Willie Nelson

Willie Nelson. I have always been a fan of Willie Nelson. It seems like I have never been unaware of the songs of Willie Nelson. My encounters with his music began sometime via what was my then local AM radio station in rural Colorado back in the early 1970's. I was most probably riding in a pick up truck. KREX were the then call letters for that local radio station. I still remember the station’s jingle: K-R-E-X……. Grand Junction. For some reason in my head the jingle is always immediately followed by a song that begins with a pedal steel guitar.

My brain is a cesspool of cliche. 

I have no idea when I learned the name associated with the voice; that his name was obviously Willie Nelson.

All this preamble just to confess that it is only through inadvertent causality that Willie Nelson’s 1981 release of Greatest Hits (& Some That Will Be) musically represents to me much of the best aspects of what I enjoy from country oriented music. Sure, I heard gazillions of another country artists along the way; me being raised in rural america and all. I am quite fond of Hank Williams (the original) and Patsy Cline, for example. I could go on and on about a hoard of other artists I consider essential for the country tradition (and argue as passionately with myself about those I believe should be tossed out by their ear).

But were I forced to choose only one, I’d just go with Willie Nelson. 

It is cliche to summarize his works by referencing a Greatest hits album. And yet that makes it somehow entirely appropriate. Greatest hits albums are often somewhat dismissed as "lesser" and this is often done with little consideration or regard.

This makes sense. The Greatest hits records are rarely directed towards the audio aficionado. The aficionado will most often seek the highest quality source album from which the Greatest hits farmed its content. Extreme fans are going to also seek Anthologies. Anthologies prioritize completeness and are most often created to satisfy the most demanding of enthusiasts who want to encounter everything an artist ever committed to some recording apparatus.

Greatest hits albums, in contrast, are the people's albums. More often than not, they are curated with a more common listener in mind. These albums rarely seek to be fancy or high brow or desire to appease the critic. Financially, the Greatest hits construct was often used to generate sales from the most people possible by placing a bunch of great songs together into an easy to sell package. These albums tend to not be interested in “Deep Cuts” or “Next Steps”.

Oddly, their lack of regard for the new or novel is their greatest strength.

Willie Nelson's Greatest Hits (& Some That Will Be) is an exception in that regard. He confesses right there in the title that, in fact, not all the songs were hits when he released the album.

You know what that is? That there is an honest man.

Remember, Willie Nelson is exceptional.

A great Greatest hits album is reliable and dependable and full of good songs if nothing else. That describes Willie Nelson's Greatest Hits (& Some That Will Be).

Perhaps it is a latent tendency within me; something sourced back to my rural roots; something that insists on having a particular allure towards the great monetary deal that a Greatest hits album used to represent? 

The nostalgia.

The Greatest hits album format, during the analog years was, for me, was right up there with the best financial deals a young guy could encounter. They extended the value of my hard earned dollars with more great songs per album. Greatest hits albums were up right up there with the other great deals such as "Five for $5!"; “Buy one and get one FREE!”; “Buy one get the second for a penny!” (R.I.P. little penny). Why purchase a reasonable amount when the math says more is better and penny to pound the best deal?

Why part with your hard earned dollars buying a bunch of albums with only a couple of good songs on them when you can buy one album full of only the Greatest hits! Not Great hits, but the Greatest of hits?

The juiciest of hits.

And it saves you so much listening time. Those of us who endless mine for new songs and sounds understand very very well that there are so many songs, yet so very little time. Greatest hits albums are time savers. They make it easier to rapidly narrow your focus so you intelligently determine where best to find your "Next steps" or "Deep Cuts".

Without a compilation of their best singles, I may have delayed my long affinity for the Cure.

I needed Standing on the Beach before I got to Pornography.

That sounds, uhm, naughty. I didn't mean it as such. But maybe it sort of is?

Uhm, ok.

There are Greatest hits albums for every artist worth their salt. Want to listen Jim Croce? There is a Greatest hits for that: Photographs & Memories. Gordon Lightfoot? Do you want Gord’s Gold I or Gord’s Gold II? Queen? There is Greatest Hits I, Greatest Hits II, Greatest Hits III. They are also packaged together as Greatest Hits I, II & III - The Platinum Collection. 

To be sure there are artists who have lesser valued Greatest hits. I won‘t name names, but you know what I mean. These are the folks that had only one hit yet have a Greatest hits album. To be clear, their hit is generally a solid hit. A Greatest hit. But one Greatest hit does not a Greatest hits album make. Upon listening to said Greatest hit album, you may find yourself thinking “That one single song is so damn good! What happened? Why no other hits?” The second song on the track list of these albums is often the only other song you can recall ever hearing from them. A kind of "lesser" hit. You may have thought at the time “this song is pretty good. It's' quite ok. I like other songs better. This one is fine. I am certain they will only improve over the years and the next album will be full of songs like their Greatest hit."

