Picture in a Frame (2003)

Kimmie Rhodes’ vocals don’t do much for me, but Willie’s voice on this version of “Picture in a Frame” immediately struck me. It’s up front and close in a way I haven’t heard before. I love this song on “It Always Will Be.” That version is probably better as a whole. This one has too much Kimmie and not enough Willie. But the snatches of Willie’s voice on this track are priceless. Same with this version of “Valentine.” It also appears on “Across the Borderline.” The producing and mixing on this album are excellent thus far. A lot of clean acoustic guitar work and crisp vocals. “Just One Love” also appears on the other album Willie recorded with Kimmie Rhodes. This version is a much more stripped down acoustic affair, and it is superior to the original. A little flamenco guitar between verses. Thankfully, there’s more Willie and less Kimmie in this track. She tries to sing harmony with him. She sounds like a younger Emmylou Harris. Willie’s vocals are strong. This version of Rodney Crowell’s “Till I Gain Control” ranks as one of my favorites. This album is growing on me. I’d always rather have straight up Willie, but Kimmie hangs back and sings harmony and let’s Willie and Trigger take the lead. This is one of my favorite songs that Willie does. I rank all of his versions of this song high, and this is no exception. “Love Me Like Song” is a different kind of song for Willie, and this time he’s trying to sing back-up vocals. “I Just Drove By” starts out with Willie and Trigger sounding as full and strong as ever. Willie also sang this Kimmie-penned song on their last outing, “Just One Love.” Again, this one is more pared down. Just acoustic with a touch of steel. This album may have to make my untenable top ten. Another hidden gem. How many more of these unknown Willie gems are out there? He is leaving behind the most amazing trail, more of a wake, of work. I’m just water skiing over it right now. I love the title “Contrabandistas.” Kimmie takes the lead on this one. Willie hangs back. Not sure who she reminds me of. Another flamenco-inflected track. Great guitar work on this album. Willie’s “Love Will Always Be” appears as “It Always Will Be” on the 2004 album of the same name. I gave that version a 4, but this may be a 5. More spare, more stripped down in this earlier 2003 version. Again, the irony of Willie claiming that his love “will always be,” until it isn’t. Until it slips away. Only in his mind will it always remain. Then he ends with two Kimmie Rhodes tunes. Interesting how Willie seems to give the guitar solos more space on some of his later works. Kimmie takes the lead on “We’ve Done this Before,” but Willie joins in “like a wave returning to the shore.” It gets at Willie’s sense of time, like seasons, like waves, like falling leaves. Returning to the past, to memories. We’ve been here before. Déjà vu. I’ve been there, I’ll be there again. A Buddhist, stoic view. “Rhinestone Highway” may be my least favorite song on the album. Might be the strings and the slightly overproduced feel (relative to the other tracks). The other songs sounded like they were recorded in Willie’s living room, but this sounds like a studio. Too polished. And almost no trace of Willie unless he’s on guitar. My biggest beef with this album would be this last track. Why end it with no Willie unless he is trying to let her have the last word or note. Too humble and deferential as always. Willie never seems to care about getting credit. Another example of him lending his name to further someone else’s career, regardless of the negative effect on his own. Who else does this? I like the principle if not the product.

Tougher Than Leather (1983)

