Willie Nelson - Spirit

One of my best friends once asked me “Hey Ben, I want to get some Willie Nelson albums and I wanted to find out which were the best ones.” I can’t tell you how grateful I was that he asked, and how excited I was to share my opinions on the subject.

After giving him the rundown on some records that would serve as some good introductory and intermediate Willie records, I finally told him, “and when you’re ready, after you’ve given the other ones a good listen, get the Spirit record, it’s Willie’s finest accomplishment.”

Spirit is my favorite Willie Nelson record, and like I told my good friend, I believe that it’s Willie’s finest accomplishment.

Willie wrote the entire record, produced it, and (according to Wikipedia) the band consisted of only Willie, his sister Bobbie on piano, Jody Payne on a second acoustic guitar, and Johnny Gimble on fiddle. The record was released in 1996 when it was a certainty that country radio wouldn’t give it a chance, and when Willie at age 63, would have been forgiven an album that was not on par with his classic efforts.

I love Willie Nelson’s early songwriting efforts. The keen sense of irony, the parade of miserable characters that are never short an especially punchy turn of phrase to break your heart in an interesting way, and his mastery of the traditional honky-tonk form are all enduring, engaging and entertaining.

The Spirit album, however, finds Willie chasing a different ambition. It’s not a true “concept album” but all of the songs find Willie in the same conceptual mode–as a country songwriter writing at the highest levels on the topics that he feels are the most important. As you listen to the record, you can see that real and important work is unfolding before you and if we are to judge by the product, it seems that Willie chose this album to most beautifully express his deepest conclusions as a songwriter/poet.

Conclusions, after a sort, populate this record. The conclusions are conclusions “after a sort” because they are characterized by existential acceptance, the reckoning of Willie’s spiritual disposition with life, rather than the more conventional, and less interesting, notion of his finding out “this truth” or “that truth” and declaring once and for all “how life is.” It’s as if Willie wrote the last country album here–the one where the singer either comes to terms, or doesn’t, with all he’s experienced and with what he has come to understand as reality.

That’s not to say that album isn’t a triumph musically. It is. The songs are brilliant both melodically and lyrically and many of them seem almost like duets between Willie and Trigger, and Willie will often offer a lyric and then back away and pause while his guitar playing conveys the sentiment musically. To me, however, the accomplishment of this record is in Willie’s lyrics, his perspective, and in choosing which images and events to include in songs that are so condensed and sparse lyrically, the revealing of what he feels is essential.

“Your Memory Won’t Die in My Grave” is one of the best examples. Willie surveys the good and the bad associated with his love’s leaving, “I’ve been feeling kind of free, but I sure do feel lonesome / baby’s taking a trip, but she ain’t taking me / I’ve been feeling kind of free, but I’d rather feel your arms around me / cause you’re taking away, everything that I wanted.”

And then, in what I consider to be one of the best choruses ever written, Willie chooses his words carefully in an effort to give the “truest” accounting of their lost love and where it leaves them:

There’s an old hollow tree
Where we carved our initials
And I said I love you
And you said you love me
It’s a memory today
It’ll be a memory tomorrow
I hope you’ll be happy someday
And your memory won’t die in my grave

Acceptance pervades here, and he doesn’t seem to be struggling against his reality (as he did in the songs “Crazy” or “Sad Songs and Waltzes”), but his acceptance doesn’t change what he feels is the most important details to begin with–namely the initials carved on the old hollow tree, which, as the first and grounding image here, has taken on a quality of existential significance. Conversely though, the incontrovertible reality of the tree and the promise of love, both now betrayed, still stand as testaments to what the relationship should be. In his final estimation Willie makes two important choices; the first is to extend hope for her happiness despite his keen awareness that their love ought to be persisting, and secondly to prescribe meaning to the events, not because their love proved itself true, but because it was, and as that is all there is, he will embrace it as sufficient.

Almost every song on the album has similar weight, and is similarly revealing.

The ability to say so much by saying so little has always been a hallmark of the best country music songwriting, as has been tackling concepts in a broad way by discussing events in a specific way. I believe that on this record Willie has not only shown his complete mastery of those skills, but has employed them in the service of conveying a great and worthwhile understanding.

What’s more he’s done so with a record that is incredibly beautiful and rewarding to listen to from the first to last track.

These songs aren’t “old” or “new”, they are timeless and classic. The Willie Nelson of the Spirit album is a Willie Nelson that is focused and in full bloom. Hank Williams never did anything so excellent; neither did Johnny Cash for that matter.

We’re very lucky to be living in an era of history that affords us the opportunity to listen to recorded music and I’m so grateful to have had the opportunity to listen to Willie Nelson’s album Spirit. There’s no reason why there had to be an album that was at once so brilliant and so beautiful, but thanks to Willie Nelson, there is.

Happy 75th Willie.