“Oh What A Beautiful World” (Legacy Recordings)
By Eleni P. Austin
“I wanna go faster, I don’t wanna slow down, I don’t wanna get off this merry-go-round, I wanna be reckless, I wanna be vain, I wanna make love like a runaway train.”
That’s Willie Nelson looking for new challenges and new adventures on “Still Learning To Fly,” a cut off his new record.
If anyone has earned the right to rest on his laurels, it’s Willie Nelson. At age 92, his body of work stretches across 77 solo albums, 26 collaborative efforts and 14 live sets, in just under 63 years. Yet here he is, still touring and making new records. He’s just released his latest, Oh What A Beautiful World.
Born is Abbott Texas in 1933, during the Great Depression, he was raised, along with his older sister, Bobbie, by his grandparents. He displayed an affinity for music at an early age, composing his first song at age seven and playing in his first band three years later. At age 14 and 16, respectively, he and Bobbie were playing professionally as part of Bud Fletcher And The Texans.
Following high school, he spent a few years in the Air Force. Returning to civilian life, he began working as a radio DJ in the Pacific Northwest before returning to the Lone Star State. He was a disc jockey by day, at night he was gigging around town, playing his own music. He first gained some recognition as a talented songwriter, and sold two early efforts, “Family Bible” and “Night Life,” to a local musician for a combined total of $200.00
After relocating to Nashville, he secured a publishing deal. Pretty quickly, established artists like Faron Young, Patsy Cline and Roy Orbison scored #1 hits with “Hello Walls,” “Crazy” and “Pretty Paper,” respectively. Intent on writing and recording his own music, he signed a recording contract with Liberty Records. Sadly, his debut, ….And Then I Wrote, arrived in 1962 and was roundly ignored by the music industry and the world at large.
While living in Nashville, he fell in with like-minded singer-songwriters like Waylon Jennings, Dottie West and Kris Kristofferson. During that era, Music City was a sea of sequins, big hair and rhinestones. Willie and his compadres foreswore the glitter and glamor, opting for jeans, scuffed boots and increasingly longer hair. The music business viewed them as outliers and outlaws.
Songwriting royalties increased Willie’s fortunes, but artistic success proved elusive. After his Ridgetop Tennessee ranch burned to the ground and his second marriage went up in smoke, he returned to Texas, specifically Austin, in 1975. A college town, the state capitol had evolved into a liberal enclave. Willie grew his hair even longer and let his freak-flag fly.
He began hosting an annual 4th Of July concert/picnic that found rednecks and hippies alike peacefully coexisting. Returning home allowed Willie to find his footing, artistically and commercially. Watershed records like Shotgun Willie, Phases And Stages and Redheaded Stranger became bona fide hits. Pretty soon this self-proclaimed outlaw was a musical guest on Saturday Night Live and accepted an invitation to the White House from President Jimmy Carter. (As the legend goes, an “insider” invited him on the roof and they blazed a joint).
He released his Stardust album in 1978, and was the first contemporary (and the first Country) musician to record a collection of Pop and Jazz standards. That gamble paid off, he managed to satisfy old fans and gain new ones when he was embraced by Top 40 radio. Tracks like “Blue Skies” and “All Of Me” featured his idiosyncratic vocal style and the gritty guitar sound he elicited from his trusty acoustic steed, Trigger. His take of “Georgia On My Mind,” earned him a second Grammy win for Best Male Country Vocal Performance.
Pretty soon, Hollywood came a’ callin.’ Willie made an appearance in Electric Horseman,” and within a year, was starring in Honeysuckle Rose, the latter, a thinly veiled version of his own life. Throughout the ‘80s he toured non-stop and recorded albums at a furious clip. Not just solo efforts, but collaborations with pals like Leon Russell, Merle Haggard and the Rays (Charles and Price, respectively). He was also part of the Highwaymen, a Country Supergroup that included Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson.
In 1990, he was dealt a serious blow when the I.R.S. seized his assets, claiming he owned 16 million dollars to the government. It turned out that his accountants hadn’t paid his taxes for years. To satisfy the debt, Willie released The I.R.S. Tapes: Who’ll Buy My Memories. The two-CD set was a bare-bones affair, just Willie and his trusty guitar, Trigger. That paid down 3.6 million, and he sold off most of his assets (to fans that promptly returned his keepsakes). By touring relentlessly, he was finally back in the black.
By the 21st century he had pretty much settled down with his fourth wife, Annie and his sons Lukas and Micah (all told, he has fathered seven children). An environmental activist, and cannabis enthusiast, his tour bus runs on bio-diesel created by a company he and Annie own. A longtime LGBTQ advocate, he recorded a version of “Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond Of Each Other.”