From the first strum of the 38-second track “My Love for the Rose” that opens Willie’s 1983 album “Tougher Than Leather,” you can tell this is Willie at his best, maybe at his peak. “Changing Skies” is as good as anything on “Redheaded Stranger.” Willie has his road band plus Johnny Gimble on fiddle; he’s producing himself in his own Pedernales studio; he’s doing a concept album on straight-up Texas Western themes; he’s got Mickey Raphael’s on harmonica; and he’s got the perfectly spare backing that he should have on all his albums. In the title track, “Tougher Than Leather,” Willie’s telling a tried and true story. One might complain that it holds no tricks or surprises, but it had the opposite effect on me. I found it pleasingly straightforward. But of course Willie is just setting us up for the curveball, the changeup, on track 4: “Little Old Fashioned Karma.” What self-respecting Texas cowboy tough guy knows anything about Eastern religion and karma? A Hindu John Wayne? A honky tonk Hari Krishna recording in an Austin Ashram? Willie makes karma sound like a little old fashioned moonshine. And yet, the cosmic sense of justice found in karma does fit with the black and white vigilante justice of the wild west. What goes around comes around, and you’ll get yours soon enough. But who could picture a guru doing the Texas two-step. Only Willie. This song seems to be almost the same tune as “Sister’s Comin’ Home.” Instead of the “jeans fit a little bit tighter thsn they did before, than they did before,” we have “just a little old fashioned karma comin’ round, a little old fashioned justice goin’ down.” And Johnny Gimble’s fiddle works its usual magic in between verses, as does Mickey’s harmonica. Sister Bobbi’s piano and Willie’s gut-stringed trigger do the same. “If you’re gonna dance you gotta play the band.” “Somewhere in Texas (Part 1)” is a 54-second gem that mentions Bob Wills and polkas and Waltzes. Just as “Tougher Than Leather” mentions the phrase “Changing Skies,” which links it back to the previous song of the same name, this short track looks forward to the next one: “Beer Barrel Polka.” So far, I can’t see any reason this album isn’t as well known as “Redheaded Stranger.” “Beer Barrel Polka” is an up-tempo solo piano piece for sister Bobbi. Willie is connecting to his dance-band roots. “Summer of Roses” slows it back down. This song also appears on Willie’s 1971-release “Yesterday’s Wine.” I think I prefer the earlier version to this one, but Johnny Gimble’s fiddle is a nice addition. Not quite sure how Willie is blending this image of a cowboy tougher than leather with all these roses and delicate, weepy fiddle and harmonica strains. Then back to the narrative filler of “Somewhere in Texas (Part 2)” with a shout out to “bad karma” and a reprise of “My Love for the Rose.” A wonderfully recursive and self-referential concept album. Willie showcases his storyteller credentials. “The Convict and the Rose” is another strong narrative track. I guess this album just doesn’t have the obvious singles like “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” And then a brief reprise of “Changing Skies.” Willie’s dreamin’ of his lover from his prison cell. “Little bird, have you heard: freedom lies, freedom lies. Love like ours never dies. Changing skies, just changing skies.” Now what can this possibly mean? Is freedom a lie? Is it just “some people talking.’” Will our love really last forever, and will the scenery just change? Or is Willie lying here when he says that love will last forever? Willie claims in the next song, “I Am the Forest,” that “I’ll always be with you, for as long as you please. For I am the forest, but you are the trees. I’m empty without you. So come grow within me…And the heavens need romance, so love never dies. So you be the stars, and I’ll be the skies. And should enemies find us, let them be forewarned, that you are the thunder and I am the storm. And I’ll always be with you, for as long as you please.” Or until time slips away, or till I hit the road again. Which could be in fifteen minutes. How long will forever last this time. And what kind of trees, what kind of love, could possibly fill Willie’s restless heart? Willie’s dark forest within (see D. H. Lawrence). And Willie ends with this wisdom: “Nobody Slides, My Friend, it’s a truth on which you can depend. If you’re living a lie, it will eat you alive…You can try it but you’ll never win. You can scream, you can shout, but it all evens out…You can run you can hide, but it’s still waitin’ inside.” Justice, Karma, right and wrong. For a man who made a career out of being an outlaw, he sings a lot about justice. “Whiskey for my men, and beer for my horses.” Willie somehow insists on both the rigid, unflinching integrity of the code of the west AND the all-tolerant, pluralistic, come-what may hippy Eastern religion attitude. How can he have it both ways? All in all, this is one of Willie’s most consistently pleasing albums, but it just doesn’t have the memorable hits to make it a great album. The story just isn’t as compelling. Every song is executed well. I can’t fault the production or the band, but the lyrics just aren’t as believable. This is rarely true for Willie, but I just don’t sense he means them. Maybe future listens will disabuse me of this initial review, but something does seem to be missing. I should like this as much as “Redheaded Stranger,” but I’m not sure why I don’t.”

