Willie Nelson Part I: Teatro

I think my love for Willie Nelson started as a child with his song "On the Road Again." I think just about everyone heard this at some point and knew the song by heart and the connection was there.  It was not until he put out the album Across the Borderline in 1993 that my head turned to notice him.  He toured for this and that is when I saw him for the first time live.  It was the fall of that year where a college professor I knew got us cheap seats to see him. Cheap in the way of discount, not where we were sitting.  He played to a sold out crowd at the University of Connecticut with the majority of the crowd being older then I at the time. 

After the show it was rumored that he stayed and signed autographs. I only had one thing with me at the time.  It was the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert album's liner notes with a picture of him in it. I was in line to have it signed and when I approached him in a daze and had him sign it and shook his hand.  At that time I had very little knowledge of his music except for the music he played that evening. Looking back I wish I was more prepared on his music.  One song that stood out was a song called "Bloody Mary Morning." I did not know about this song but somehow I liked it. 
 

It was a few months later stumbling through the cheap cassettes at the local chain record store I found the song.  I gave it a listen and I was wowed. It was an album called Phases and Stages by Willie Nelson that changed my life. It was at that point that I gave Willie Nelson a full listen like I do with Neil Young, King Crimson, and others such as Ornette Coleman, I did not immediately start buying Willie's music. but I did start seeking out everything of his music. I cherry picked albums that I needed to hear. One of those was the albums was what Willie was supporting. Across the Boarderline had a bunch of great musical guests. I even borrowed the Willie Nelson albums we had at the library I worked at. It was only a few, but it got me on the right path.

It was when I was deep into Willie's music is when my parents wanted to know if I went into a country music faze and I was going to give up on all my Rock and small Jazz records. My dad even mentioned that I had no use for his Jazz Rock albums in his collection and was just going to give them away. I quickly told him no, I just wanted to hear some Willie Nelson, I think he is quite cool. It's a good thing that I stuck with that because who knows where my musical path would have lead. 

When I continued down the Willie Nelson rabbit hole It was by now 1998. At this time I had about fifteen of his albums. I dove into the Country music waters and picked some great ones. The albums all were the standard Country classics like At Folsom Prison by Johnny Cash,  Best of Patsy Cline by Patsy Cline, American Recordings also by Cash (An album that still blows my mind because of its simplicity). No Fences by Garth Brooks, Modern Sounds in County and Western Music by Ray Charles, Kristofferson by Kris Kristofferson and a handful of others. It was none of them that made more of an impact then Wrecking Ball by Emmylou Harris. I talked about this album here, and in 1995 blew my mind on how to take Country artist such as Emmylou Harris and put her in something different. The producer I knew all too well, his work with at the time was Bob Dylan, U2, Peter Gabriel, Robbie Robertson, Neil Young and so many others, His name was Daniel Lanois. 

Daniel's reputation was to change the landscape of the artist that was stuck in their genre, and take them out of their element.  Wrecking Ball does a phenomenal job of changing everything about Emmylou Harris's music and makes it unique all it's own and to awesome effect. So when I saw an album by Willie Nelson called Teatro produced by Lanois I had to get it. Soon as pushed play I was in for a giant sweet treat. This was something all new and totally cool. 

After one song I knew this was going to be the one I was going to have on repeat listen. It was lush, beautiful and atmospheric. It was also not very upbeat, but I liked that too. With Emmylou's harmony vocals on most of the songs I knew this was too beautiful for words. I loved it from beginning to end. Songs like "Darkness on the Face of the Earth" "My Own Peculiar Way" and "Somebody Pick Up My Pieces" are just brilliant. The sound of two drummers on a few songs make the songs unique and odd in a great way that you feel that whatever Lanois did to this production it was total magic. 

I remember playing this for my parents and they too were quite impressed with the non Country that this album sounded. It was a game changer and I knew I took the right path to his music. It also made me like his older music more. It gave explanation to those albums I liked. Lanois and Nelson fit like a glove. I hope they do another album together. Between the music, the songwriting and production this album is amazing.  It will make you play it again and again.  Enjoy. By the way check out the Videos produced by Wim Wenders on YouTube.  They are pretty awesome.