Brand on My Heart (1985)

The second album included in this two-LP CD was produced by Chips Moman and recorded in November 1984 in Spicewood, Texas. It is a duet album with Hank Snow which also features the hauntingly beautiful fiddle work of Johnny Gimble. The album opens with a Hank Snow-penned up-tempo train song, “Golden Rocket.” Willie has “another true love waiting in Tennessee.” Another case of hitting the road chasing after that elusive perfect love. Mickey Raphael’s harmonica, of course, drives the train throughout the song. This version of Geoff Mack’s “I’ve Been Everywhere” does not offer much of a threat to Johnny Cash’s definitive rendition. Not sure why anyone would even attempt it after Cash did (though I don’t know the date of when Johnny recorded it, so maybe this came first). Willie’s banter with Hank at the end of the song makes the whole track worth it, though. I am impressed that anyone can simply sing the lyrics of this song with all the crazy place names. This album hits its stride with Ivory Joe Hunter’s “I Almost Lost My Mind.” It’s a funky, bluesy number with lyrics that revisit Willie’s favorite theme: “When I lost my baby, I almost lost my mind. My head is in a spin since she left me behind.” Willie’s love is usually in his mind, so losing his love and losing his mind would be one and the same. That said, he usually saves his love in his head when he loses his physical love, so it is odd that he would lose them both at the same time like this. His love is always on his mind, so losing love outside the platonic ideal of his mind is usually not that big of a deal. I probably shouldn’t like Mitchell Torok’s kitschy “Caribbean,” but I do, so sue me. It’s a fun up-tempo romantic romp. Willie refers to Christopher Columbus as Chris. I thought he was talking about Kristofferson at first. Only Willie calls Columbus Chris. Hank’s “Brand on My Heart” perfectly illustrates Willie’s theory about the permanence of love in the memory. “And left as a memory your brand on my heart.” You say I’ll “find someone to love me someday…but, darlin’, that someone can only be you.” Once again, Willie claims to be faithful and true forever even though his love has left him. Of course, in the next song Willie sings Hank’s “I’m Movin’ On.” Someone is always leavin’ someone in these songs. Love is never at rest. Like Einstein’s theory of relativity, love is either coming or going. The stable world of Newtonian mechanics never applies. Sometimes Willie claims that he will stay true no matter what his loves does, but here he claims he will simply move on. Hakuna Matata. Hank Locklin’s “Send Me the Pillow You Dream On” continues the theme that Willie still cares. Hank sounds like Dylan, and Gimble’s fiddle shines on this track. It’s a classic melancholy honky tonk song with weeping steel, fiddle, and harmonica. “I Don’t Hurt Anymore” has Willie protesting too much again. Claiming he doesn’t care anymore. The second biggest lie after “I’ll love you forever” is “I don’t care if you don’t love me anymore.” Willie claims, “all my teardrops are dry. No more walking the floor with that burning inside,” but we don’t believe him. If you have to sing a sad song about it, you still care. “No use to deny that I wanted to die the day you said we were through.” “I’ve forgotten somehow that I cared so before. And it’s wonderful now. I don’t hurt anymore.” “Now that I find you’re out of my mind.” So you’re always on my mind, until of course you’re out of my mind? This song tries to undercut every one of Willie’s Proustian preservative songs that strive to keep love alive in his mind. He’s always trying to remember, except when he wants to forget. Make up your mind, Willie. It’s foolish, of course. Love. He admits as much with “A Fool Such as I.” “Don’t be angry with me should I cry.” “You taught me how to love and now you say that we are through.” Now he insists that he will love her, foolishly, till the day he dies, even though she says they’re through. “Now and then there’s a fool such as I am over you.” “Now and then” gets at the issue of time and love. We are fools about the past and the future. Fools for love, and time’s fool. Though Shakespeare claims “love’s not time’s fool,” maybe it is. I must consult Shakespeare’s sonnets, and especially “Let Me Not to the Marriage of True Minds Admit Impediments.” The marriage of minds, and the impediments. That sums up Willie’s world and music. Again, he claims, “It Makes No Difference,” when indeed it does. “I’ll get along without you…I’ll get by somehow…I don’t worry because it makes no difference now.” Yeah, right. “I thought you loved me, too.” “That’s all in the past and I’ll forget somehow.” Really? Proust? Gatsby? I don’t think so. Forget that brand in your heart? How do you forget a brand? “I don’t blame myself and I’m sure I don’t blame you.” “I don’t worry”? Except in every song for my whole career. Worry, worry, worry. Willie is both the most and least worried man in show business. How he can be both to the nth degree baffles me, but there it is. He cries forever and never cries again at the same time. He somehow lives two lives simultaneously. And that may be the definition of living life to its fullest. Maybe that’s why he loves duets so much. He is attracted to the dialogic, the dual, the paradoxical. He wants to have everything both ways. Maybe that’s why I own both of these paradoxical albums and why you should, too.