That event never occurs. No one ever has a second greatest hit album that is more successful than their first if that first album only really had a singular greatest hit. And so that Greatest hit album sits there on the shelf. You listen to that Greatest hit only once in a while. You then listen to the other song you recall as well. You do this out of guilt and as a meager excuse to justify keeping the artifact in your collection. And then you give up on the rest of the album which is more or less the metaphorical cliff the coyote ran off in those old coyote and road runner cartoons back in the day.

Generally speaking such albums are easy to avoid, though. You can usually ask yourself a simple question: “Do I know several songs by this artist? If the answer is “yes“ and those songs are on that album; you probably have a solid deal before you. Remember, rarely are they all gems. Also remember someone’s junk is another person’s treasure. Also a remember that sometimes there are multiple versions of songs and consider the album may be using an alternate version that is perhaps not the version you had in your head. That can either be a good thing or a door opening to a disappointment.

Regardless, Greatest hits were bonafide steals when it came to popular artists when I was first expanding my collection of cassettes.

I consider Willie Nelson’s Greatest Hits (& Some That Will Be) the most necessary of his plethora of Greatest hits albums. Aural gold. Scratch that. Fuck gold. Gold is gauche. Gold is the Starling of the minerals.

The only acceptable use for gold is Gord's Gold. I or II.

Listening to Willie Nelson is to experience the aural version of polished river stone.

Why not choose Red Headed Stranger? Because I didn’t. Perhaps I chose the Greatest Hits over the more critically lauded option in deference to having access to more songs? Maybe that is true. Have I mentioned what a deal Greatest hits albums were?

There is a reason why people generally learn Bob Marley's songs initially through the Bob Marley and the Wailers Legend album- a compilation of his Greatest hits. There is a reason why we do not recommend, instead, that people begin chronologically with his first album, 1969's The Wailing Wailers. 

Wailing Wailers is not a bad album per se. It's fine. But Bob Marley's body of work grew much beyond what we find on that initial album and I reckon most of us feel that work is better represented through the Legends Greatest hits album. I mean, if you had a pal ignorant of Bob Marley, and you wanted them to enjoy his music, you are probably going to say Legends.

Because it has all the hits. It's a great collection of songs.

To be clear I am not referencing the remix version of Legends.

If we are honest, don't the vast majority of albums out there have more than a handful of songs that you often skip through? I find this personally true and I find that is entirely A-ok. I do feel guilty when I skip these tunes, but time is time and it is finite for me and I don't want to waste it. A Greatest hits album, done honestly, should be conveniently impactful.

There is nothing wrong with being moved by a boatload of good songs by a singular artist? Were someone to ask me “say, kind sir, you are quite familiar with the works of Willie Nelson; might you recommend me an album of his to purchase?”; I would unhesitatingly offer up his Greatest Hits (& Some That Will Be) as it is the album I often seek out. It has many of his quintessential songs. These songs are well loved by many and for good reasons. They are comfortably reflective of his body of work. 

I am self aware that in staunchly defending the Greatest hits compilation as a form worthy of independent accolades, I am opining about something anachronistic. I’m like a carriage driver arguing passionately about a certain type of lamb skin being best for the gloves that are used to hold the reins to the bridle as he rides in a taxi cab. I‘m anachronistic, so that checks out. It's why I won't talk about the Legends remix album. The constuct of what an album is has become dated and it begs the question of their necessity. There are now other methods we can use to curate a collection of popular songs. The digital age and its endless data farms have rendered removed the physical constructs that originally defined them.

I do not know that the Greatest hits album survives the future.

Art will evolve with or without it. Whether they like it or not.

I will attempt to evolve with it while also being appropriately nostalgic.

Ok, enough about the Greatest hits construct.

Willie Nelson’s Greatest Hits (& Songs That Will Be) permits me to journey elsewhere where things have a familiarity, if but only momentarily. Amongst the chaos, life is more simple and digestible when Willie Nelson wafts through one’s ears.

The collection of songs on Willie Nelson's Greatest Hits (& Some That Will Be) holds its own across a reasonable expanse of time and are presented in a well considered manner. The album (2 LPs worth for what it is worth) reflects a cohesive, well meaningful, body of work. I don’t care that it is a Greatest hits album as I enjoy what I am hearing from beginning to end.

