The Great Divide (2002)

Well, my Untenable Top Ten just reached seventeen. I shouldn’t have liked this album with Kid Rock and cheesy pop tunes like “Don’t Fade Away.” But Willie works his magic on even the cheesiest tunes and makes me believe them. “Mendocino County Line” is the perfect duet song for Willie, just like “Beer For My Horses.” Thematically it fits his personality, and the producers leave room for him to work his voice in and out like an instrument, like a dobro or a mandolin solo. This album makes my list because it consistently surprises. “Won’t Catch Me Cryin’ Over You.” Yeah, right. Willie is always taking every opportunity to cry over everyone, except when he’s insisting you won’t catch him crying over them. So he’s either crying or talking about how he won’t cry. The cheesy back-up vocals have to go, but there is so much else right with this album that I can forgive that. “Pardon me if I love you endlessly.” And yet, it’s “Funny How Time Slips Away.” Always promising and simultaneously denying that love can or will last forever.

So I have missed several days. My first missed days of this project. I have been listening to The Great Divide each day, but life just got too busy to blog. I think I can make up time (a very Willie thing to do) by listening to these monster collections of his early stuff during my trip to DC. With multiple CDs and 30 tracks per CD, I think some of these discs deserve more than one day. The liner notes are books, too, so it will take time to read and digest. That reminds me that the liner notes were missing from this used CD (I guess I shouldn’t by used). So I don’t have good info on the songs and musicians for this album.

It may be the quirkiest set of duets and genres yet (and that’s saying something). It has some of the flamenco quirkiness of Teatro, the pop treatment of his classic pop albums,

“You asked me if I’d leave

And I said never

And that’s still right.”

How long is forever this time? Still is still moving and promising love will last forever is still crazy as it ever was. Still right in what way? In your mind? In theory? In memory?

“This face is all I have, worn and lived in.” “Worn and lived in through the tides of time.” “I’ll never look like you, cool and…” And yet Willie is cool. “These tears.” The lines and wisdom of age and time, worn like canyons by rivers of tears, pain, suffering. The strings and horns and rousing chorus and electric guitar are a bit much, but the vocals and the honesty of this song may fit Willie better than any of the almost 900 songs I have listened to thus far. The trippy vocals with the drum machine R & B slow jam beat on “Don’t Fade Away” works, even though it shouldn’t. I love the ambition and the courage of trying something this sappy and cliché. And Willie transcends the genre and makes it work. How the heck does a Harmonica get into this song? Is that allowed? A harmonica in a slow jam? A steel in an R & B tune? For that matter, who let Willie into this gospel inflected couples skate ballad? Willie adds authenticity to easy listening, makes it uneasy somehow. He adds an edge to any genre he enters. He roughs it up, scuffs it up. I could do without the Cyndi Lauper re-make of “Time After Time.” This jazz vocalist does this tune in a more interesting way, but her name escapes me (Lucinda, Vanessa?). “Recollection Phoenix” works, too, with the harmonica. Recollecting, memory, time, love. Heck, “Time After Time.” Of course Willie would re-do that. Every song he ever wrote could be called that. “What do you do with the sands of time?” “But I can’t hold back the sands of time.” “What do you do with a memory that just hangs around and just stares at me? I can tear that frame off that wall. But it won’t erase the things I saw.” “Night and day, you remain.” The stubbornness of memories. They won’t fade or go away. Like the strains of steel and harmonica. “What do you do with old regrets? There’s a box full underneath the bed. Just close enough not to forget.” “What do you do after goodbye?” You think about it. You make love to your old memories. They are more real that way. The remains of the day. The remains of time. Its death, and yet, what remains is alive in a way, in song, in art, like the ashes, the remains, in Keats’ urn. Remains are both the dead body and that which lives on. Death and life rolled into one substance. Is that Christ? Is the cross where the death of time and death itself occurs? Donne says death, you will die. “You remain.” Some of these tunes are Willie’s most authentic, most apt, most believable.

