Memories of Hank Williams Sr. (2000)

This was actually better than I thought it would be. It is clearly another example of Willie paying back an old friend. Willie joined Butler’s band in 1958, so Butler clearly helped Willie get started in the business. Larry Butler had always dreamed of making a Hank Williams tribute album, so Willie helps him do it. Willie’s vocals are wonderful. The setting is spare, featuring a fine fiddle and a classic steel guitar. But Willie only sings half of every song, and Larry Butler doesn’t do much for me. If you could remove Butler’s vocals and just listen to Willie sing these songs with this band, you’d have quite an album. It’s great to hear Willie sing Hank straight up. Of course Willie loves singing about tears and being “so lonesome [he] could cry.” “Half as Much” reminds me of “Half a Man.” “If you only loved me half as much as I loved you.” I’d settle for the crumbs of your love. Just half of your love. It seems that much of Willie’s music deals in halves. Paradoxes on the one hand, and half measures on the other. Love cut in half, separated. Unrequited love is half-love, which is worse, more painful, than no love. It is a case where ½ is worse than zero. Less than zero. Because the half taunts and teases you with the half you don’t have but desire even more because of the taste, the half, you have. Does he really mean “May You Never Be Alone Like Me”? He sings, “I believe the lies you told to me when you whispered, dear, I’ll worship thee…I gave up my friends, I left my home when you promised to be mine alone, and now you’re gone and our love can never be.” Here, again, is that wry, sardonic tone from “Funny How Time Slips Away.” You promised to love me forever, but forever didn’t last too long. This would be the opposite of Jo Dee Messina’s “Somebody’s gonna give you a lesson in leaving.” Or maybe it is the same. I hope someone does you wrong the way you did me wrong. I hope someone will show you how short forever can be. “Move it On Over” shows how fickle love can be. Big dogs replacing small dogs. Partners changing at the drop of a hat. And so it goes. This reminds me of Murasaki’s The Tale of Genji. The endless soap opera of fickle love, fleeting relationships. “Wedding Bells” tells of a scorned lover being invited to his former lover’s wedding. “Dear, I hope your happy just the same.” Does he really? “Those wedding bells will never ring for me.” This is another one of those songs where Willie is trying to convince himself, half-heartedly, that he doesn’t care. “Please let me pretend that I am there.” Let me marry you in my mind. “Your Cheatin’ Heart” says it all. Hank Williams is the Plato of honky tonk. All of country music is a footnote to Hank. This is a “you’ll be sorry” song. I’m crying now, but you’ll be crying soon. What goes around comes around. It’s like the imprecatory psalms in the old testament. We want our enemies, those who have done us wrong, to feel the same pain we feel. You’ll “crave the love you threw away…the time will come when you’ll be blue. Your cheatin’ heart will tell on you…tears [will] come down like falling rain. You’ll toss around and call my name. You’ll walk the floor the way I do.” And then he sings, “Why can’t I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold, cold heart”? “And so my heart is paying now for things I didn’t do.” Mind games of the heart. Heart and mind and their interaction. That’s Willie and Hank in a nutshell. Hearts trying to convince minds and minds trying to sway hearts. “I can’t stay here any longer ‘cause my sweet love ain’t around.” “My Sweet Love Ain’t Around.” “Hey Good Lookin’” has Willie sweet talkin’ a new love. Trying to coax time and love to slip away from some other fool. Seducing forever. Funny how we always think the next new thing will be the best forever. Newness is the very opposite of timelessness, and yet we crave it as if it were the same thing. Our very craving leads us astray, away from forever. Fittingly, then, Willie ends in a pool of tears in “(I Heard that) Lonesome Whistle.” He sings, “All I do is sit and cry.” The cryingest cowboy who ever lived. As much as I don’t care for Larry Butler’s vocals, the fiddle and steel, Willie’s vocals, and Hank’s lyrics make this one worth owning.

The Promiseland (1986)

