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.