Willie Nelson, Countryman (Lost Highway, 2005)
Okay! Right from the first cymbal splash this new Willie Nelson CD is something else. It comes wrapped in a red, yellow and green digipac which features an herbal centrepiece (it isn't a fern) and on the back, a black and white picture of Willie in the woods. There is a brief blurb that says, "10 years in the making, Willie's first ever REGGAE album merges the gospel and soul spirit found in both reggae and country." TEN years! Whew!
That's right. Countryman was started way back when Willie was signed to Island Records, the label that introduced reggae to the world. He began the project with producer Don Was, and recently completed it with Richard Feldman for release on Lost Highway Records. The cast of supporting musicians is split between the country guys who support Willie on a regular basis and a bunch of Jamaican musos. Robby Turner, Dan Bosworth, Mickey Raphael, Randy Jacobs represent the Americans, while the Jamaican contingent includes Wayne Jobson, Paul Stennett, Norris Webb, Santa Davis and Uzziah Thompson. Together they create an amalgam that owes as much to one place as the other. It's a true blending of styles, and at first listen it's a weird one.
Pedal steel guitar brings us in, and then the familiar bass and drum kick in. Then Willie's familiar nasal vocal delivery makes its appearance. He makes no concessions stylistically. He sings the same way whether he's singing a Hoagy Carmichael chestnut, or dueting with Ray Charles, and as he sings reggae, well, he's the same ol' red-headed stranger. At first you wonder if that's a problem, but soon his guitar comes in for a brief solo, and as it floats over the riddim track, and is sweetened by a little dobro, and some of Mickey's harmonica, it all starts to make sense in a funny way.
Most of the tunes are Willie's own, with two co-writes (with Ray Price and Hank Thompson) and three other very interesting covers. There're two songs from the reggae songbook, "The Harder They Come" and "Sitting In Limbo," both of which suit Willie's outlaw persona to a "T". And finally there is a marvelous duet with Toots Hibbert on Johnny Cash's "I'm A Worried Man." This is the highlight of the album, and Countryman would have received an unqualified rave had it featured more of this kind of stuff. Imagine Willie with the I-Threes, or Willie with Sly and Robbie! Talk about yo' riddim mon!
Ah well, that's just a pipe-dream (and what's in the pipe?), because Countryman is what we have before us, not what we wish it might have been. The first time I listened to the album I hated it. I skipped over the songs, previewing just the first few seconds of each song, getting a false sense of the sameness of the tracks. I put it away, unconvinced that I could write anything positive about it at all. Then I started playing it in the background, trying to ignore it. But I found myself hearing something and turning it up. Listening to this song or that. Amazed at the authenticity of the backing tracks, and how well the riddim fit with the guitars and harmonica that had been grafted on. Before I knew it, I was recommending a track here and there to people. "Hey, you haveta hear this new Willie Nelson reggae album! . . . No, really!"
And now I have to admit it. It works. Sure, I can see how it could have been improved, but what we have here is fun to listen to. There's good music, good playing, and a good time to be had. So maybe it's not for everybody, mon, but give it a chance!