I never appreciated the title of this album until today. Of course America has always seen itself as the land of opportunity, the land where dreams come true. The American dream. Much of Willie’s music clearly plays into this boundless, mythic optimism. “Living in the promiseland. Our dreams are made of steel. A prayer of every man is to know how freedom feels. There is a winding road across the shifting sand.” Dreams made of steel, resistant to all cynicism and doubt. Some call it naïve and foolish. As Don Henry sings, “Dreams weren’t meant to come true, that’s why they call ‘em dreams.” And yet, in America, people expect dreams to come true. Against all odds. So Willie’s music is full of hopefulness, and his life is a true rags to riches story, and he has lived it out in gratitude, always trying to pay back friends and fans for all the help he’s had along the way. Willie’s music is about freedom, and about the “winding road over the shifting sand.” In songs like this, he seems to believe in the promise, in the future. And yet so many of his other songs are about how promises never come true, never last. Willie seems to have a love/hate relationship with promises. He seems to be supremely optimistic and skeptical at the same time. Again and again I have to ask, how is this possible? And yet there he is. For 85 albums and counting, still living out the paradox, and smiling beatifically through his tears. The strings detract from the seriousness of this song, as always, but the quality of the lyrics and the vocal performance make me forget them for the most part. Mickey’s harmonica sounds like it is in an echo chamber. It’s so good to hear Johnny Gimble’s fiddle open “I’m Not Trying to Forget You.” Another example of Willie opening with a new hit penned by someone else and then turning to one of his own classics for a new interpretation. Mixing the old and new. Recursive. Actually, now that I look at my collection, it seems my only other version of this song comes from Spirit (1996). I much prefer the version on Spirit, but maybe this 1986 version is the first recording of this song. In any case, it is the only Willie-penned song on this album, and the re-curring themes of time and memory predominate:

I’m not trying to forget you anymore.

I’ve got back into remembering all the love we had before.

I’ve been trying to forget someone that my heart still adores.

You’re just someone who brought happiness into my life.

And it did not last forever, oh, but that’s alright.

We were always more than lovers, and I’m still your friend.

And if I had the chance I’d do it all again…

And the best day of my life is still when you walked through my door.

Willie vacillates between trying to forget the past and trying to preserve it permanently. Here he admits that his most perfect love was in the past (ala Proust and Gatsby), and yet he is not afraid to revisit it in his memory, more like calling up an old friend. In previous songs, the local memories haunted him. Here they are literally “fond” memories. Pleasant, not painful, to recall. This song strikes a rare middle ground in terms of his attitude toward the past. He’s not trying to forget or remember, he is just letting his memory operate as it will. Sometimes forgetting, sometimes remembering. He is accepting that love comes and goes, like seasons, like waves, and time does the same. He seems at peace with this. Interestingly, Gimble plays fiddle on both versions of this song. Bobbie is noticeably absent on piano, but family band members Bee Spears and Mickey accompany other studio musicians on this album. Then Willie slows it way down with another D.L. Jones tune, “Here in My Heart.” Randy Travis does this song as well. “You could be anywhere in the world tonight, but I’d still have you here in my heart.” Willie returns to his more possessive, controlling view of memory. Willie’s vocals and Gimble’s fiddle get to share center stage on this song in a way that you rarely get to hear. The back-up singers come on a bit too strong, though. Mickey’s harmonica weaves in and out tastefully. And then we have a Floyd Tillman song. “I get the craziest feeling. I guess it’s ‘cause I’m losing you.” “Maybe if I lost my mind, then maybe I’d learn to forget.” “I