Laying My Burdens Down (1970)

I own this 1970 Felton Jarvis produced RCA album on LP, but since I don’t have a record player, I’ll be reviewing the songs via the ITUNES album I downloaded for $9.99. I’ve reviewed the title track on my blog for the compilation “One Hell of a Ride,” but it bears repeating that this gospel tune has a funky bass that makes me wish Willie did this song live in concert these days as an encore. Dee Moeller’s “How Long Have You Been There” fits into Willie’s host of haunted memory songs. He burns bridges, but memories of lost loves pursue him, haunt him, and won’t let him go. Willie makes a wise choice with Glenn Campbell’s “Senses.” “I feel lonely every day…now I can taste the tears that I cried…it’s over but I don’t have the sense to let you go…It doesn’t make much sense for me to cry for you, and if I had any sense at all I’d realize we’re through. But my senses are reacting much too slow.” This song and Willie’s career might do well to steal a title from Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility. Here Willie is crying as usual. He’s the crying cowboy, a sensitive soul. And yet, he has no sense. Too sensitive for his own good, and not enough sense. It’s another “she’s gone” song. The battle between heart and mind, between feeling and thought, is one that Willie depicts in song after song. He’s the Jane Austen of Country Music, the Lizzy Bennett (with a little Wickham sprinkled in for good measure, or bad measure, as the case may be). Felton Jarvis let me down by letting the strings and back-up singer invade this song, but the lyrics and the vocals make up for the grating background. Willie’s own “I Don’t Feel Anything” returns to the funky bass beat of “Laying My Burdens Down.” It’s an interesting choice to follow “Senses.” In that song he felt too much, here he feels nothing. Willie’s always feeling too much or not enough, and always at the wrong times. A not uncommon human predicament. “I don’t feel love or hate or anything that I felt before. Why was I so afraid of seeing you again? How I must have loved you once upon a time…You look the same as always, time’s been good to you, but I must confess that time has done a few things for me, too.” Here again time is on Willie’s side. He uses time to his advantage. “Love’s not time’s fool,” and neither is Willie. I actually kind of like the canned horns in the background. I wish Willie did more with horns. Harlan Howard’s “I’ve Seen That Look On Me (A Thousand Times)” is another example of Willie’s double-vision, his ability to see “both sides now.” Like Proust’s binoculars. The gist of the song is that Willie’s been cheating on his woman for a long time, and now she’s finally started cheating on him. It takes one to know one, and Willie knows that knowing look. He can sympathize. He can see himself in someone else. “What makes us do the things we do? Heaven only knows. We think we have a secret, but it always shows. And I taught you how to cheat, and you’re doing fine….But I still love you, and so I pretend, and hope I never see that look again. But if I do, I know the fault is mine.” She lies to him, and he lies back by acting like he doesn’t notice. Fight lies with lies. I think what attracts so many people to Willie’s music is his willingness to admit “the fault is mine.” He knows people lie and cheat and hide, but he doesn’t get bent out of shape because he knows he does it, too. I’m not sure what Willie’s “Where Do You Stand?” is about. This sounds like the same version that’s on the 2009 compilation “Naked Willie,” but I’m not positive. “Hey what’s your plan?” The strings and horns and back-up vocals are almost too much to bear. “It’s time for commitments, it’s time for a showing of hands.” Willie is one to talk about commitments. “Surely there’s someone with courage to say where he stands.” How can you stand firmly when you’re always on the road? Eddie Rager’s “Minstrel Man” is very much in the JT, Carole King, 1970s vein of songwriting. “Happiness Lives Next Door” seems to be the same version as the one on “Naked Willie” but different from the one on “The Ghost” and “Face of a Fighter.” “When We Live Again” is the third song that shows up again on “Naked Willie.” Clearly Mickey Raphael thought this was an album in dire need of denuding. This song features one of Willie’s more telling lines: “Let’s re-live again the time that we know now.” Even in the present moment he is looking ahead to how this moment will look as a memory. He can’t wait to re-live a moment. In fact, he seems to hurry through life on the road so he can get to re-living his life. “Let’s not lose the days, the progress love has made.” “Following Me Around” harkens back to “How Long Have You Been There?” A memory is following Willie around. This song fittingly appears on “The Ghost” (and I have reviewed the lyrics on my blog for that compilation) and this same version appears on “Naked Willie,” sans strings and back-up vocals. So almost half of this album is rescued and restored by Mickey Raphael. He needs to go through and do the same with a great deal more of Willie’s over-produced early work. In short, the over-production of these songs knocks this album out of the untenable top ten, but you can hear many of them in a more palatable setting on “Naked Willie.”