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.