get the craziest feeling. I wish it would leave me alone. But it just goes on and on. That crazy feeling you’re gone.” “Before I was born I never had cares, and I won’t have cares when I’m gone. But until that day they take me away, I’ll do my best, but it’s hard to go on…” The word “crazy” shows up again and again in Willie’s music. Love is crazy, time is crazy, memories are crazy, minds are crazy; in short, the human condition is crazy. So how do we respond? Willie tries everything: tears, drink, the road, fooling around, stoicism, Buddhism, you name it. He tries it all. Earlier he said he wasn’t trying to forget her; here he wishes the memories would leave him alone, quit hassling him. “Wake me when it’s over” he’s sung before. Here he is willing to lose his mind if it will help him forget, and yet he suggests he may already have lost it. It’s the catch-22 of love. You’re crazy if you remember, and you’re crazy if you forget. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. A fool if you do and a fool if you don’t. So Willie does both all the time. He somehow does and doesn’t at the same time. He blends doing and not doing. And that’s crazy. Paradoxical. “No Place But Texas” could contain Willie’s paradoxes. The “Wide open spaces” and the “wild and free” mentality. Texans are strong and tough, and yet “They still cry when they hear a sad song.” I’m liking the spare background on several of these tracks which give Willie’s vocal and guitar and Gimble’s fiddle and Raphael’s harmonica room to roam. The back-up vocals continue to grate, and Mickey’s harmonica sounds oddly like it’s in a cavern. “You’re Only in My Arms (To Cry On My Shoulder)” sounds like it could be on “Stardust.” Willie has to work tears into every album. The crying cowboy, although she’s the one crying her way into his heart this time. Lots of great Gimble on this track. This album is proving to be one of Willie’s most consistently pleasing. Willie picks up the pace with “Pass it On.” I think Willie really believes this song, but it comes off sounding more trite and cliché than almost any song I can recall him covering. There’s no story here. It’s mere preaching. Just love everyone. Easier said than done. Willie makes it sound too easy. Then “Do You Ever Think of Me” has Willie wanting to be remembered. He wants to preserve his memories of others, but he also wants them to preserve their memories of him. He wants a kind of double eternity. Mutually ensured eternity. “When you whisper ‘I can’t live without you’, do you ever think of me. And in your eyes’ disguise those same old lovin’ lies you tell so tenderly.” This is “Funny How Time Slips Away” all over again. You say you could never live without me, but never comes so soon. And you live without me just fine. But when you then go tell someone else that you’ll love them forever, do you ever think of me? In “Old Fashioned Love” Willie sings, “I’ve got that old fashioned love, there it will always remain like an ivy-clinging vine, clinging closer all the time through the years…just the same.” “Dry land may turn to sea, but there’ll be no change in me, I’ve got that old fashioned love in my heart.” Ha! Is he serious! Changeling of changelings. It’s like a chameleon saying he’ll never change colors, at least not till he moves. What can a bus and ivy have in common? One is always moving, and one never moves. Willie’s ideal would be an ivy-covered bus. Ivy clinging tighter and tighter to his bus as it speeds along, never stopping. Willie paradoxically longs for unchanging old fashioned love, and yet he stays on the road running away from permanence as fast as he can. “Basin Street Blues” is one of the happiest blues tunes. If Buddha sang the blues, he would sing it like this. Happy blues. Blissful blues. This album makes my Untenable Top Ten for its spare, uncluttered arrangements (despite the cloying strings and back-up vocals at times), for its showcasing of Gimble and Raphael, and for Willie’s strong 1986 vocals and thoughtful song selection and sequencing. Again, it sounds a lot like “Stardust” at times. Willie ends with the instrumental “Bach Minuet in G,” which doesn’t do much for me. Not sure why it’s here or how it fits thematically or musically with the other songs.

