Rainbow Connection (2001)

This is the kind of quirky, eclectic, organic, evolving kind of album only Willie could come up with. According to Willie’s own account written in the liner notes, it started out as a children’s cd, but it evolved into a cd that starts with children’s songs and then evolves into mature adult songs. This is another one of those favor albums Willie does as favors to his friends and family. He did this one for and with his daughters and friends. It’s great to hear Willie singing solo acoustic on the title track, but it isn’t one of his stonger vocal performances. He can’t seem to hit some of the notes. “I’m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover” is an old tune from Willie’s childhood, and the “Luck Choir” actually makes it sound like a family sing-a-long at Christmas, which it literally was, recorded in Luck, Texas over Christmas. “O’l Blue” becomes even more special when you learn that Willie made his grandmother, who taught him music, play it for him every day, and it made him cry every time. That’s where the cryin’ cowboy learned to cry. A hard-livin’ man with a soft heart. This song is worth the price of the cd, and it is as good as anything Willie has ever done. His daughter sings a lovely, understated harmony. Amy Nelson wrote and sings “Wise Old Me,” but Willie doesn’t sing or play on the track. “Won’t You Ride in My Little Red Wagon” is a fun little tune. Just Willie, Trigger, bass, and a little rhythm guitar. It’s like having Willie singing in your living room for your kid’s birthday party. “Playmate” sounds like Willie has a cold, which is how “Rainbow Connection” also sounds. I think he should have done another take on both of these tunes. Willie sings “I’m My Own Grandpa” better than anyone. He sings it matter-of-fact, straight-faced, and serious. The Luck Choir again adds a homey flavor to this sing-along favorite. Amy Nelson sings “Rock Me to Sleep” and Willie accompanies on Trigger. “Playin’ Dominoes and Shootin’ Dice,” which is what Willie does at his headquarters in Luck, moves this album into the realm of adulthood. Of course Willie’s attention would wander from a children’s cd into something else, something more. Tex Woods and O.D. Dobbs wrote this song in 1952 (or renewed the copyright then), but it could be the story of Willie’s life, the story of a man whose wife finds him foolin’ around, and she beats him with his own guitar and then shoots him. This story gets told over and over again in Willie’s biography. Four or five wives getting after him for foolin’ around. And Willie sings this one straight-faced and serious. Just tellin’ it like it is. No judgment or sympathy. Willie has a knack for finding songs that other people wrote but that describe his own life perfectly. He is a master of song selection. Where does he find songs like this? And how does he have the chutzpa to sing songs that cast an unflattering light on his own behavior. He just lets it all hang out with no apologies or explanations. “Wouldn’t Have it Any Other Way” is the only Willie –penned song on the album, and he wrote it for this album in 2000. It fits Willie’s on-the-road, Hakuna Matata philosophy. “We wake up in a new world every day.” We’re on the road again every morning. We don’t care what other people say, and we live life to the fullest. Unapologetic to the core. A beautiful, simple song, and so typical that Willie would do a children’s cd that morphs into an adult cd; a cd of covers, but then he has to add one of his own. You just never know what you’ll get when you start playing a Willie album, and you get the sense that he doesn’t know either. He’s making it up as he goes along. It grows organically. And you sense the authenticity of this spirit in the songs. He needs them and he means them at that time and that studio with those people. His song selection is as quirky and of-the-moment as his phrasing. He breaks meter in every line and in every choice of song. Always surprising the listener like Thelonius Monk. Expect the unexpected. And where the heck did a rough blues song like Weldon’s 1942 “Outskirts of Town” come from? Matt Hubbard’s harmonica works overtime to bring out the blues. Willie closes out the set with two Mike Newbury tunes. In “Just Dropped in (To See What Condition My Condition Was In),” Willie sings, “found my broken mind in a brown paper bag again” and “tore my mind on a jagged sky.” It’s all about mind with Willie, all in the head. Memory, mind, time. Later he sings, “I broke my mind.” Broken hearts, broken minds. Maybe they’re the same thing. “Had myself crawlin’ out as I was crawlin’ in.” My untenable top ten list has become so untenable, what the heck. Add this to the list. I think it’s at 35 and counting. It will probably end up being my top 50, which will be about half of Willie’s albums. Not very helpful. Oh well. What can I say. I like it all. “The Thirty-Third of August” is the best song on this album. “Today there’s no salvation.” A blind man can “see what [Willie] can’t understand.” “It’s the thirty-third of August and I’m finally touchin’ down/ eight days frum Sunday, and I’m Saturday-bound.” Reminds me of Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning Comin’ Down.” Willie closes with some of the most haunting, chilling lyrics in his repertoire: “Now I put my angry feelin’ under lock and chain/ I hide my violent nature with a smile/ though the demons dance and sing their songs within my fevered brain/ not all my god-like thoughts, Lord, are defiled.” On a kids album? What was he thinkin’? What was on his mind? This is a far cry from “O’l Blue” and “I Am My Own Grandpa,” but what is a “far cry for some” is just a regular old cry to Willie. Willie makes no distinctions. Cry, cry, cry. It’s cries all the way down. From hungry babies crying to hungover men crying. It’s all hunger for something more, restlessness, crying, emotions. Put it in the top ten, baby. Baby, baby, baby. From babies to grandpas, we’re all human, and Willie finds that humanity and brings it out in every song. But I still worry about him covering up those angry feelings with a smile. Can we trust that smile? What’s he hiding? And why? Why hide your violent nature? Is that honest? Authentic? Where is the real Willie? And to think that he started this album with a song from the Muppet Movie. Only Willie could pull this off and come full circle from Kermit the Frog to “The Thirty-Third of August.”