Despite indulging in a lifestyle fueled by wine, weed, women and song, Willie has outlasted many of his contemporaries and compadres. In the last several years he has had to say goodbye to Johnny, Waylon, both of the Rays, Leon, Merle, his beloved sister, Bobbie (who had been part of his band since the early ‘70s), and most recently Kris. For the last six decades, his albums have run the gamut from brilliant, to workman-like, to not so great.
His latest, Oh What A Beautiful World, is a 12-song set that highlights the songwriting prowess of Rodney Crowell. A talented singer-songwriter in his own right, he and Willie first met in 1978, five years later, Willie recorded a version of Rodney’s “Till I Gain Control Again” with Waylon Jennings. A Texas native, Rodney first moved to Nashville in 1972. His earliest influences included fellow Texas Troubadours like Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt.
He made his bones playing rhythm guitar in Emmylou Harris’ Hot Band. His solo debut arrived in 1978. A decade later his Diamonds & Dirt album unleashed five consecutive #1 singles. He’s recorded 16 studio albums and his music has been covered by everyone from Waylon, Johnny, Emmylou, Jerry Reed, Crystal Gayle, Bob Seger and Rosanne Cash (his wife from 1979 until 1992). He’s also won two Grammy Awards.
The album opens tentatively with “What Kind Of Love.” Rough-hewn baritone guitar, high lonesome harmonica, thumpy bass, plangent piano, flinty pedal steel and Willie’s ever-present Trigger riffs are wed to a kick drum beat. He wraps his reedy tenor around lyrics that offer a tender oath of fealty: “I’ll show you the best I can show you Baby, that’s all I can show you, and I’ll know you the best I can know you Baby, as long as I know you/What kind of love makes you go out in the wind and the driving rain, what kind of love runs through your heart with a pleasure so close to pain, what kind of love, only this love I have.” Trigger coils around fluttery electric licks on the break just ahead of a lachrymose steel guitar solo.
A couple of tracks, “The Fly Boy & The Kid,” and “Open Season On My Heart,” share some musical DNA with the Bard of Hibbing himself, Bob Dylan. The melody of the former, powered by sun-dappled guitars, loose-limbed bass and a laid-back shuffle rhythm, traces the epochal notes found on “Forever Young.” The lyrics also evince a similar measure of high hopes and goodwill: “May the wind be at your back, and the world sit at your feet, may you waltz across Wyoming with a rose clutched in your teeth, may the answers to your questions fall like raindrops right on cue, and may you set up shop in heaven, before the devil know you’re due.” But the chorus injects a healthy dose of irreverence: “Oh, here’s to love, here’s to life, all the fair and tender ladies, and the old fishmonger’s wife, yeah, here’s to you, here’s to me, some old mad dog mountain fly boy, and the kid from Tennessee.” Willie rips a knotty Trigger solo on the break and once more on the outro, shadowed by finger-picked acoustic notes and some wheezy harmonica.
The latter echoes the amiable grace of “Make You Feel My Love.” Ambling acoustic guitars intertwine with stately piano, languid Wurlitzer, mordant bass lines and a brushed beat. Lyrics are equal parts introspective and lacerating, as they attempt to unpack devastating heartbreak: “I can’t blame anyone but me, for this restless fool I’ve come to be, my tired excuses just don’t fit, it don’t look good from where I sit/I’ve tried to change without much luck, I reach a point where I get stuck, I hit the streets and fireworks start, it’s open season on my heart.” Trigger licks flicker on the margins of each verse before Willie executes a rippling solo before the fade.
The best tracks here hopscotch across the record. Take the autumnal “Forty Miles From Nowhere,” searing harmonica notes partner with majestic piano, woodsmoke guitars, grainy bass lines and a percolating beat. Nuanced lyrics find Willie addressing a long-gone love: “It rained today, the clouds rolled up at dawn, all hell burst wide open and just like that was gone, your little lap dog chased a fox-tail squirrel ‘cross the main road through the wood, some ninja on a dirt bike nearly ran him down for good, right about now, it gets quiet around here, what with nightfall in the wings, the floorboards creak and the faucets leak, but it’s the emptiness that sing. His vocals are suffused in loneliness and grief as he acknowledges “friends don’t call like they used to, for reasons not unkind, ‘if there’s anything that we can do’ rings hollow down the line…I weep for you, it’s what I do, forty miles from nowhere, at the bottom of the world.” The song closes out with an extended instrumental coda that blends liquid guitars, cascading piano fills, quicksilver steel guitar and meandering, yet authoritative runs from Trigger.