A Horse Called Music (1989)

This album features two Beth Nielson Chapman-penned songs. The big hit is obviously her “There’s Nothing I Can Do About it Now.” I reviewed that song on my blog about The Essential Willie Nelson collection. It also appears on the 2006 Live From Austin Texas. Amazing that out of 85 albums I own so far, I only have two versions of this song. Here’s another song written by someone else which sounds like it could be autobiographical for Willie’s life. It combines Willie’s twin obsessions with the road and with time. “The highway’s come full circle to a place I scarce recall.” I could do without the strings (I always can), but Willie’s vocals are clear, nuanced, and credible. He seems to believe this song. Willie has his family band along with some additional studio help. The line “The highway never ends” could be a motto for Willie’s life. The speaker in this song takes a walk down memory lane and feels the full weight of nostalgia and regret. Right up Willie’s alley. “I Never Cared for You” is one of only three Willie-penned tunes on this album. This one has a flamenco tinge, and it would be interesting to compare this version to the two other versions I have (on Teatro and Me and Paul). Of the three, I much prefer the version on Teatro. I’m struck by the contrast between “You Were Always on My Mind” and “I Never Cared for You.” Which is it? How can both be true? How can we ever believe either? He tells both lies to himself so often. The strings in Skip Ewing’s “If I Were a Painting” are just too much to bear. But the lyrics resonate. They transcend their syrupy setting. “Don’t paint the tears, just let me remember me without you in my eyes.” “It’s only the frame that holds me together, or else I’d be falling apart.” “If I were a painting I wouldn’t feel, and you wouldn’t be breaking my heart.” Again, the themes of memory and lost love and wanting art to somehow transcend both. [The desire to be a stoic, a Buddhist, who doesn’t let feelings, desires, get to him.] It is only the frame, the limit, the structure, the meter, that holds Willie together, and yet he’s always hitting the road, the highway, and breaking meter, singing behind the beat, so he can fall apart beautifully outside the frame, the family, home. His art is the record of that beautiful failure to hold it all together. This confirms my theory that people only have the energy to “hold it all together” in life or art, not both. There isn’t enough time to hold both together. Both require so much time and care and maintenance. It seems you have to sacrifice one for the other. “Spirit” is another song that anticipates the albums Teatro and Spirit. The strings cloy, but Willie’s vocals stay front and center. It’s interesting that this late in his career Willie is still allowing producers to add syrupy strings to his tracks. The lonely speaker of this lyric “rides the horizon” like so many outcasts and outlaws in Willie’s songs. I swear I have heard and reviewed “There You Are” on one of the 85 albums I own, but I can’t find it in a previous blog or in my ITUNES. Maybe I just know it from the radio. I had just started listening to country radio right around 1989, so I may have it ingrained in my mind from then. Some might find this to be a cheesy pop tune, but I’m a sucker for this. It reminds me of “You Were Always on My Mind.” As always, I could do without the strings, but the steel guitar and Willie’s vocals are as good as they get. “Your memory is the only thing that hasn’t changed.” Willie returns to his tried and true formula. “I close my eyes and there you are…here I go back into those memories, where you are still in love with me.” If this isn’t Proust, I don’t know what is. Or Gatsby. The desire to control the fickleness and fleetingness of time and love by closing one’s eyes and using memory and art to freeze perfect love in the Grecian Urn of our minds. “Mr. Record Man” is another example of Willie re-doing older material on new albums. The lonely man in this lyric (and Mickey’s weeping harmonica) follows nicely after the previous song. Willie shows such thoughtfulness in his choice and sequence of songs. This gives his albums a wonderfully recursive feel. He’s always circling back through time, through styles, through songs, through mentors, through influences, through producers. Just like nature and waves and seasons. Always the same and yet always new. I love Beth Nielson Chapman, and her second song on this album is as good as the first. This is the first time I’ve heard Willie sing “If My World Didn’t Have You.” “It all has a balance like sunshine and rain. You share with me the blues and the breaks.” Willie couldn’t make it without her, and yet he’s leaving her all the time. What he means is, I need the idea of you, the memory, to keep me going. I need Daisy or Odette. A real person won’t do. No real person could sustain me. In “A Horse Called Music,” Willie sings, “I guess it’s all better that we just let it slide.” Hakuna matata. Let it be. And yet he rides away with a “tear in his eye.” Another crying cowboy. There’s a John Wayne, Lone Ranger theme to this album. Willie’s spare vocals at the end of the song are as good as he gets, and his voice is still young and strong in 1989. This is my first listen to Willie’s “Is the Better Part Over.” It opens like a movie score with strings galore. Then it cuts to solo acoustic. What a song to end an album with. “After thinking it over, wouldn’t you rather have the ending nice and clean, where love remains in all the closing scenes?” “Why hang around for an ending that’s laden with sorrow? We’ve both been around, we’ve both seen that movie before. And as much as I love you, I can’t love while fearing tomorrow. If the better part’s over, why should we try anymore?” “Are we down to not quite saying what we mean?” Willie hates singing on the beat, he bristles at restrictions and laws and family ties. And yet he likes form and structure and closure when it comes to endings. Again, why can’t we freeze life at the better parts, skip the annoying commercials, fast forward, TIVO the great love scenes. Wouldn’t it be nice? And yet we wouldn’t be human. Think what we’d lose? There’s a pathetic quitting, giving up, avoiding hardship element to songs like this. Is this the price of Buddhism and stoicism? It’s fine if you’re the stoic, but God help the stoic’s wife or child. Willie seems to what love with no strings, with no risk, and yet that’s no love at all. That’s like gambling without betting real money? No risk of losing money, but no chance of winning big either. Nothing ventured nothing gained. This album is very close to making my Untenable Top Ten, but I think it just barely falls short. It’s honorable mention. I will revisit it often with pleasure and may change my mind with further listenings. There are certainly some gems here you won’t find anywhere else.

Stars and Guitars (2002)