The Ghost (Part 3) (2005)

Of course Willie would “Blame It On the Times.” Time itself is to blame. Time is our curse, our fall, the result of original sin. “Yesterday’s gone and there’s No Tomorrow in Sight,” but “I hope we can salvage a few memories.” And yet, Willie often has yesterday in sight. Salvaging memories is a way to keep yesterday always in sight. Yesterday is better than tomorrow, more reliable, more permanent and predictable and controllable. Only Willie would think he needs a “new way to cry.” “All my tears have fallen, I can cry no more. I’ve cried so much since you have said goodbye. The pressure keeps on fillin’ up within my heart. It grows and grows, but still my eyes are dry. Though my heart is breaking, tears refuse to start, so I’ve gotta find a new way to cry. I’ve gotta find a new way to relieve the pain. It just can’t stay forever locked inside. And until I forget you and can smile again, I’ve gotta find a new way to cry.” I’m not sure what was wrong the old way. He’s made a career of crying. Maybe the blues and honky tonk replaces the public mourners, the psalms. It is a way to grieve. It is a new way to cry. To relieve the pain. It’s what the courtly love tradition was. It’s what Petrarch and the troubadours were doing. Inventing new and better and more efficient ways to cry. “Maybe in time you’ll change your mind and decide to love me again.” There it is again: time and mind. “I’ll just hang around till it’s over and hope it never ends.” Foolishly hoping that time won’t slip away. Foolishly believing the old lie that you’ll love me forever. Foolishly hoping that forever will last longer this time. Ironically, time does change minds, but usually for the worse. And why should we believe that Willie will really stay around. How can he stay around when he’s always on the road? He claims that he’ll never leave her, that he’s stubborn that way. Sounds like “Broken Promises” waiting to happen. He even breaks promises he makes to himself. “A broken promise always means someone will surely cry, and I know who that someone will be.” Really? It seems about fifty-fifty. Who’s always leaving whom? “Happiness Lives Next Door,” always next door, always around the bend, always out of reach, always elusive. And yet it is always tantalizingly close, next door. Never down the street or the next town over. Always next door. So “Let’s Pretend we’re strangers for tonight. Let’s pretend we never hurt each other.” Let’s lie to each other about our love. “Let’s pretend our love is just beginning, make believe that it was true love at first sight. And even though our love has never really ended, let’s pretend we’re stranger’s for a night.” Willie says he needs a new way to cry, but “[He’s] Going to Lose A Lot of Teardrops” this way. “While you make up your mind” I’ll just wait “forevermore.” Crying all the while. “Perhaps in time our love could still be.” Willie will just wait forever, play the patient housewife. “I’ve been trying so hard to forget you, but this chore of forgetting I find has me burning both ends of the candle, and fighting a battle with time. What I’d give just to sleep for a moment, but it’s a luxury that I can’t afford, for I know that I would just dream about you, and my tears would start falling once more.” Willie’s career is a battle with time. Burning both ends of the candle is his way of harassing time, trying to force its hand, its healing hands. And yet forgetting time is such a chore, almost as hard as remembering it. Hard to stop it from slipping away, and hard to give it the slip. This song sounds like one of his demos with just vocal and guitar. Probably the sparest on disk 3. This version of “Go Away” sounds similar to the version on the Complete Liberty recordings, but without the annoying back-up do-wop singers. “Go away…and let me cry alone.” “I’d be crazy if I took you back again, but this foolish heart…” Crazy plus foolish = crying. “It’s not right for me to love you…I wish I were far away from you.” And yet happiness is next door. I have four excellent versions of “What Can You Do To Me Now,” and it’s a toss up which one’s best. One of Willie’s sparest most haunting songs. “You broke my pride and made me cry out loud.” Willie cries uncle to time and love. Willie has gone to the dogs, faced his own death and mortality, and it has made him stronger, Buddhist, stoic. Ditto for “She’s Not For You.” I have four versions, and all are excellent. “She told you she found heaven in your eyes. We’ll I think it only fair to warn you, that sometimes she lies.” Sometimes? Some-Times time slips away. “She just looks for greener pastures now and then. And when she grows tired, she knows old faithful will take her back again.” “I’m used to feeling blue.” That could be a song in itself: “Used to Feeling Blue.” I used to feel blue, and now I’m used to it. Like Buddha, like Marcus Aurelius. To philosophize is to learn to die, to be used to the blues. But is this just another word for being numb? “What a Way to Live,” and yet what is the alternative? What other way can you live? This song also appears on “Me and the Drummer” (I prefer the version on that album). “I’m so ashamed of my eyes ‘cause they still cry for you after they both watched my hand wave goodbye to you. I’ve told them time and time again, that this will never do, and I’ve told them how you always laugh at teardrops. I’m so ashamed of my arms for missin’ you. Last night I woke up just in time to see them reach for you.” Willie’s ashamed at his tears, but he hasn’t been shamed enough in 50 years to stop. He keeps right on cryin’. If at first you don’t succeed (in grieving), cry, cry again. The back-up vocals make me cry. “Shelter of My Arms” is another spare recording. Dreams and memories will “carry me through eternity.” They are all I need. I know “it’s just a dream that soon will end.” And yet my dreams and memories are real enough, realer than reality, and more eternal. “You come home just long enough to laugh at me.” I still love you as before, and yet I don’t care? How can I love and not care?