On “Banks Of The Old Bandera,” fiery harmonica lattices burnished electric guitars, fluid bass and a diffident beat. As Willie yearns for bygone days, there’s a specificity to the language that has the listener yearning too: “On the banks of the old Bandera, where roams the barefoot child, on Sunday go-to-meetin’ shortcuts out along the high wire lines down a dusty road…I can hear the screen door slamming, run a foot race to the creek, you can see clean to the bottom and deeper just depends on how you look, maybe where you stand, Monkey Pines and swimmin’ holes lay just around the bend, the rope we used to swing on now hangs tattered in the wind, what it made you feel like is a song, and what it feels like now is gone, and what it makes you feel like is a song.” Sinewy Trigger riffs and honeyed harmonica punctuate each verse, as slow and sweet as molasses.
Then there’s the title track, which finds Willie trading verses with it’s author, Rodney Crowell. Twisty harmonica collides with some Trigger twang, lithe bass lines, strummy acoustic guitars and a chugging beat. Lyrics juxtapose the joy and the sorrow, the happiness and heartache that weaves through the tapestry of life: “It’s the girl and the boy, and that first taste of joy, and it’s that old photograph of two hearts torn in half, oh, what a beautiful world/We build our hopes up high, perchance to someday fly across the clear blue to someplace new.” Sturdy Trigger riffs wrap around buoyant piano and plaintive harmonica on the break, underscoring the duality of living.
Meanwhile, “She’s Back In Town” is a low-slung groover. The arrangement straddles the line between Honky-Tonk and Rhythm & Blues, upright bass lines fold into ornate piano notes, sparkly guitars, slurred steel guitar and a stutter-step beat. Willie’s nonchalant delivery nearly camouflages his delight at discovering an elusive femme fatale has returned: “….they say they seen her, she’s lean and meaner, she’s back in town, she travels light, she travels swift, keeps out of sight, because she was born with a gift, she’s one of those, who comes and goes, she’s back in town.” It all coalesces on the break, flowery piano washes over slinky guitars, stinging steel guitar and wily harmonica. Stacked guitars sync up and lock into a slack-key groove, while Trigger rides sidesaddle.
Of course, Bob Seger made “Shame On The Moon” his own back in the early ‘80s, but Willie manages to add some new textures and colors. Keening harmonica is matched by jangly acoustic guitars, pliant piano, iridescent steel guitar, agile bass lines and a loping beat. Trigger drifts through the arrangement with runs that feel gnarled and sepia-tone. The opening verse seems to resonate now more than ever in this increasingly divisive and angry world: “Til you been beside a man, you don’t know what he wants, you don’t know if he cries at night, you don’t know if he don’t, when nothin’ comes easy, old nightmares are real, until you’ve been beside a man, you don’t know what he feels.”
Other interesting tracks include the wistful ache of “Making Memories Of Us” and the marital ennui of of “I Wouldn’t Be Me Without You.” The aforementioned “Still Learning How To Fly” is anchored by thrumming acoustic guitars, smoky harmonica, swoony steel guitar slivery bass, and a thunking beat. Revved up Trigger riffs dart through the mix as lyrics seem to dovetail with Willie’s indefatigable spirit: “Life’s been good I guess, my ragged old heart’s been blessed, with much more than meets the eye, I’ve got a past I won’t soon forget, you ain’t seen nothing yet, I’m still learning how to fly.”
The album closes with the sweet ramble of “Stuff That Works.” Finger-picked acoustic guitar. restless Trigger riffs, shady steel guitar and wiry bass lines are tethered to a clip-clop gait. Lyrics offer a sunny meditation on aging: “I’ve got an old blue shirt and it suits me just fine, I like the way it feels, so I wear it all the time, I’ve got an old guitar that won’t ever stay in tune, but I like the way it sounds in a dark and empty room, I’ve got an old pair of boots that fit my feet just right, I can work all day and go out and dance all night, I’ve got a new used car that runs just like a top, yeah, I get the feeling it ain’t never gonna stop/Stuff that works, stuff that holds up, is the kind of stuff you don’t hang on the wall, stuff that’s real, that stuff you feel, is the stuff you always reach for when you fall.” As the song rounds the final bend wheezy harmonica, willowy steel guitar and plucky Trigger licks ride off into the sunset.
Willie relied on a wolfpack of pickers and player during the making of this record. They include longtime producer Buddy Cannon, Wyatt Beard, Jim “Moose” Brown, Fred Eltringham, James Mitchell, Bobby Terry, Glenn Worf and Mickey Raphael -who has been by Willie’s side since 1973.
Willie has always been a consummate songwriter, but he’s also been a deft interpreter of other people’s songs. Following in the footsteps of heroes like Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday and Ray Charles, he gets inside of a song and truly possesses it completely. As he saunters toward the century mark, Willie remains a fucking force of nature.
