To Willie

Willie Nelson is no stranger to others covering his songs. In fact that was his career back when the singer and the songwriter were two separate cogs in the entertainment machine. In 1956 Willie sold his song ‘Family Bible’ to a man in a Houston bar for $50. A year later Claude Gray recorded the song, it was a hit and has since become a country standard. Poor Willie didn’t see a cent. Soon after, he went on to write his enduring classic ‘Hello Walls‘. Willie did get royalties this time though it was still recorded and remembered as being the more living room friendly Faron Young‘s. He went on to write ‘Night Life‘, made famous by Ray Price and supposedly the most recorded country song of all time (even Charles Manson had a crack), along with the massive ‘Crazy’ for Patsy Cline as well as songs for Roy Orbison amongst others.

It was only once country music shed its Nudie suits and honky-tonk sound in the seventies that Willie got his big break as an artist in his own right, riding the outlaw country wave with Waylon Jennings and his ilk.

So it’s certainly true to say Willie isn’t afraid of others singing his songs leaving the question of whether the younger artist is afraid of covering Willie and whether they can do something original with songs that they obviously hold dear. Phosphorescent’s Mathew Houck has a good crack.

He stays clear of the early Nelson country songs focusing instead on the hard living, hard drinking, sometimes regretful Willie of the 70s onwards. The album opens with the drugs lament ‘Reasons to Quit’ that Willie recorded with Merle Haggard in the 80s, and Houck’s voice adds a certain wistless emotional quality to the song that those big AM-country singers lack, probably because they never listened to grunge.

‘Too Sick to Pray’ is a perfectly good reading and ‘I Gotta Get Drunk’ ups the tempo with its fast moving shuffle, quite sensibly evoking those times when you’ve had a little too much bourbon. The slower elements of Phosphorescent’s previous albums emerge on ‘Can I Sleep in your Arms’ and ‘Heartaches of a Fool‘.

However, like with other covers projects by alt. country artists, most notably Bonnie Prince Billy’s 2006 effort with Tortoise, The Bold and the Brave., listening you understand why they chose the song in the first place (taste is generally impeccable in alt. country) but then you figure why shouldn’t I be listening to the original. A couple of cheap compilations later the covers record is confined to bottom of the pile and deleted from the iPod.

I just hope Willie got his royalty cheque.