Sheryl Crow doesn’t add much to “Whiskey River” on this live album from 2002. Toby Keith tried to make this version of “Good Hearted Woman” sound like the classic live version with Waylon, but he can’t quite pull it off. The fans aren’t as enthusiastic as they are in the classic version, but I like how Toby says, “Willie” the same way Waylon does on that famous version. The sense I get from that classic version, though, is that it was a Waylon concert and Willie walked on stage and surprised the crowd. Not sure if that’s true, but that’s what it sounds like. You don’t get the same energy here. Rob Thomas, the author of “Maria (Shut Up and Kiss Me),” actually gives Willie room to sing on this live version. The horns and back-up vocals don’t do much for me, but the vocals make this worth owning. “Mendocino County Line” is such a great song for Willie’s voice, and Lee Ann Womack is a great duet partner for Willie. The song gives Willie just the right kind of space he needs for his vocals to stretch out and roam. The strings are a bit much, but Willie’s voice is in rare form. I’m a sucker for the studio version of this song, and this one rivals (or surpasses) the hit version. Willie, of course, takes some liberties in spots, which makes it interesting. “Always On Mind” with Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora doesn’t work. I’m glad Bon Jovi respects Willie and wants to sing with him, but I won’t return to this version much. Willie’s solo vocals are actually quite good, and the crowd gets into it, but I’d like to edit out the duet partners. “Night Life” with Ray Price (who made it a hit before Willie did) is one of the highlights of this disc. I like hearing Willie sing with Ray because it lets me hear where Willie got so many of his vocal licks. Ray, like Thelonius Monk, can do so much with the spaces between notes. The piano, sax, and steel work in and out of the vocals unobtrusively, and the backing on this track is so much sparer than the others that the vocals feature more prominently. This may be my favorite track on the album. Keith Richards’ “Dead Flowers” is an interesting selection. I’d like to hear Willie sing this solo. Ryans Adams, Hank Williams III, and Richards dominate this song too much for my taste, but I’m intrigued by the lyrics of this bluesy Stones tune. “Lonestar” with Norah Jones is another interesting choice of song and partner. So far we’ve had Whiskey River, Night Life, Dead Flowers, and Lonestar. I’m too tired to connect the thematic dots between these songs, but I think there’s a pattern. Willie’s vocals are superb, and Norah gives him room to operate. Another spare production with just guitar, drums, bass, and organ. Aaron Neville’s “Stardust” borders on absurd at times. Willie seems to be sitting this one out. This does point out an interesting phenomenon, though. Neville isn’t covering Hoagy Carmichael; he is covering Willie’s 1978 version of Carmichael’s song. Only Willie can cover a song so thoroughly that people then cover his cover. I’m a sucker for Willie’s rendition of “Don’t Fade Away” with Michael Knight, but I may prefer the studio version to this live one. I give this one 4 stars, though. This version of “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” with Patty Griffin pales in comparison to the one on “Songs for Tsunami Relief.” The steel steals the show on this spare track, and Willie only joins in during the last minute. I’d like to hear more of him. True to his humble nature, he lets his friends steal too much of the vocal spotlight. Steven Stills’ classic “For What It’s Worth” is another bold choice. I’d still rather hear the live CSNY version on the acoustic “Four Way Street,” but Bill Evans’ sax makes this one interesting. Willie’s funky, slowed-down version of this 1967 Buffalo Springfield hit intrigues me. Sheryl’s not bad. Matchbox Twenty actually makes something new out of “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.” They actually slow it down and stretch it out instead of speeding it up. That’s the secret to Willie’s music. It often gets better when you slow it down. You can actually get more out of it that way. You can savor each word and syllable and beat. This version gets jazzy and trippy. I wouldn’t have thought it possible. Vince Gill pulls an Aaron Neville and basically sings “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” by himself. This exemplifies the problem with these Willie Nelson and Friends Concerts: too much friends and not enough Willie Nelson. They should be backing him up, not the other way around. “Till I Gain Control Again” is one of my favorite Willie songs (even though Rodney Crowell wrote it). I wanted to like this version more than I did. I thought Emmylou Harris would be perfect, but her vocals actually seem a bit off here. I much prefer the version on Willie and Family Live, though Willie’s vocals and the steel guitar shine. Jimmy Cliff’s reggae classic “The Harder They Come” with Ryan Adams provides a pleasing contrast to the previous ballad. How many people could pull off a transition from Emmylou Harris to Jimmy Cliff so easily? The family band actually disappointed me a bit with “On the Road” and “Move it On Over.” They seemed a bit flat instead of providing the rousing finale for the show I was hoping for. Mickey, as always, pulls his weight on harmonica, and Bill Evans’ sax shines, but these last two just didn’t do much for me.

Outlaws and Angels (2004)

