Island in the Sea (1987)

Willie self-produced this album in 1987, the year I graduated from high school, at his own Pedernales Recording Studios in Spicewood, Texas. He has his standard road band accompanying him along with some studio pros and even Bruce Hornsby on piano for one track. Willie starts out as a “roving cowboy” who sure has “made himself at home.” And for such a roving cowboy, sailor, drifter, he sure has found a friend. Again, the paradox of finding home on the road. Call it the “still is still moving” paradox. Willie’s yodeling at the end of his self-penned title track surprised me. The image and symbolism of an island in the midst of the sea, like the Honeysuckle Rose bus in the midst of the road, might represent the Buddhist calm in the midst of the storms of life. Willie then digs back into the old box of Willie standards and pulls out “Wake Me When It’s Over.” This isn’t my favorite version, but it’s an interesting bluesy take with a Stardust-quality production sound. Booker T. Jones produces one of the songs and pitches in on other tracks. Mickey’s harmonica threatens to steal the show as always. I prefer the 1967 version of “Little Things” with Shirley Nelson, but this one ranks a close second. The 1979 version on “Sweet Memories” ranks third of the three I have. I wish Willie sang this one more often. It’s one of his mellowest, most melancholy songs, and though I usually favor the mellow, melancholy albums, this album may be too mellow for me. It doesn’t quite make my untenable top ten because it just never took off for me. I kept waiting. The band, the production quality, the mixing, the song selection all suggest that this would rank as one of my favorites, but I think it just misses. This version of “Little Things,” though, is a five. Tom Paxton’s “Last Thing on My Mind” fits Willie’s obsession with thinking and minds. “I could have loved you better. I didn’t mean to be unkind. You know that was the last thing on my mind.” Because you were always on my mind. I always had the best intentions. In my mind my love was always perfect and true. Willie can deliver a wry turn of phrase, a pun, a twist, a semantic change-up like no other. The bottom drops out and your ears and mind swing foolishly. His delivery packs a deceptive wallop like a spitter or a knuckle ball. This version of “There is No Easy Way” is similarly solid, but not one of his top performances of this song (another near-miss). I guess my ears are starting to get greedy. I know how good he can be, and I wanted some of these to be even better. Bruce Hornsby’s “Nobody There But Me” is an interesting selection. It has a Montaigne-like sentiment that when you have to face the music, face your life, speak straightforward French, there’s nobody there but you to blame. “Cold November Wind” fits Willie’s autumnal theme, but it’s odd on an island album. How cold do November’s get on islands in the sea? Fall in Hawaii? “A cold November wind cuts the deepest of them all.” Willie (or P. Horne) connects the life of love to seasons. Inevitably fleeting. In a way, seasons are always on the road. Seasons are the perfect example of the “still is still moving” principle. They always change, but they always stay the same. And yet even though we know fall will come, or that cold November wind, it still surprises us like it’s the first time. And we are surprised that way by love, too. By time when it slips away, as if we didn’t know it would. Every time it strikes us as odd or funny, and yet we should know it is normal, not funny at all.

“Women Who Love Too Much” is Booker T. all the way. Willie trying to sing a slow jam R & B song. Women who hope that “life will be what once it seemed.” This may be a counterpart to “To All the Girls I loved Before.” Women who expect too much of love. Humans who expect too much of being human, of relationships, of mortality, of life. Women who believe the old lie that romance offers us. And yet what a beautiful lie. What do we gain by not believing it? This song is like nothing else in Willie’s repertoire. “All in the Name of Love” is another Booker T. song that has a pounding R&B beat, but you factor in a bass sounding harmonica and you have country R & B, whatever the heck that is. I’m not crazy about this song, but it’s so unusual, so unlike Willie’s other stuff, that it’s worth revisiting. What won’t we do in the name of love? As dark a story as Willie has ever told. “He left two holes where two hearts had been.” Reminds me of “I once had a heart, now I have a song.” We hurt, we kill in the name of love. Apparently Booker T. also buys into Willie’s fatalistic philosophy: “You can’t change the stars above.” I’m curious about how Mickey gets this funky, frightening bass sound out of his harmonica. Booker T.’s “Sky Train” is another story song, but this one seems to transcend the fatalism of the last one: “There must be better times if we keep moving down the line.” Booker T. seems to be writing Willie’s autobiography: “Midnight bands on endless tours in search of endless highs…we’re restless millions moving on, the lost and not yet found.” Still is still moving, but it’s restless till it finds rest in Thee. The satisfying high is fleeting, fickle, and elusive. We seek meaning without context, not knowing that context, relationship, is meaning. Context is text, text context. All facts are theory-laden. The tragedy and the theme of every Willie Nelson song is that we keep looking for a short-cut to deep and lasting satisfaction, and there just isn’t one. We pay for every short-cut dearly. We save time, but we lose so much more. We think art will redeem us, but it can’t.