Clean Shirt (1991)—take 2

7/23/2010

Here’s another album without a single Willie-penned tune. It opens with Waylon’s “If I Can Find a Clean Shirt.” “Come on now, Willie, don’t look at me that way…no I ain’t goin’ down to the border tonight, drinkin’ tequila and takin’ chances with our life.” Waylon is trying not to let Willie talk him into a wild adventure. Then Waylon thinks, “On second thought, if I can find a clean shirt I might.” It’s those second thoughts that can sometimes get you in trouble. Not thinking before you act and thinking too much are two different ways to get into trouble. Sometimes your first thought is your best thought. See Hamlet. Look before you leap. He who hesitates is lost. “I Could Write a Book About You” picks up on an idea raised in the first song. Earlier Waylon mentioned how he knew Willie like a paperback book, one which he had read carefully and knew every page. Here, both Waylon and Willie insist that they could write a book about each other, but both insist “That’s not how I remember it.” Though they claim, “I know you like a brother,” they disagree about their memories. They saw it differently though they were both there. In the end they agree not to write the book after all. Interesting that Max Barnes wrote half the songs on this album. Troy Seals wrote several as well. I think they also wrote several for Randy Travis around this time. “Old Age and Treachery” always overcomes “youth and skill.” They’ll try almost anything: “What Waylon won’t Willie will.” These songs all seem to be a conversation between Waylon and Willie. “Two Old Sidewinders” is no exception. “That ain’t no hill for a couple of climbers.” Willie and Waylon seem to be lamenting being over the hill. Maybe they are trying to side-step time. “Tryin’ to Outrun the Wind” is like tryin’ to side-step time. “Her memory turns over and over again.” Why do memories do that? “He’s like an old stallion longing for freedom, trying to out-run the wind.” Who is? Willie? How is a guy who has fooled around chasing lots of women but now remembers a more perfect woman and a more perfect love like a stallion longing for freedom? Sounds more like a free stallion longing to be penned. Or maybe it’s a song about the tyranny of freedom. “The dreams all ended too soon” in “The Good Ol’ Nights.” This is a song about picking and choosing your memories. Willie asserts control over his own past, his own memories, his own time. He remembers what he wants to. “Guitars That Won’t Stay in Tune” follows the previous song that mentioned guitars and women that were both in tune. Both songs also mention Cadillacs. In the last song Waylon said he didn’t care about them because he never owned one. Here he worries about making payments on one. Actually both Willie and Waylon are saying they don’t like payments on a caddy or guitars that won’t stay in tune. In “The Makin’s of a Song” Willie sings, “When you start to feel at home out on the highway you’re damn sure qualified to sing the blues.” So feeling at home on the road is the blues. That’s a puzzle and a paradox. Because Willie sings in the next song: “I been on the road most all of my life…in search of some pleasures and treasures and things…whatever pleased me the most.” Yet “Home is where the heart is…my heart is there in the middle of Texas beside the old Alamo.” “Put Me on a Train Back to Texas” seems to be about returning to the roots you have tried to run away from all your life. No different than the Dixie Chicks on “Long Time Gone.” Country music is always about leaving home and longing for it at the same time. It’s like the Fragile X handshake in that way. Wanting so badly to leave and stay at the same time. “Rocks From Rolling Stones” is about the twin longing for roots and rootlessness. For freedom and form. And if you “can’t make a rock from a rolling stone,” why do we keep trying. “There’s a river of freedom runnin’ through your veins.” We want something foreign and familiar, new and old, and we want it at the same time, like sweet and sour. We want to break free from the past and return to it with equal vigor. The centripetal and centrifugal pulls of the past and memory. The gravity and tides, the moons of memory.