Healing Hands of Time (1994)

After listening yesterday to the oboe and the English horn in Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, I am startled to hear them in a Willie Nelson album. And yet, what instrument could be more melancholy than an oboe? I actually liked this more than I expected to. This isn’t Charlie Parker with strings. Willie’s voice is in its prime (if the ageless Willie can be said to have a prime), and even the orchestra and its maestro cannot keep Willie from breaking meter. Hearing him toy with an orchestra is even more fun than listening to him toy with a simple rhythm section. I could do without the cheesy back-up singers, but the strings and horns actually provide an interesting backdrop for his vocal shenanigans. This version of “Crazy” may make my top 3 or 4 (behind the Demo Sessions and Storytellers and perhaps another live version medley like the Texas Opry House in 1974 with Johnny Gimble’s fiddle). The orchestra basically substitutes for the fiddle and the steel and the harmonica, but he keeps the guitar and piano solos. The trumpet on “Night Life” is a sound I haven’t heard on a Willie album before, except, of course, on the Wynton Marsalis album. We also have a flute and an alto flute on some of these tracks. On “How Will I Know” there is a violin solo that seems more like a classical violin solo than a fiddle solo. A subtle distinction, but it makes this album interesting. Call me crazy, but half-way through my second listen today I am putting this in my untenable top ten. Willie’s vocals are as good as they get, and the background is unique, surprising, interesting. It’s not Stardust, but it’s not that far off.

Lyrically and thematically, “There’s Worse Things Than Falling In Love” steals the show. I’m not sure the lyrics even make sense. He compares a lover leaving to “a funeral where nobody dies” or a “full house and nobody home.” The third stanza, though, intrigues me:

I’m well past my half-way in time

But I still have a lot on my mind

And the one thing Willie is most certain about, his golden rule, if you will, is that “there are worse things than being alone.” But what does he mean? That good things come out of loneliness and solitude?

On “If I Had My Way,” Willie asserts that if he had his way, “we would never grow old.” He didn’t write the song, but he may as well have. He chastises a lover for promising him that she would love him forever and then dumping him immediately. He laments that time slips away, and yet he’s a sucker for making this same promise to others. He knows it isn’t possible, but he doesn’t care. If he had his way, it would be possible. We could love each other forever and time would never slip away.

In “I’ll Be Seeing You,” we have a typical Willie twist on a cliché. He doesn’t mean that he’ll actually see you again soon; he means that your memory will be haunting him wherever he goes and wherever he looks. He will be seeing you everywhere forever after your gone. He will see more of you after you leave, which perhaps explains why there are worse things than being alone. After saying “see ya,” ironically, he will see more of you. “See ya” and “see you” become two sides of the same coin. I can see more of you when I can’t see you. I can see you better in hindsight. Is this why absence makes the heart grow fonder? I’m still not sure what’s worse than being alone? Being with people? Being with the real Daisy is worse than dreaming of the perfect Daisy in my mind?

The three pictures on this album speak volumes. On the cover Willie has a carefully groomed ponytail falling over a black tux. His face is serious and contemplative like a serious classical artist. On the inside cover he’s wearing a “Bloody Mary Morning” bandana, and on the back cover he leans against a black Steinway with a black cowboy hat and a crisp black suit. Will the real Willie please stand up? He’s as comfortable in a tux as in a wife-beater. And he sings the same no matter what he’s wearing. It’s just the bands and the genres that change.

The poet Charles Bukowski writes,

"there are worse things

than being alone

but it often takes

decades to realize this

and most often when you do

it's too late

and there's nothing worse

than too late"

I’m not sure what Willie or Bukowski mean, but it’s at the center of everything Willie writes and sings. The paradox of time and love and memory.

Live From Austin, Texas (2006)