The Ghost (Part 2) (2005)

The liner notes say these tunes come from the late 1950s and early ‘60s. Kurt Wolff also adds, “It’s a treat to know there’s still material out there for most of us to uncover and hear for the first time.” Amen. I’m over 80 albums in and still hearing stuff for the first time. Willie’s oeuvre seems bottomless. These liner notes, though, are maddening in that they don’t tell me where these recordings originally appeared. I have a half dozen versions of “Half a Man,” but this may be one of my favorites. Piano, bass, snare, and Willie’s voice. A touch of steel, but no acoustic that I can discern. Vocals are even stronger on this version of “The Last Letter.” This song appears on the early Liberty recordings, but with syrupy strings. This recording is spare with steel, snare, bass, piano, and a touch of acoustic. An understated combo that lets Willie’s vocals shine. I’ve got to find out what albums these recordings are coming from. This is my first taste of “Pride Wins Again.” “One time she loved you, and though you still feel the same, love is always the loser when pride plays the game.” Another song of love and time and lies. The fickleness and impermanence of love. Why can’t it last? This one’s a bit more up-tempo with almost a ragtime piano and a marching snare mixing with the steel. This is also my first exposure to “Building Heartache.” “When you say you love me, we both know it’s a lie, and just a dream from which I must wake, and each sweet word you tell me, is a heartache in disguise.” Promises are lies in disguise. When you say you’ll love me “always,” we both know it’s a lie. Yet we keep telling these sweet lies and keep believing them, too. Why? “Face of a Fighter” is another first for me. Willie faces lost love the way Rocky Balboa faces Apollo Creed’s fists. And he suffers the scars and heartaches like a fighter absorbing blows. He won’t go down, though he’s hanging on the ropes. “Pages” may be my new favorite Willie song. It’s a hidden gem. “Last evening I turned back the pages of time, and tore out the chapters when you were mine. I attempted to cut out the memories of you. And paste in some new ones far better and true. True. I searched through the chapters referring to hearts, for the one with the caption ‘till death do us part.’ I ripped at each letter and I tore at each word. I screamed at your memory and nobody heard. But your memory’s determined and chances are few of my ever finding a replacement for you. It desperately clings to the floor of my mind. And fights for its place in the pages of time.” Wow! Willie is like the government in “1984.” He wants to re-write the past. Cut and paste the good parts. Like Jefferson with his bible, Willie wants to edit the story of his life. This may be the most direct and blunt statement of Willie’s view of time. In this song he screams at memories. Shouts at time. Mostly piano and vocals with a little guitar. This is Willie as Simon and Garfunkel. Willie’s vocals are as stark as can be, but the guitar and piano are kind of funky and jazzy in the background. An odd but pleasingly off-kilter combination. This version of “I Hope So” is close to the one on the early Liberty recordings, but I don’t think it is identical. But then where the