Shotgun Willie (1973)—take 2

7/5/2010

Shotgun Willie (1973)—take 2

I can’t believe how short my January blog for this album was. I like the studio version of “Whiskey River” better this time around. The slowness doesn’t bother me as much. In fact, it makes me like it better. It makes the torture of her memory more torturous. The title track remains one of my favorites. I wish Willie did more with horn sections. Willie has his road band with him for this album. “Sad Songs and Waltzes” only appears here and on the 2006 “Songbird” album. Willie needs to play and record this song more often.

“A true song as real as my tears.” For Willie, there’s nothing truer than tears. As Buddha says, life is suffering. Life is tears. This is also another “she’s gone” song. “I’d like to get even with you ‘cause you’re leavin’.” Willie laments that “sad songs and waltzes aren’t sellin’ this year,” but of course he’s been selling them for 40 years since this album came out. I rated many of these songs lower in January than I would rate them now. “Again the local memory comes around…rids the house of all good news, then sets out my cryin’ shoes.” Memories haunts Willie, make him cry, give him the blues, “lets loneliness back in.” To Willie, memory is personified, real, physical. It has a will and a mind of its own. “I once had a way with the women till one got away with my heart.” Sounds like Proust again. Interesting that Willie asserts, “My life ain’t mine anymore.” Whose is it? Willie seems like such an individual, a rebel, and yet here he claims to be a slave to fate, to time, to love. He wants the world to slow down, so he slows down his songs, the meter, the beat, to make time adjust to him rather than the othert way around. Maybe that’s what art does. It freezes time, as in the Grecian Urn,” tames it, domesticates it, makes it seem manageable, if only for the length of the song or painting or novel. Art slows time down, makes it orderly, limits it, the way we often wish we could but never can in real life. Art frames life and time and love. “Stay All Night (Stay a Little Longer)” this time around reminds me of “Local Memory.” The local memory hangs around longer than Willie wants, but here he’s begging someone to stay longer. “Devil in a Sleeping Bag” only appears on this album. It is very autobiographical, mentioning “Connie and the kids” and “Kris and Rita” and how “travelin’ on the road is such a drag.” Willie loves and hates the road. Next he sings, “It’s your heart; I can’t tell you what to do, but She’s Not for You” and “I’m the only one who would let her act this way.” Here he laments a lover who is always looking for “greener pastures.” Sounds like a field calling a pasture green. “She’s not for you” and neither is Willie, because he’s always looking for the next new thing. In Cindy Walker’s “Bubbles in My Beer” “Scenes from the past rise before me…visions of someone who loved me bring a lone silent tear to my eye.” “I’m seeing the road that I traveled, a road filled with heartaches and tears, and I’m seeing the past that I’ve wasted watching the bubbles in my beer.” Tears and time. “You look like the devil when you’re crying” but you “have a great big smile for everybody.” Not sure who Leon Russell is talking about, but I read somewhere that Paul English inspired this song. And then there’s “So Much to Do since you’re gone, too much to do all alone.” Too much life to live, too much time to pass, “without you.” Too much time to go it alone. In “A Song For You” Willie sings “and I know your image of me is what I hope to be. I’ve treated you unkindly but, darlin’, can’t you see. There’s no one more important to me, so darlin’ can’t you please see through me.” Leon Russell’’s lyrics describe Willie perfectly. Willie wants to be the platonic image you have of him. He wants you to know you were always on his mind. He wants you to see through the physical, tangible, fallible Willie to the ghost, the memory of “when we were together,” beyond “space and time,” the transcendent, beatific, bodhisattva Willie. In other words (Floyd Tillman’s), “I gotta have something I ain’t got. I gotta have some lovin’ and I need a lot. I gotta have something to drive away these blues.” Wanting what we don’t have is Proust’s definition of love. As soon as we have it, though, it isn’t something we don’t have, so we don’t want it anymore. How can we want something we have, because the definition of want is lack. If loving is longing and wanting and desiring, how can it continue if we have what we want? This is the puzzle of love. To continue to want what we have. Willie’s “so ashamed” of himself for still loving her after she’s gone, for still wanting what he can’t have, and yet he can’t help it. In Leon Russell’s “My Cricket and Me,” he denies that he’s crying. “Oh no, I’m not crying. These ain’t tears in my eyes. I’m so happy, I’m dying of laughter…We’re not lonesome, my cricket and me.” Willie’s the queen of denial, denying love, and time, and tears. I’ve blogged elsewhere about Willie’s battle with time in “Both Ends of the Candle.” “Save Your Tears” only shows up here and on the demo sessions. Willie needs to sing and record this more often. Jimmy Day’s “I Drank Our Precious Love Away” appears only here.