This is Willie live with friends in LA in 2004. He opens with a rousing rendition of Billy Joe Shaver’s “Georgia on a Fast Train.” “On a rainy, windy mornin’ on the day that I was born in my old sharecroppin’, one-room country shack. They say my mamie left me the day before she had me. Said she hit the road and never once looked back. I’d just like to mention that my grandma’s old-age pension is the reason why I’m standin’ here today. I got all my country learnin’ milkin’ and a churnin’, pickin’ cotton, raisin’ hell, and balin’ hay.” Though Billy Joe wrote it, it clearly describes Willie’s life. His mama left him early in his life, and his grandmother raised him. Joe Walsh and Toby Keith accompany Willie on this opening tune. Clearly this song fits into the “on the road” nature and theme of Willie’s life and music. It also shows the blending of sinner and saint, outlaw and bodhisattva, that runs through Willie’s life and work. “I got a good Christian raisin’ and an eighth grade education.” Of course someone born to a mother with a wild streak and raised by a good Christian grandmother would be a hybrid of both. Willie’s life and work strive to reconcile these twin extremes. Merle Haggard then joins them for Merle’s “Ramblin’ Fever,” another quintessential “on the road” song. Gotta keep moving so you don’t bog down. “Ain’t no kind of cure for my disease.” Can’t let “no woman tie me down.” It’s like a fever that Willie can’t fight or control or outgrow. It afflicts him like a disease. He is the passive victim of forces outside his control (like his mother leaving him). This version of “Shotgun Willie” with Kid Rock is not my favorite, but I admire Willie’s audacity in giving it a shot (pun intended). Not sure why they keep chanting “Shotgun Bobbie.” Are they referring to his sister, or is Kid Rock’s real name Bobby? Kid Rock is clearly the outlaw today, so he is a fitting partner in that sense. I like the funk of this version. Not sure who the woman on back-ups is (liner notes list three possible women), but she belts it out with Kid Rock. The harmonica must be Mickey Raphael. The liner notes simply say that the house band and the family band are both there and help out on different songs (though it does mention that Mickey is in both bands). And then, of course, a gospel song with Al Green. Right after Fast Train and Ramblin’ Fever. The yin and yang of Willie’s life. “Rainin’ in My Heart.” We will see on this album the themes of rain, storm, and midnight. “My love for you is an eternal one.” And yet it rains. “Why can’t it be like it used to be…Somebody ought to stop the rain…Lookin’ at the Sun, it’s rainin’ in my heart.” “It seems like only yesterday we were so in love. We were lookin’ at the sun but somehow it keeps rainin’ in my heart.” It’s “Funny How Time Slips Away” all over again. Why can’t love be true and last forever. Rain and the storm and midnight and the fallen world of autumn and seasons and change and time ruins perfect love, and yet leads to such beautiful emotions and songs. Why does pain yield great art? Why do we suffer into beauty, suffer into truth? “Stormy Weather” with Shelby Lynne is a five. Her voice is angelic. “Just can’t get my poor self together.” “Since you went away the blues walked in and met me.” I just pray that the lord will let me sit in the sun once more. “Doesn’t he have the prettiest hair you ever seen?” Shelby asks the crowd. I saw the video of this performance on YouTube, and Shelby is flirting big time with this 70 year-old man. I love Carole King, and “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” fits perfectly with this theme of “Why can’t love last forever” songs. “Tonight you love me completely” (ah, but what about tomorrow? Will it last? I think not, though I hope so.) “BUT…will you still love me tomorrow?” “Is this a lasting treasure, or just a moment’s pleasure?” This applies to Willie’s view of love, but also to his overall view of life. Is there more to life than just the physical pleasures of the here and now? This is the existential question that lies behind all of Willie’s music. Is this all there is? Or do we see glimpses of more? Glimpses of eternity? Glimpses of deeper, more lasting joy? “Can I believe the magic of your sighs?” “Tonight with words unspoken, you’ll say that I’m the only one.” But then time will slip away, and you’ll find another faster than you can blink an eye. “I’d like to know that your love, is a love I can be sure of.” Wouldn’t we all like to be sure of an eternal love? And this leads to the gospel music that follows and that Willie ends the show with (“I’ll Fly Away”). And it’s back to Augustine’s “Our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.” But Carole, like so many others, steals the song from Willie and won’t give him space to sing. Shelby let him sing, but Carole blasts him off the stage. And after a few gospel tunes and a woeful folk ballad, of course Willie has to return to his “on the road” theme with “Still is Still Moving to Me.” This is not one of my favorite Willie tunes, but I like this reggae version with Toots Hibbert better than the straight up versions. And it’s great to hear Willie perform with rock stars (Joe Walsh and Keith Richards), gospel stars (Al Green and The Holmes Brothers), folk stars (Carole King), and Country stars old and new (Merle and Toby). He moves easily between and among them all. He is not of them and yet he is at home with them all. Gregg Allman’s “Midnight Rider” continues the “on the road” theme. Al