewed this song in an earlier blog. Again, I’d like to hear a whole album of duets with Willie and Lucinda. Merle’s “Mama Tried” is another song written by someone else seemingly about Willie’s life. Mama (or grandmother) tried to raise Willie right, tried to reign in the ramblin’ impulse. Be even Mama couldn’t keep him true. Mama and God are like the bass line, the melody, from which Willie’s life and vocals deviate, always behind or ahead of the beat, but then resolving for brief moments, always coming home, if only for a short while. Always coming or going, always just passing through. Always wishing he could stay, but only half-heartedly. He teases us vocally and morally. He lies musically. He seems to promise one thing, then delivers another. This song is another version of “Georgia on a Fast Train.” Here, though, he accepts the blame. He doesn’t excuse it as a “fever.” “I turned twenty-one in prison doing life without parole.” “That leaves only me to blame ‘cause mama tried.” I think the dead do this song. Rickie Lee Jones may be the only person with a stranger vocal delivery than Willie. She and Willie tackle “Comes Love” along with a jazzy combo of bass, trumpet, and piano. When it comes to love, “Nothin’ can be done.” We know how to face and bear up under any other form of adversity, but love baffles and defeats us every time. We are powerless, helpless in its presence. Nothing can be done about time, love, and the fallen human condition. This track gets better with each listen. It might be a five, too. I didn’t want to like “We Had it All” with Keith Richards, but it turns out Keith is on acoustic, and this is a tender ballad. And Richards sings better than I thought he would. “You are the best I can recall…I know we can never live those times again.” Everything was perfect in the past, till time slipped away. If only we could get it back. If only it wasn’t so slippery and elusive and fleeting. Reminds me of Adam and Eve. They had it all in the garden, but they wanted freedom, the open road, and they regretted it forever. “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On” is a ramblin’ wreck of a song with Jerry Lee Lewis, Kid Rock, Keith Richards, and Merle. Willie seems to be saying, heck, we had it all, it’s sad we lost if forever, but let’s rock and make the best of it. The pendulum swings from despair to hope to “screw it all” and then back to despair and hope, etc. Of course, it all has to end with the gospel. “I’ll Fly Away” combines the hope of redemption with the road. Except this road is not a road away from God and family but the road to glory, the adventurous, perilous, exhilarating road to heaven. A different road. The glory road. The road home. This song reconciles Willie’s desire for freedom and belonging. Willie refers to Bobbie as “little sister,” but of course she is two years older. The family band’s solos, except for Mickey’s, pale a bit in comparison to the house band. Nevertheless, this album’s a keeper.