On first listen, this concert seems stronger than the Live at Billy Bob’s from 2007. What’s interesting about this set list is that every single song is a huge hit. Willie never has to pad out his set list with filler. He can pack it with wall-to-wall platinum. It is almost too much, though, like eating just icing. Sometimes you need a little cake. You can’t take just pure hits. Mickey Raphael’s harmonica has a pleasingly different sound with the live acoustics. This concert has all the standard Willie runs: “Whiskey River”-“Stay A Little Longer” and the Funny/Crazy/Night Life medley. This one is especially trippy. I’m really looking forward to listening to the dozen or more versions of this medley I can dig up and comparing them head-to-head. This one won’t be the best, but it has some original qualities that make it stand out. The harmonica figures prominently in this recording. We basically have a trio: Willie, Trigger, and Mickey. I had no idea Beth Nielson Chapman wrote “Nothing I Can Do About it Now.” This may be the best song on the album and one of his best versions of this song. Ditto for “Help Me Make it Through the Night.” This “Bloody Mary Morning” runs over 5 minutes and veers into an Allman Brothers kind of jam session toward the end. Then Willie slows “Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain” way down. Always playing with time and tempo. This “Always on Your Mind” ranks up with the best as well. I’m reminded of Jerry Garcia’s guitar work and vocal pacing on some of Willie’s tunes. His voice surprisingly soars on this one, even at 74. “Still is Still Moving to Me” still hasn’t grown on me, though I like it lyrically and philosophically. Ending with “Milk Cow Blues” is an adventurous choice. Willie seems to be sowing his wild oats on this one. He starts out slowly with this straightforward blues piece, but then he veers off into jam band land. Harmonica, piano, and guitar riffing all over the place. Willie’s vocals are as playful as I have ever heard them. Maybe Shelby Lynne inspired him, or maybe it was the hometown crowd in Austin, but Willie was feeling it. There are some surprising vocal flourishes I have not heard before in almost 60 albums thus far this year.

Songbird (2006)

I’m not crazy about the band on this album, except for Mickey Raphael. I guess I’m just partial to the road band or to Willie solo acoustic. Willie opens with a long blues tune, “Rainy Day Blues,” that clocks in at 5:32. “Songbird” is a bit too poppy and overproduced for my taste. Again, I respect Willie for using so many different producers and bands. You never know what might work, what might be the next Stardust. But this isn’t it. I guess I’m not a Ryan Adams fan. The electric guitar solos in the background seem out of place with Willie’s style. No liner notes to speak of, so I can’t tell who wrote what, but “Blue Hotel” certainly fits thematically into Willie’s repertoire. Not sure I like the chorus either, but it is something different, something I haven’t heard yet. Willie with gospel chorus and organ. It doesn’t work for me, but it was worth a try. Willie’s voice is interesting on this recording, but the production overshadows his voice and forces it into the background. I love the audacity of doing a cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Stella Blue,” but I’m partial to Jerry Garcia’s voice on this one. I wanted to like this more than I did. Maybe it was the electric guitar. Too loud. It drowns out the subtlety of Willie’s voice. He gets more powerful when the music gets softer and slower. I like how Willie works in three of his old standards—“We Don’t Run,” “Sad Songs and Waltzes,” and “Back to Earth.” "Back to Earth" is spare, with just steel and harp. It’s a five star version, as good as or better than any of his versions. Ditto for “Sad Songs and Waltzes.” Not sure how these spare recordings fit with the rest of the album. What kind of album is this anyway? I can’t get the concept, the thread that ties it all together. “Hallelujah” is certainly a trippy, Grateful Dead-like version of a gospel tune. This album baffles. Is it gospel, blues, pop, rock, country, folk? Where else can you find a gospel chorus with a harmonica and a steel guitar. Honky tonk gospel? Most people do one or the other. Willie does both at the same time. Willie sings the way Chinese landscape painters paint, from the angle of totality. He tackles all genres at once rather than doing one at a time. This version of “We Don’t Run” is on speed. It won’t hold up to other versions, but I admire the experiment. It will be fun to listen to this after the one on Spirit. I’ve never heard an “Amazing Grace” like this. No one takes liberties like Willie. The organ and Willie’s haunting phrasing make this more of a dirge. His voice wavers like a distorted guitar. Like a voice with a wah-wah pedal. Add trippy, jam-band gospel to Willie’s mash-up genre repertoire. Overall, this album is not one of my favorites, but I will revisit it because I still don’t know what to make of it, which often is a good sign that it might get better with further listenings. It surprises, which means it might last.

Willie and Ray (2005)

This one surprised me. Ray Price must be 80 or so on this album, but he sounds great. Willie’s vocals are strong as well. This album features Willie, Ray, steel, and fiddle, no harmonica. This allows the listener to focus more on the vocals. I’ve commented on many of these songs in previous blogs, but these versions are as good or better than some of the previous versions. They will stand up well in future head-to-head listens.