Green, Carole King, Kid Rock, and Toots all have to scream to achieve the emotional impact that Willie achieves with a whisper. Ironic. Willie performs musical ju-jitsu. Somehow he uses the listener’s own emotional momentum against them. Like a vocal slingshot he swings their own yearnings back upon them. His voice merely re-directs their own desires. This version with Ben Harper has more of a soul/gospel/blues feel with a back-up chorus and an electric lap slide guitar solo (and, of course, Mickey’s harmonica). “Ain’t gonna let ‘em catch me, no.” Just keep runnin’ and outrun the blues. “Pressure Drop” with Toots and Ben Harper doesn’t do much for me (possibly because I don’t understand the lyrics). “Pressure’s gonna drop on you.” Is this a revenge song? “I’ll Never Be Free” is an ironic song for Willie to sing. Someone who lived his life so free and recklessly yet admits that he has been a slave in so many ways. A slave to freedom. Freedom can be a tyrant. It’s not as good as “Stormy Weather,” but Lee Ann Womack tries. “No one can satisfy this longing in me.” “How can I be free when I still remember.” Memory enslaves us. “Just like a chain bound to my heart. Your love remains when we’re apart. Each kiss I gave to you…made me a slave to you.” Reminds me of Luther’s “Bondage of the Will” and the notion that within bondage comes true freedom. “Opportunity to Cry” may be my favorite Willie song, and this is not one of my top five versions of this song, but I love the audacity of this version with the Holmes Brothers that Willie claims is a “blend of blues, funk, and soul.” It sounds like Otis Redding singing Willie. Just as Ray Charles turned soul into R & B., Willie turns traditional honky tonk cheatin’ songs back into gospel tunes. So Willie started out singing in church, then he went country and Hank Williams, but then he comes back to gospel. Same with Johnny Cash. He comes full circle in so many ways. He broke free from Nashville, but then he goes back to recording with the very studios that he fought to escape. But this time he does it of his own volition, as in Wordsworth’s “Nuns Fret Not Their Convent’s Narrow Room.” Los Lonely Boys’ “Cisco Kid” doesn’t do much for me. Again, not sure what the lyrics mean, and Willie sits this one out. Then Merle and Toby join Willie for “Pancho and Lefty.” Toby can’t hang with his heroes, but it’s touching that he tries. It isn’t one of my top five versions of this song, but it’s worth owning. “Overtime” with Lucinda Williams is a five for sure, but I’ve already reviewed this song in an earlier blog. Again, I’d like to hear a whole album of duets with Willie and Lucinda. Merle’s “Mama Tried” is another song written by someone else seemingly about Willie’s life. Mama (or grandmother) tried to raise Willie right, tried to reign in the ramblin’ impulse. Be even Mama couldn’t keep him true. Mama and God are like the bass line, the melody, from which Willie’s life and vocals deviate, always behind or ahead of the beat, but then resolving for brief moments, always coming home, if only for a short while. Always coming or going, always just passing through. Always wishing he could stay, but only half-heartedly. He teases us vocally and morally. He lies musically. He seems to promise one thing, then delivers another. This song is another version of “Georgia on a Fast Train.” Here, though, he accepts the blame. He doesn’t excuse it as a “fever.” “I turned twenty-one in prison doing life without parole.” “That leaves only me to blame ‘cause mama tried.” I think the dead do this song. Rickie Lee Jones may be the only person with a stranger vocal delivery than Willie. She and Willie tackle “Comes Love” along with a jazzy combo of bass, trumpet, and piano. When it comes to love, “Nothin’ can be done.” We know how to face and bear up under any other form of adversity, but love baffles and defeats us every time. We are powerless, helpless in its presence. Nothing can be done about time, love, and the fallen human condition. This track gets better with each listen. It might be a five, too. I didn’t want to like “We Had it All” with Keith Richards, but it turns out Keith is on acoustic, and this is a tender ballad. And Richards sings better than I thought he would. “You are the best I can recall…I know we can never live those times again.” Everything was perfect in the past, till time slipped away. If only we could get it back. If only it wasn’t so slippery and elusive and fleeting. Reminds me of Adam and Eve. They had it all in the garden, but they wanted freedom, the open road, and they regretted it forever. “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On” is a ramblin’ wreck of a song with Jerry Lee Lewis, Kid Rock, Keith Richards, and Merle. Willie seems to be saying, heck, we had it all, it’s sad we lost if forever, but let’s rock and make the best of it. The pendulum swings from despair to hope to “screw it all” and then back to despair and hope, etc. Of course, it all has to end with the gospel. “I’ll Fly Away” combines the hope of redemption with the road. Except this road is not a road away from God and family but the road to glory, the adventurous, perilous, exhilarating road to heaven. A different road. The glory road. The road home. This song reconciles Willie’s desire for freedom and belonging. Willie refers to Bobbie as “little sister,” but of course she is two years older. The family band’s solos, except for Mickey’s, pale a bit in comparison to the house band. Nevertheless, this album’s a keeper.