heck do these recordings originate? This is turning out to be one of my favorite albums for Willie’s vocals and the understated accompaniment. This version of “Everything But You” also appears on “Night Life: Greatest Hits and Rare Tracks (1959-1971).” I’ve got everything but you, which means I’ve got nothing. “They give me memories that last a day or two.” But I want love that will last longer, like Keats’ Grecian Urn. This version of “A Moment Isn’t Very Long” also appears on “Crazy: The Demo Sessions” (see my review on the blog for that album). Another version appears on “Me and the Drummer.” Here it appropriately follows a memory that lasts “a day or two.” “Some Other Time” is another first for me. “I’ll forget you and start my life anew. But not just now. I won’t forget you. ‘cause I’ve spent too much time loving you. I know I could forget you if I wanted to. But there’s still 10,000 dreams I dream of you. Some other time I’ll stop remembering the love that came my way.” Willie wants to turn his memory on and off like a light switch, but every one of his songs is about how this doesn’t work. Much as we would like to cut and paste and control memories to suit our needs, it never works that way. Again, I swear I’ve reviewed “I Feel Sorry” before, but I only see it showing up on Love and Pain (the same version as this). Only Willie could feel sorry for the guy whom his latest lover left for Willie. Willie’s been on the other side so often, he feels sorry for the guy, but not sorry enough to repent. Like Claudius. Like being “Always On My Mind,” it doesn’t count for much. This version of “You’ll Always Have Someone” appears, with different mixing, on “Love and Pain” and “Night Life.” That word “always” is so problematic and so central to Willie’s thinking. Always is always a lie, and yet Willie says it as often as he disbelieves it. I’ve reviewed a different version of “Any Old Arms Won’t Do” on “One Hell of a Ride” from 1968, but this version must be earlier. The key idea is that Willie wants a perfect love, like Petrarch and co. Anything less than perfect, unconditional, eternal love, agape, won’t do. “Slow Down Old World” also appears on “Who’ll Buy My Memories,” and that version may be my favorite, but this one’s worth owning. “And So Will You, My Love” is new to me. “Nothing lasts forever except forever and you, my love.” “Your memory’s always near. Wherever I am found. Your memory’s still around.” Another “always” song. This version of “Things to Remember” also appears on “Crazy: The Demo Sessions.” Ditto with “Undo the Wrong,” except it’s called “Undo the Right” on “Crazy.” “Home is where you’re happy,” and yet Willie’s always running away, always on the road. So if he’s happy on the road, the road is home. Wherever his lover is becomes his home. And yet isn’t that one of Willie’s fundamental problems? True homes can’t always be happy. It’s the problem with the “pursuit of happiness.” It implies that you run away from unhappiness, but that’s a form of cowardice, an avoidance of responsibility. “Why Are You Picking On Me” also shows up on “City of New Orleans.” “I’m well aware of this game you’ve learned, to love me and leave and show no concern.” And yet awareness means nothing, because I will still keep playing.