I'm so ashamed of my eyes cause they still cry for you

After they both watched my hand wave goodbye to you

And I've told them time and time again that this will never do

And I've told them how you always laughed at teardrops

I'm so ashamed of my arms for missing you

Last night I woke up just in time to see them reach for you

And now my heart confesses it still wants you too

I'm so ashamed of them all for loving you

Willie’s crying again and mad at himself for crying. Tears like memories have a mind and a will of their own. Women laughing at men’s tears goes back to the troubadours, Petrarch, Spencer, Shakespeare, Ovid, and the poets of courtly love.

Ray doesn’t sound too torn up about the fact that he’s “just destroyed the world [he’s] living in.” The bouncy Texas two-step drums and bass make this hard to take too seriously. I guess Willie got this from Ray.

“Something to Think About” shows up on Willie’s reggae album and on Me and the Drummer (and I comment on the lyrics in the blogs on those albums). I don’t think this is the best of the three versions, but I love the lyrics. “Here’s something to think about: I’ll still be thinking of you.”

I comment on “Run That By Me One More Time” in the blog about Live and Kickin’. This studio version may actually be better than the live version because you can hear the excellent lyrics more distinctly.

“Soft Rain” could be taken from Murasaki’s Genji. Perfect love is always destroyed by men. We seek the ideal love, but we never find it. Gatsby, Proust, etc., etc. etc.

“I’ll Keep On Loving You” appears on Last of the Breed and Moonlight Becomes You (and I comment on the lyrics there).

I feel like I have listened to and commented on “I’m Still Not Over You” before, but I can’t find it. He’s still not over her, and he doesn’t want to be. What would he be over anyway? Reminds me of Randy Travis’s “Is it still over, are we still though? Since my phone still ain’t ringin’, I assume it still ain’t you.” Still is still moving; still water runs deepest; but I’m still not over you, no matter what I do. Whether I run or stand still. Whether I hit the road or run home. Whether I drink or cry or try to erase my memories, nothing helps. The paradox of Willie, of course, is that he simultaneously seems to be suggesting that we are never over anything, and yet he always seems to be over everything before it happens with his beatific Buddhist calm.

Live at Billy Bob's Texas (2007)

My kids don’t like Willie Nelson’s music, but they’ve listened to so much of it in the car this year that even they can tell good Willie from bad Willie. My son Jack pointed out on the ride to school today that these were not very good versions of these songs compared to others we have listened to this year. Willie is talking through many of the passages of these standards rather than singing them. He even farms out the vocals for “Workin’ Man” to sideman Jody Payne. The liner notes say he play for 3 hours when he does Billy Bob’s, so I can understand why a 77 year-old man might get weary during such a set. The remarkable thing about this album is that it’s the same band and the same songs from the 1974 Texas Opry concert 33 years ago. I much prefer the 1974 concert, but still. The family is still rockin’ into their 70s. I’m interested to compare this Funny/Crazy/Night Life medley to others I’ve heard this year. This time around I noticed the lyrics to “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” Kristofferson seems to be asking, “Help me navigate through time, the viscosity of it, the resistance of it. Help me be finite, limited, mortal, human. Help me make it through the night that is life. Help me make it through life as a human, bound by time. Help me face my own humanity and live it out. Help me be fully human.”

To Lefty From Willie (1977)

What a find! In his liner notes, John Morthland calls it “the Great Lost Willie Nelson album from this era.” Everyone knows Stardust (1978) and Red Headed Stranger (1975), but no one knows this one, which was also recorded in 1975. He didn’t release it till 1977 because Frizzell died shortly after Willie recorded this tribute, and he didn’t want to appear to be trying to exploit Lefty’s death for monetary gain. Willie has the same road band with him that he used on Red Headed Stranger. I need to listen to some of Lefty’s music to see how innovative his vocals were at the time and how he influenced Willie’s own vocal style. Morthland refers to Willie’s “virtually monochromatic timbre and phrasing.” Like Chinese landscape painting, there is a power to the monochromatic palate. Lefty’s “Look What Thoughts Will Do” clearly influenced many of Willie’s songs. “If drinking won’t kill me, her memory will.” Drinking doesn’t kill you; thinking about lost love kills you. “I’ve got a thinking problem.” So did Proust. Thoughts and memories can be just as fatally intoxicating.