Willie and Family Live (1978) [disc 2]

This disc opens with a version of Rodney Crowell’s “Till I Gain Control Again” that also appears on the compilation “One Hell of a Ride” (which I have previously reviewed). What’s interesting is that the mixing (or re-mixing) is quite different in these two versions. I actually prefer the version on “One Hell of a Ride” because the vocals stand out clearer. Either way, this is a five-star performance of this song, and Mickey Raphael continues to have one of his finest performances in this concert.

This version of “Bloody Mary Morning” may be the fastest I’ve heard. I have about seven versions so far, but this may be my favorite. I’m not sure why, but this has never been one of my favorite songs; however, this one has my attention. Maybe because Willie seems to be enunciating the lyrics more clearly. They often get lost in the raucous live versions of this song, but here he seems to maintain both blazing speed and clear vocal phrasing. Maybe it’s Willie’s Taoist skill of hurrying slowly.

I’m a sucker for “I’m a Memory,” and this may be my favorite version of the five or so I have thus far. It’s short (at 1:49), but Mickey blows the heck out of his harmonica and makes this one of the most packed 1:49 of the 2 ½ days worth of Willie’s music I have so far on my 8 gig nano (which is almost full). It’s good to hear Willie re-do one of his oldest hits, “Mr. Record Man,” live in 1978. I only have three versions of this so far, and again, this may be my favorite. Ditto for “Hello Walls,” which Willie segues directly into after “Mr. Record Man.” I only have three versions, but I also like the one from the early album “Country Willie.” “One Day at a Time” is another song I have three versions of (the others are on “Me and Paul” and “Country Willie”). Another topic for future blogs would be to listen to great pairings of Willie’s albums (like pairings of wines). “Willie and Family Live” would go well with “Country Willie.” A lot of the same songs, but done very differently. This version of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” may be too fast for my taste, but it is interesting. Mickey and Bobbie have impressive solos. Not sure who’s on back-up vocals (it isn’t listed in the liner notes), but she features prominently on this track and the next. Then Johnny Paycheck steps on stage to help with “Amazing Grace.” I’ve got four versions of this song, but I’m not sure which I prefer. I’ll need to compare them side-by-side. Not sure why Willie brings Johnny Paycheck on stage. He doesn’t add much. I’d rather hear Willie do it straight up. This is the only version of “Take this Job and Shove It” I’ve heard Willie do. Seems blasphemous to sing this right after “Amazing Grace.” But I wouldn’t be surprised if Willie planned it this way. It certainly provides a startling contrast. Mickey spruces it up with his harmonica, but Willie doesn’t participate as far as I can tell. Then, as if to purge the stage of the outlaw Johnny Paycheck, Willie goes into a rousing version of the gospel tune “Uncloudy Day.” I only have three versions of this (also on “Honeysuckle Rose” and “The Troublemaker”). I’m hearing the instrumental “The Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line” for the first time. I love Leon Russell’s “A Song for You,” and I give Willie a 5 every time he sings it. He sings it better than Leon. It’s an “Always on My Mind” kind of song. I love you in theory. “I love you in a place where there is no space or time.” But who wants to be loved in such a place? We want to be loved in time, in space, or we are making love to air. But this notion sums up Willie’s and Proust’s ideas about love. And it’s pure, naked, solo, acoustic Willie. And then he jumps into “Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms.” The audience really gets into it, goaded by Mickey’s harmonica. First time I’ve heard him do this one. Surprisingly, this is only my third version of “Georgia on My Mind” (also appears on “Stardust” and “Two Men with the Blues”). Willie’s version on “Stardust” can’t be improved, so I can see why he doesn’t re-do it as much. This one is a close second, though. And it is 1978, the same year “Stardust” came out. Mickey’s solo sounds just like the album. This is my third version of “I Gotta Get Drunk,” and I think I prefer the version from “Crazy: The Demo Sessions.” It sounds a lot more like Hank Williams. Willie sounds more like himself on this version. And then he does a reprise of “Whiskey River.” I don’t know how he does this song every night. He must have the discipline of Phillip Glass to not forget what he’s doing and go on auto pilot. I actually like the reprise version better than the opening one. You can feel the momentum of the concert coming to a head here. The audience response adds to this recording, as it does on “Honeysuckle Rose.” And then another “The Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line.” Not sure why we needed another, and why he would end on an instrumental, but there it is.

Willie and Family Live (1978) [Disc 1]

This live album opens with Willie’s standard set list:

Whiskey River

Stay A Little Longer

Funny/Crazy/Night Life medley

I prefer the versions on the 1974 Texas Opry House concert, but these are solid. Mickey’s harmonica is in rare form. This version of “If You’ve Got the Money I’ve Got the Time” is so different from the one I’m used to that I find it intriguing. It’s faster and Willie takes some pleasing liberties with the phrasings. “I Can Get Off on You” is better on Willie’s studio album with Waylon Jennings, but it is nice to have a live version. This may be my favorite version of “If You Could Touch Her at All,” and the 14:26 “Red Headed Stranger Medley” is worth the price of the two-disc set. I haven’t heard this live anywhere else. For that track alone, this makes my untenable top ten. These versions of “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys” and “Good Hearted Woman” don’t match the versions with Waylon, but it’s still nice to have these for comparison purposes. Willie slows down “Mamas” and adds a little funk to it. Mickey has fun with the extra spaces this opens up. The photos of the family band included with the liner notes are also worth owning. This disc ends with the blazing instrumental piece “Under the Double Eagle,” which is only the second version I have thus far. The other appears as an outtake on the Complete Atlantic Recordings three-disc set. There’s a little hillbilly scat singing at the end. I think it goes without saying that every Willie fan should own this one.