The album opens with "Railroad Lady". This not one of his most well known songs. He has many other tunes that are more familiar to the casual listener. But this one is very representative of his body of work and it is appropriate as a lead off hitter.  You know even better stuff is coming. But this is a great first song to kick things off; it limbers up the ears so to speak. A high percentage hitter looking to get things started on a positive note.

And it does. If you were listening to Kraftwork immediately prior to listening to this song, you would realize you were being transported to vastly different lands and the contours of those lands would be immediately apparent.

Willie Nelson’s body began in 1933. Willie’s artistic body of work begins in 1956 and continues into 2026. That is an amazing stretch of time to engage in the artistic practices of song creation and song delivery. That is fucking awesome.

That is really fucking awesome.

I confess that I have not once owned a copy of Greatest Hits (& Songs That Will Be). It's a bit odd of me to strongly assert this as album that is measurably meaningful to me. Yet it is. 

It also begs the question as to why I chose to shamelessly opine and defend a belief in the Greatest hits construct and yet I apparently never felt Willie Nelson’s Greatest Hits (& Songs That Will Be) was worth me parting from my own hard earned dollars to acquire it.

I also confess that I only listened this album its entirety only a few scant years ago. I mostly, sadly, shamefully, only know it post the advent of the (gulp) digital age.

Good golly.

I can't get everything right.

I call out this album because it has now become a necessary comfort food of sorts to nourish me as I age. Packaged goodness. Three out of three Canned Parasite approval rating. Solid representations of the art of song writing and delivery. 

These songs have been played on the radio for decades and I catalogued most of them mentally as I heard them. I didn't seek them out. They found me. Some I heard more than others, but most simply found my ears over the years through the randomness of AM radio. And I enjoyed it when they did. I enjoyed them enough to remember them. 

As we entered the digital age and began consuming our media on devices that gave us, at times, some illusory control over the curation of the content we wished to subject ourselves to and I inadvertently realized, to my joy, that all of these songs, and in particular the very versions that I preferred, coexisted on the same album. They were there together all along. I just somehow despite being a proclaimed Willie Nelson enthusiast, did not know it. The album’s existence meant there was no need for a Willie Nelson playlist or endlessly scrolling around trying to remember the name of that one song that it isn't "Good Hearted Woman", but has a different feel to it. Just find Greatest Hits (& Some That Will Be) and hit play. It’ll pop up eventually. Easy peasy.

All good for an easy lengthy Willie Nelson fix. 

Willie Nelson’s Greatest Hits (& Some That Will Be) includes a stellar rendition of "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain". The essence of Willie Nelson distilled into a song. It is the most polished of stones. The version on this album is the nicely stripped down bare bones version that highlights him singing and playing his acoustic guitar. He has played this same guitar since 1969. It is apparently a Martin N-20. N for nylon strings rather than steel. The guitar is almost as famous as him at this point. It has a name and that name is Trigger. I'm not sure if it is his only guitar, but it is the only one that matters. Due to the wear of playing with a pick; it having no pick guard; and it being genuinely a working man’s instrument; it has more holes in it today than when he first acquired it.

Willie is no slouch on that N-20. The version of Whisky River on this album is a live 1978 version demonstrates this. It is a high energy rollicking piece that would comfortably fit into a Grateful Dead show set. The musicianship demonstrated on the live performances that are included on this album are top notch. He had a stellar band supporting him. I love the honky tonk piano change ups on this piece. The song that follows includes Waylon Jennings and is equally as entertaining. Waylon's telecaster is on fire. Whew boy! Americana before it had been labeled as such.

There are other versions of these songs out there but these are the versions of the songs I most prefer. They somehow ground me. Like a comfortable well worn pair of shoes. My subconscious insists these are the most fundamental versions. Canonical Willie Nelson. Perpetual cranial reference pieces if you will. Oh that is a Willie Nelson tune. I recall his song ”On The Road Again.” I enjoy this tune as well. I understand why. I will place it next to his other songs in my memory. 

Much like Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson has evolved and changed over the past several decades. His over 100 studio albums attest to this.

Story has it that he prefers the bunk in tour bus to a bed in a house. He continues to tour.

Story also has it that Willie Nelson is the only person to have smoked Snoop Dog under the table. 

Fuck Chuck Norris; I pick Willie Nelson.

I have no idea where the myth and the legend begins or ends when it comes to Willie Nelson. It no longer matters. All of this is Willie Nelson. Willie Nelson is a cool that oozes out underneath the door. Willie Nelson is a state of mind. His Greatest Hits (& Some That Will Be) takes us into that state of mind. It‘s a fun diversion from “wave hands around the bonkers world”. Willie Nelson provides us world that may have some heart ache and hard times, but it less lethal and more fair than the one we inhabit.