The Ghost (Part 1) (2005)

The liner notes describe this disc as “a collection of laid-back Nelson recordings from the 1960s and ‘70s.” I’ll need to do some research to figure out where these recordings actually come from. To that end, here is the track list:

1. I Let My Mind Wander

2. December Days

3. I Can’t Find the Time

4. I Didn’t Sleep a Wink

5. You Wouldn’t Cross the Street

6. Suffering Silence

7. I Just Don’t Understand

8. Rainy Day Blues

9. Night Life

10. The Ghost

11. Following Me Around

12. End of Understanding

13. Will You Remember Mine

14. So much to Do

15. Is There Something On Your Mind

16. Healing Hands of Time

This version of “I Let My Mind Wander” is new to me. I have four others, but this ranks up with the best. Willie’s vocal, steel guitar, and an understated bass, snare, and piano combine to form the near-perfect setting for his melancholy lyrics. This version of “December Day” is as understated as Willie gets. What other artist gets measured by how understated he is, and yet Willie seems to be competing with himself to see how understated he can be. Like the Rothko’s Chapel guy, Morton Feldman, always trying to get his orchestra to play softer. Willie always wants to get more spare, more stark, more raw. And yet, there is a limit to how spare a recording can be. At some point, you can’t strip any more away. You can’t get any more naked. You can always add more clothes. Addition is infinite, but subtraction is finite. Willie seems to be battling this limitation. I reviewed this version of “I Can’t Find the Time” on “Love and Pain,” same with “I Didn’t Sleep a Wink.” “You Wouldn’t Cross the Street” also appears on “Me and Paul,” and “Me and the Drummer.” Interesting that there seems to be a connection between these three albums. “Love and Pain” is a mere compilation, but the title is suggestive. Not sure who came up with the title, but it does capture Willie’s music, the intersection of love and pain, which is the battleground of time and memory. This is the only recording I have of “Suffering in Silence.” Willie encourages her to “suffer in silence like me,” and yet Willie’s whole career is suffering in public, making suffering into art. The steel guitar almost sounds out of tune, if that’s possible. As if crying and weeping could be out of tune. “Speak no bitter words. The world offers no sympathy. Though trouble surrounds you. And you long to be heard.” This is Willie’s stoic, Buddhist philosophy. “I’ll give you a lesson in living.” Willie’s whole career is giving this stoic, Buddhist lesson in living. A guide to escape the wheel of suffering. “Suffer in silence and smile” like the beatific Buddha. Ah ha! I figured out where I’d heard “I Just Don’t Understand.” It appears on the reggae album “Countryman.” I love the “do you mind.” Willie is obsessed with mind. “Mind your own business.” “Mind your manners.” “Always on my mind.” Mind has so many meanings and connotations. Mind can mean pay attention. Our mind is the organ that focuses our attention beyond pure instinct. Memory is the thing animals lack. Elephants aside, animals use memory for survival, for us, it just as often brings pain as we contemplate the past and future. We don’t have the blissfully ignorant ability to live only in the present. It is our blessing and curse. It is the subject of every Willie Nelson song. Could it be that consciousness, which is the human condition, is simply the awareness of time, the awareness of the past and the future? Here he combines “mind” and “understand.” Do you mind, as in, will it bother you, and that’s exactly what our minds do: bother us, plague us, worry us. “I’m a worried man” is another favorite reggae song of Willie’s via Johnny Cash. Our minds don’t understand, and we can’t understand our own minds (see Walker Percy’s “Lost in the Cosmos”). We can’t make up our minds; we are made up by the hardwiring in our minds. In “Rainy Day Blues” Willie asserts that you can’t outrun the blues. A world without rain and blues is a utopia, that is, a no-place. It doesn’t exist. This version sounds very similar to the 1959 version on The Early Years collection of Liberty recordings. The mix is very different, but the recording may be the same. So maybe I need to get all compilations because the mixes vary so much that they become almost different songs. The mixing makes a huge difference. Sort of like craft beers in cans versus bottles versus kegs versus growlers. The containers matter. The temperature, the glass. It’s part of what makes “Stardust” so great. I have about a half dozen versions of this song, but I’ll have to do a side-by-side comparison to rank them accurately. This one ranks up there with the best. Great to hear a sax along with Willie’s vocal. I now have almost a dozen versions of “Night Life,” but this is the same one from The Complete Liberty Recordings. “The Ghost” may be the sparest recording on a very spare album. This sounds like one of his early demo recordings. Just Willie’s voice and Trigger. “The ghost of our old love appears…It laughs while I listen for the breaking of day.” Not only do our memories haunt us, but they laugh at us, mock us. Time itself seems to be mocking our finitude. Life itself, the human condition itself. Hamlet.