Once I thought I loved just you, and I thought you loved me too

But today you say we're through; just look what thoughts will do.

Now another wears the crown, and you think that you have found

Just what makes your world go round; watch those thoughts they'll get you down.

And if within your future years your new love should bring you tears

Then you'll think of me I'm sure, but those thoughts won't help you, dear.

Once I thought I loved just you, and I thought you loved me too,

But today you say we’re through; now just look what thoughts will do.

This song is a precursor to “Funny How Time Slips Away” and other songs about thinking love would last forever, and finding out it won’t. Forget what they say about country music. It is cerebral stuff. If Proust was a neuroscientist, so was Lefty Frizzell. The guy who wrote the Proust book found a novel connection when reading Proust while working in a neuroscience lab. I found an equally novel connection by listening to Willie while reading Proust (and reading the Proust guy’s book).

“Always Late with Your Kisses” the way Willie is late with the meter. Perhaps his behind-the-beat singing is his revenge on those tardy kisses, the way Gatsby was Fitzgerald’s revenge on all those elusive Daisys. The question is, for how long will Willie “Want to Be With You Always.” Put another way, “How Long is Forever This Time.”

Jimmie Rodgers influenced Lefty, so I need to listen to more Jimmie Rodgers. I have checked out a collection of his songs from the library and will pursue that connection. Apparently Lefty had a huge influence on Merle and Randy Travis as well, and I can hear it now. I’m wondering if Mickey Raphael doesn’t play on some of Randy’s early albums, too. I love Merle’s version of “That’s the Way Love Goes,” but now I understand where it came from.

You want me to love just you

While you love your share

Don't you think that's a little unfair

It's me that stays home

While you stay gone

Till you decide to care

Now don't you think that's a little unfair

I can't see how it can be anything for me

What's mine is yours

What's yours is yours

That's how you wanted to be

And you want me to wait for you

Till you decide to care

Don't you think that's a little unfair

You want permanence from me while you seek change. You want to have your fidelity and violate it, too. You want me to care while you are careless. And yet, the phrase “a little unfair” has that wry, casual, quizzical feel that “funny” has in “Funny How Time Slips Away.” It says, “I’m not mad, just chuckling at how absurd your demands are. I’m not outraged and bitter. I’m smiling at how you are doing me wrong.” Maybe this how Willie wished his ex-wives treated his infidelities. Surely they did not display this stoic calm, this Buddhist serenity in the face of faithlessness.

Willie strips down the lyrics to “I Never Go Around Mirrors” and just sings the very essence of the song. He stretches out each word and each line, like a French chef creating a reduction. He distills it and distills it down. In this case, he distills the tears down. Here we see again the love-hate relationship with memories. I want to remember you, I don’t want to remember you. Maybe I can outrun or hide from or numb memories. Maybe if I stay away from mirrors I can deny how these memories are affecting me. Maybe I won’t see my shadow if I cover my eyes. It’s a charming, child-like response because doesn’t heartbreak reduce us to those raw, childlike emotions that adults usually can suppress?

I never go around mirrors

It just tears me up to see a grown man cry

And I never go around mirrors

‘Cause I’ve got a heartache to hide

“Railroad Lady” is a hoot. “She’s a railroad lady, just a little bit shady.”

This unreleased version of “If You’ve Got the Money” doesn’t seem as good as the single version.

It’s good to hear Willie singing straight country with no frills, just his own distinctive phrasing. I’m moving this into my untenable top ten.

Morthland asserts that Willie uses the “up and down volume of his voice” to achieve the effect Lefty gets by “breaking up notes and toying with them.” Willie seems to get more desolation in his voice with fewer theatrics. The genius is how he gets so much out of his voice with seemingly so little. So much suggestiveness with such subtle, such slow, such quiet variations. He makes it seem so easy and so effortless. Effortless desolation, unlike George Jones who is working hard to hit that mournful note. More like Miles Davis. He does more with silence between the notes, like Thelonius. Using the negative space of sound.