This may be Willie Nelson’s 79th solo studio album, and his 156th in all, but despite such prodigious and prolific writing, the Red Headed Stranger is still a minimalist in his 93rd year. Case in point: Dream Chaser’s 10 tracks clock in at half an hour, and they’re each as astute, funny and affecting as ever.
Title song and album opener “Dream Chaser” lasoos Bobby Tomberlin into the very well-oiled Cannon-Nelson writing team, for a sweet bout of lossless reflection, while “Fly Away”, penned by Cannon and Bobby Whitlock, is a sweet, spare heart-breaker. The more intimate, gravelly vocal of “We’d Make a Good Movie”, with it’s sad, witty chorus – classic Willie – sits well with his guitar Trigger’s grace notes, and his punctuations and runs throughout the whole set are as deft and as…
Tag Archive: Willie Nelson
Few artists are as closely tied to the foundation of country music as Willie Nelson. Before the outlaw movement, before the braids and bandanas, Nelson was a Nashville songwriter absorbing the work of Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, and Merle Travis.
Originally released in 2010 and produced by T Bone Burnett, Country Music is his direct salute to that lineage. It was his first album made entirely of country standards, a tribute to the songs that shaped him before he became a household name.
The current reissue from Craft Recordings and HighTone Records gives the album renewed focus. HighTone’s relaunch has centered on core Americana titles, and this record fits squarely within that tradition. Country Music opens with Nelson’s own 1959 single…
Willie Nelson spent much of the summer out on the road with the Outlaw Festival, so it’s only appropriate that his new studio album is paying tribute to a fellow Outlaw.
Workin’ Man: Willie Sings Merle finds Young celebrating his late friend Merle Haggard, with whom he recorded three albums between 1983 and 2015. Willie’s 78th original album, Workin’ Man features a host of Hag favorites including “Okie from Muskogee,” “Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down,” “Today I Started Loving You Again,” “Mama Tried,” and “If We Make It Through December.”
…The album was recorded at Nelson’s Pedernales Studios in Austin and marked the final recordings that Nelson made with a pair of members in his longtime Family band: drummer…