Interesting that “Following Me Around” follows the song “The Ghost.” Her memory haunts Willie like a ghost in both songs. Why does memory do that to us? Why does it haunt us? Why do we compare it to a ghost? “She always follows me from town to town. At least her memory’s following me around. And whenever I clear my mind so she can see, I feel her love come rushing into me. And I know that I will never be alone. It looks as though her memory’s found a home.” Here Willie combines notions of memory with home. Restless memory’s come home to roost, but it’s a peculiar homecoming. Homecoming as haunting. A haunted homecoming. Memories stalk us, won’t leave us alone, worry us. The horns on this one seem a bit inappropriate. I think this version also appears on “Naked Willie.” The horns are removed on “Naked Willie,” though. And ITUNES says it is a 1970 recording. The only other version of “End of Understanding” I have is on The Highway Men: The Road Goes on Forever (1995). I prefer the 1995 version (and have blogged about it on the blog for that album). “Will You Remember Mine” also shows up on “Sweet Memories” (of course) and “Who’ll Buy My Memories.” This may be my favorite of the three. Spare as can be. Willie’s vocals are at their best. And I don’t know if it is Mickey Raphael, but a harmonica makes a fitting appearance. “So Much to Do” may be the same version as appears on The Complete Atlantic Recordings. This is the only version I have of “Is There Something on Your Mind.” You’re always on my mind, but what’s on yours. I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours. Her heart and mind are separate. “Is there someone from the past you can’t forget, dear.” A ghost? A local memory? Someone “following you around”? Everyone seems to be haunted, chased by, memories in these songs. “I can’t compete with memories.” Memories of love are stronger than real love. “While there’s still time, is there something on your mind?” And yet memories are outside time, beyond time. This version of “Healing Hands of Time” seems the sparest of them all. It could be the same one as that on “Country Willie—His Own Songs.” Hard to tell. A different mix, though. Raises the question, though, how can time haunt and heal at the same time. A haunted healing.

Love and Pain (1996)

Not sure what to make of this compilation album. I can’t believe it contains only the second version of “Let My Mind Wander” that I own (the other is on “Me and the Drummer”). The very thin liner notes state only that these nine songs were recorded in Texas in the mid to late 1960s. Not real helpful. This first song is spare and uncluttered, though. “December Day” appears to be the same version that appears on The Ghost (which also has very unhelpful liner notes). The mix is totally different, though, and I think I prefer the mixing on this one. Pretty much solo acoustic. A great example of Willie’s early vocals. I guess this would be the earliest version of this song, several years before the one on “Yesterday’s Wine.” This version of “I Can’t Find the Time” also appears on “The Ghost.” Willie’s theme of time features prominently. “They tell me in time I’ll forget you, but somehow, I can’t find the time.” Sounds like Willie’s Remembrance of Things Past. “You always end up on my mind.” Hmmm. Sounds like “Always on My Mind.” Here’s another song where Willie wants to forget her, but he can’t shake her memory, can’t outrun it or give it the slip. Half the time time slips away from him, and half the time he’s trying to give time the slip. Neither ever works. Very enjoyably spare recording. I’m not sure this is really Willie singing on “I Didn’t Sleep a Wink.” If it is, it is the most unusual vocal performance. Sounds nothing like any of his other recordings. It’s a blues tune, and he must be trying to sound like someone else. Same version is on The Ghost. “You Wouldn’t Cross the Street” also appears on The Ghost. Same with “Suffering in Silence.” I’m seeing a pattern here. I think I’ll just review these tunes when I review The Ghost parts 1, 2, and 3. That is obviously the set people should order, not this one. And yet, the mix for these nine songs may be better on this compilation. “I Feel Sorry for Him” and “You’ll Always Have Someone” and “I Just Don’t Understand” are all on The Ghost. I could swear I’ve listened to and reviewed “I Just Don’t Understand,” but it doesn’t show up in ITUNES or in my archive of blogs. I know I’ve heard the line “Would you mind too much if I don’t understand.” Or something very close to it. After 80+ albums, my memory may be breaking down. I’ll get to the bottom of it eventually. The short of it is, don’t buy this album. Get The Ghost parts 1, 2, and 3.

