Songs For Your Day

William Hugh Nelson–native Texan, child cotton-picker, guitar plucker–should be stuffed and placed in the Smithsonian when he dies.  Though if they plan to put copies of all his albums in there with him, they should start construction on a new wing now.  He’ll need the space. 

I imagine that, if Willie continues to record at the breakneck pace he has all his life, following his eventual death at age 112 or so, so many posthumous albums will make their way to us over the years that he’ll make Johnny Cash look like a studio sloth.  He’s already put out 93 albums in his career.  And that doesn’t even begin to count the compilations, box sets, greatest hits, etc., a list of which took up all my eyeball space trying to look at it online.  I scrolled for a full minute.

But rather than try to talk about Willie Nelson’s oeuvre as a whole, I will simply talk about the album which I most recently picked up, his 2006 collaboration with Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, Songbird.

Willie has recorded for many record labels, most notably Columbia during his seventies hey-dey, when he put out genre-busting albums like Red Headed Stranger, and Stardust.  He went to Island in 1996, with whom he put out such modern-day classics as Spirit, Teatro, and Milk Cow Blues.  Now, though, he is on a record label so in tune with what country music should sound like that they have an artist list so selective, it literally looks like a Country Hall of Fame highlight reel.  They’ve got Lucinda Williams, Ryan Adams, Whiskeytown, and Ryan Bingham to cover that modern sound, and then Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Ray Price, Lyle Lovett, even Van Morrison, and, of course, Willie Nelson, here to tell us country’s history.  Altogether, the label has 203 releases, 23 which came from Willie, including the late-day masterpiece, Songbird.

Ryan Adams took care of production, and his band the Cardinals took care of the music, though of course Willie played Guitar and brought Mickey Raphael on Harmonica and Glenn Patscha on Hammond B-3 from his own lineup.  Only four of the songs are Nelson originals, and two were written by Adams; the rest of the album is a tasteful selection of covers, including the title track, and a stunning re-interpretation of “Amazing Grace” that will make you shiver.  The minor chord mood combined with Willie’s vocals finally put meaning to the line “It was Grace that taught my heart to fear.”

Adams’s production is signature and distinctive, especially in the opening to “Songbird,” but he never imposes upon Willie’s presence.  The slow-tempo songs like “Blue Hotel” and “Hallelujah” (yes, the Leonard Cohen song) are accentuated by a fine backing choir, and Adams’s pointed lead guitar.  Yet the anchor in both those songs, and throughout the album, are Willie’s vocals, which are at the forefront of the mix.  You can feel all the experience of his 73 years in the words, but with an energy and intensity, I would dare even to say a faith, that is ageless.

On the kickers, Adams brings to Willie’s sound a crunch and a weight that are sometimes missing in the easy shuffle-style Country music that Willie perfected in the beginning of his career.  Here, the guitars are electric and loud, and the drumming is heavy and fast.  Willie has always been capable of rocking (see Willie and Family Live), but he’s never rocked this way before; songs like “$1000 Wedding” and “We Don’t Run” are exercises in controlled recklessness.

As is usual for Willie two of his four originals are well known from the early days of his career.  “Rainy Day Blues” was originally penned and recorded in 1959, the B-side to his classic song “Nite Life.”  “Sad Songs and Waltzes” was the third track off his 1973 Atlantic records debut Shotgun Willie (his Atlantic career was rather short–only two albums, both brilliant but misunderstood at the time; Atlantic kicked him out after 1974′s concept album Phases and Stages).  While the latter is solid and little tinkered with, “Rainy Day Blues” has a swagger to it that was absent from the ’59 recording, a swagger that, I might emphasize, is distinct in that it has been earned.  As many of Willie’s self-covers do, this version of the song shows not only how Nelson as an artist has been able to grow within the framework of his iconic outlaw style, but also how country music has changed over the years.  In 1950s Country, humility and heartbreak dominated the songwriting; these days, in the commercial, radio-ready Country, patriotism and pomposity are the major themes.  Country musicians now sing with Arrogance.  Willie always has, and always will, sing with Confidence.  It’s why he can put out any kind of album he wants, whether it be reggae (Countryman), jazz (Two Men With the Blues), or the rock and roll of Songbird.  It’s why he can cover his own material a thousand times and still make each recording distinct and essential.  He is the Countryman, the Red Headed Stranger of outlaw music.  The man has earned his stripes.