In fact it is an often down right fun time. A right old hoedown.

He succeeds just as well when he slows it right on down. His version of Georgia On My Mind is up there in Ray Charles’s stratosphere. That's amazing. I don't hear many opinions about Willie’s vocals and accordingly find them under appreciated; I particularly note the years leading up to this album when his voice was arguably in its prime. A lot of the accolades that some one such as Van Morrison gets regarding jazz sensibilities, should be provisioned equally to Willie Nelson. Willie understands a song and he understands how to deliver it. He is pre auto tune. He is bonified. Georgia is rarely on my mind, yet after I hear his rendition he has left it also on my mind. I would offer both this version of Georgia On My Mind and his version of the subsequent song on this album, All of Me, as ample proof that he can carry a tune with his voice alone and is not constrained to the Country and Western genres.

His guitar technique and tone become the nice icing on the cake and compliments his playing just like the coffee you serve with that cake. I’d say, his particular combination works better than most. No offense. What could possibly be better than being a cool dude with a voice, a guitar and a song? Why be a thoughtless warrior when you can be bard like Willie? The ladies love the bards!

And then things speed back up on this album as it heads back into Honky Tonk territory with his version of Hank Williams's "If You've Got the Money I've Got the Time." It is an appropriate selection that allows the music to flow nicely along as though it were a well considered concert set list. Grab a partner and do-si-do.

All this to say that this album was wisely constructed. I won’t bore us with a complete lengthy track by track as this is a healthy album of twenty some odd tracks that clock in north of 80 minutes. That time is better spent listening to the album rather than talking about the album. Let’s just say the album continues along in this pleasant manner with some well known songs, some that won’t be as familiar, and some that may be versions that are perhaps not what one most often encounters in modern times. 

Wives, songs, times, challenges, and even his voice changed over the years. But there is still Willie Nelson being Willie Nelson. He's been advocating for farmers, LGBTQ communities, animal welfare and ending cannabis prohibition along the way. That is quite an array of advocacy for a man rooted in what I consider best portions of the western country tradition without all of the implied aggression and phobias that often trip those traditions into all sorts of foolishness. Willie Nelson is the rugged individualist that has also has empathy for others and their struggles. 

I commend Willie Nelson.

A song sung by Willie Nelson is timeless.

Willie Nelson, himself, is eternal. 

My heroes have always been Willie Nelson.

The accompanying audio piece found below began shortly before the verbal barrage above was begun. They are related, but only very loosely so. They are related in sharing roughly the same head space at the same time. But the intent and purpose of each are entirely differently motivated.

The above piece centers on answering why I find Willie Nelson's Greatest Hits (& Some That Will Be) a definitional work in my life.

The below piece centers on the fascination I have with word play.

The piece is probably best approached with an openness to meaningless humor. I tend to only obtusely infer rather than using blunt literality. I don't prefer literalness. The piece meanders meaninglessly. Many of my pieces do this. It reflects what I am exposed to these days. It reflects the lack of social stability society increasingly exhibits. It contains moments of awkwardness. Sometimes we don't know what to say.

Sonically speaking the piece has absolutely nothing to do with Willie Nelson's artistry. That is to say, the piece in no way attempts to infer or even minutely suggest that there is any sonic influence whatsoever from Willie Nelson's superb body of work. No country licks. No miming of Willie's excellent voice. There is the rephrasing of his lyric "My heroes have always been Cowboys". That phrase is absolutely reworked into "My heroes have always been Willie Nelson." And I do toss out a few easter egg types of references to anyone familiar the Outlaw sub genre of the country arm of the musical ecosystem. It's all in good fun.

Often I try to keep my pieces with some aspect of humor in mind. I don't like obsessive negativity. I enjoy honesty, so sometimes it is unavoidable. But I like the hope that positivity provides. 

In the end it is all arguably a bunch of nonsense I suppose; but there is an awful lot of intention involved in the process of creating that nonsense that begs the question "what is and is not nonsense?"

A question I do not answer, but a question I infer at times in this piece.

Most of what follows are pieces of utter nonsense with smatterings of truths.