Heavy Hank: Songs of Hank Williams (2006)

The picture of Willie and Larry Butler from 1958 next to the one from 2006 is worth the price of this album. As with the last album I reviewed, Willie is clearly paying back an old friend. This album is very similar in all aspects to Memories of Hank Williams Sr. (2000). The band and Willie’s vocals are great, but I could do without Larry Butler. The opening song is a perfect choice for an album like this. “Since she left I’ve been half crazy. I feel some heavy Hank coming on.” Again, love makes you crazy, and it makes you need honky tonk and the blues. “Take these tears from my eyes and let me see just a spark of the love that used to be…take these chains from my heart and set me free.” These are chains of memories. And yet how can we ever be set free from memories? The steel guitar tears your tears right out of your eyes. The fiddle does the same. “All my faith in you is gone, but the heartache lingers on.” It appears that “May You Never Be Alone Like Me” is identical to the version on Memories of Hank Williams Sr. Hmmm. So what is this album? A re-hashing of the other album with a few new tunes? Identical versions of “Wedding Bells” and “Hey, Good Looking” also appear on both albums. “Jambalaya” is unique to this album, though, and the fiddle shines. Again, what I wouldn’t do to have an album of all these classic Hank tunes with just Willie and this band. Willie, steel, fiddle, Hank. Now that’s a recipe for Jambalaya or gumbo if I ever tasted one. Willie “can’t keep the tears from [his] eyes” in “My Son Calls Another Man Daddy.” Tears, tears, tears. No one cries like Hank and Willie and that weepy steel guitar. “Why Should We Try” is a great question that Willie seems to be asking in many of his songs. “We’ve been livin’ a lie…we were just victims of a half-hearted love.” “The vows we made are only to break.” Here we have the themes of lies, halves, and promises. “The dreams that we knew can never come true.” “False love like ours soon fades like the flowers.” Is he saying nature itself is a lie, a seductress, a fleeting, evanescent flirt? Is life itself a cheat? It makes us feel like we will live forever and then we get old. Sounds like Hamlet. To be or not to be? Why bother? Why try? Why live? This strikes at the existential core of Willie’s and Hank’s music. “My heart fell at your feet. I can’t help it if I’m still in love with you.” “A picture from the past came slowly stealing, as I brushed your arm and walked so close to you, and suddenly I got that old time feeling.” Funny how time slips away, but funny also how it sneaks up behind you and shouts “Boo!” When you want it to stay, it slips away, but when you want it to stay away, it shows up like an unwanted guest. Willie sounds great on “Mind Your Own Business.” The tune and the lyric fit his voice and his sensibility like a glove. Hank and Willie are clearly musical soul mates. I could do without the back-up singers. This collection ends with Hank’s “I Told a Lie to My Heart.” Which raises the question, why do we lie to ourselves about love? Lies, lies, and damned lies. How many of Willie’s songs (and those he covers) are about the lies we tell each other and ourselves? How much of art itself is devoted to this? Fiction?