Willie Nelson, the man, the myth, the legend; makes me smile. Saying Willie Nelson makes me smile. “Willie Nelson. Oozing underneath the door.“ That makes me smile even if it makes no reasonable sense. I have no idea what that was about. Maybe I'm thinking there is a factory that creates some kind of ointment that is the essence that is Willie Nelson. People buy it and stuff. They slather it on and it makes them feel a bit more Willie Nelson. Anyhow, some mishap occurs in the factory and, oh shit, next thing you know there is Willie Nelson ointment all over the floor. It rapidly fills the room and in short order it begins oozing out underneath the door of the factory. There are people that are screaming and running about; but they do so in a giddy uncontrollable enthusiastically excited manner. As in "OMG! Can you believe this Claire! Look at all of this Willie Nelson ointment! Claire! Let's get buckets so it doesn't go to waste! I'm going to fill my pool with Willie Nelson ointment and invite everyone over!" I do not know what particularly happens next, but it will be damn spectacular whatever it is.

More than likely it is simply a metaphor of some sort. Willie Nelson is so cool you cannot contain him within a room. Willie Nelson is so cool that you cannot shut the door on him to contain him. If you shove Willie Nelson into a room and shut the door, his coolness is just defacto permeates underneath the door you closed him behind. You cannot escape Willie Nelson. Not really. But that's a good thing.

To be clear I am not advocating shoving Willie Nelson anywhere.

However I mean it, it is not meant to convey anything negative or unsightly. I do not mean it as in “Oh, no! Willie Nelson! Willie Nelson is oozing underneath the door! This is a tragedy! God help us and Willie Nelson!” Nor do I mean it in the manner of “Gross! Ick! Willie Nelson is oozing underneath the door. Nasty! Get it away from me!)

Regardless, the phrase alone was good enough reason for me to build vocal tracks around this concept during a time when I needed a moment to escape the turbulence that accompanies our current bullshit times. If it humors me, and does no reasonable harm to anyone, it is good for my purposes. Better than wallering quietly in perpetual misery.

Unfortunately, that chaotic world’s atmosphere seems to have nonetheless wandered itself into this piece. Much like a bull that got out of the pasture the piece devolves a bit as a somewhat argumentative polite disagreement about something becomes evident. Facts, unfortunately, matter. Without them we are unable to formulate logical responses to crisis and as such we increasingly resort to emotional madness. Like everything else I create these days, I seem unable to entirely block out the world as a source of input and it squeaks into everything I do. So it is not surprising that it popped up here. Despite me trying to lock the door on it for just a bit, it crawls through the cracks even though I only want Willie Nelson oozing underneath that door. We mostly keep it under control. Best we could anyways. No one was reasonably harmed.

The foundation is a fairly simple Digitakt/Digitone track with a bit of post fx reverb and occasional delay. The Digitone is mostly providing pads. The Digitakt is mostly a bunch of samples I created in Logic Pro or something onboard the Digitakt's library. Layered on top of that track are the several vocal tracks. I sampled a bunch of takes of me saying a bunch of nonsense including "My heroes have always been Willie Nelson". Obviously, I had his song “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys” stuck in my head. The vocals are always going through the SP404-mk2 and outboard FX. 

I added a couple of guitar tracks along the way, the first of which is heavily delayed. 

Right now, at this moment, I am ok with the piece. I am a bit tapped out listening to it by now and want to do other stuff. It was more of a pain to mix and elements had to be rerecorded for various reasons. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to get the levels where they produced consistently produce the results I was seeking. The past several mornings I have listened to this piece the first moment I have had available to do such and each time I listen I have exclaimed something along the lines of "This is utter crap! Holy Hell! What was I thinking?" Next thing you know, I am fixing that one element "just a little bit" and then the next thing you know after that is that I have torn out all of the wires so to speak and we, oops, are now doing a partial rebuild.

It would probably help if I'd replace my dying headphones.

blah blah blah.

I'm getting bored with the piece and it time to walk away from it. Walk away for a while. Maybe come back some other time. Relisten. Declare it garbage. And then go back into triage mode trying to figure out what I don’t like and ask myself why I thought it was solid earlier.

Note, this is version ii. That means there is an earlier version i aggressively rejected by version two-ing it.  That's harsh! Overly harsh as I just listened to it. I probably bailed on it a tad too soon as there are elements in that one I prefer to this one. Choices you know?

I think I am adding this into the online collection of stuff I created more as an affirmation that sometimes the journey is more important than the result and I did enjoy the process of employing some new elements into the mix. And there is an offbeat humor in this that is authentic and sincere. As a form of audio journaling that has value to me. That isn't nothing in this day and age. 

Honestly I probably only completed any of this because I finished the splash page art work without much fuss and thought it would be a shame to not use it for its intended purpose.

I also wouldn't be surprised if I come back some time later and do a version 3 and replace this version. Who knows?

I’ve dilly dallied with this enough…

Willie Nelson ii

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