MOMENTS OF FOREVER: Kris Kristofferson's Love for ALL Defines His Llife

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Willie and Kris were playing the Miami Marine Stadium, basically covered bleachers on a small inlet that ran along Key Biscayne. It was a scrubby situation, designed for South Florida rednecks to watch speed boats race and take jumps, just metal bleachers with an overhang to keep their hangovers from baking them out of their mortal coil in the scorching Saturday high noon sun.

The stage set on pontoons. The backstage was a couple of low rent yachts.

When the call from the promoter came – “Would you like to interview Kris Kristofferson?” – I couldn’t say “Yes” fast enough. He seemed surprised. Kristofferson had become an actor and an activist, far more than a songwriter or rock star. I was the cred freelancer covering country, black and rock of a certain stripe.

How do you tell a middle-aged white guy you and one of your friends once cut out of school one afternoon, took two Rapid Transit trains to Van Aken Center to watch the afternoon showing of “A Star Is Born”? Explaining that his swagger, shirtless or in a poet’s blouse was dangerous, bravado forward, but poetically elegant would be moot. He was a pirate, a rock star, a gypsy and a man who took great risks, reached deeper into the human condition and offered up the pivot points of pain, dignity and courage without furrowing his brow.

Heck, my father started telling me about Kris Kristofferson when I was a kid, propped between my parents watching “The Johnny Cash Show.” Landed a helicopter on Cash’s lawn to give him a tape. Janis Joplin’s last hit – the one after she died – was a Kristofferson song. He understood addicts, alcoholics and washed out losers in a way that meant they weren’t actually born to lose.

Oh, and he’d gone to Oxford.

Yeah, I wanted to interview Kristofferson, whose music career was sagging, but whose mark on American songwriting was already indelible. Rushing to the morgue to pull the clip file, I blessed the Miami Herald’s Fred Burger, who’d covered so many of the Outlaws and other progressive country acts with a matching eloquence. He not only had several pieces, he’d seen to it that the artists he thought were important had clips from other sources in there as well.

Reading, reading, reading. Boxing, the Air Force, a Rhodes scholarship, William Blake, a teaching appointment, flying out to oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico for extra money, parents hated the idea he would give up his legacy to write songs. Janitor at CBS Studios, where Bob Dylan was recording; dreamer who kept handing out demos, making friends with Willie, Cash, Waylon, Roger Miller, all the other travelers seeking to make a more elevated, sophisticated kind of lyricism with an even simpler melodic zone.

When the call came through, I was ready.

Scrawling my own kind of shorthand, the voice was ruddy, rich, warm, like a savory biscuit slathered in  something delicious, something like apple butter. He was laughing a bit, telling his stories, thinking about some of my questions, really honoring my curiosity. And that’s when I shot my shot.

“So what was it like, studying with William Blake?”
“Excuse me,” he said, tone twisting around itself a bit.

“William Blake, you studied with him…” pause, then adding helpfully, “at Oxford.”
“I’m sorry…” the voice on the other end was puzzled, then a giant laugh rolled down the phone.

“No, no, you studied with William Blake,” I protested. “It’s in the morgue.”
“Honey,” he said, tamping down his chuckle, “William Blake is DEAD.”
“I, uh, uhm,” the mortification was immediate. “Can you give me one second?”

“Sure, honey,” he graciously responded. “Take your time.”

Head down on the classical writer James Roos’ desk, I silent screamed like I was auditioning for a slasher film. And then I did it again, and again, and a fourth time. Exhaling, knowing I needed to pull it together because my 20 or 30 minutes was evaporating, I closed my eyes and reminded myself I might be 19, but I am a professional.

“I am so sorry,” I began picking up the phone. Kristofferson kept laughing. “I am so embarrassed. I was reading all the clips, and I swear, it was there… I didn’t just make it up.”
“Holly,” he said, cutting me off at the pass, “can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.” At this point, he could end the interview. It would’ve been deserved.

“When was the last time – do you think – someone asked me about William Blake?”
I was silent. I had no idea. I didn’t want to make it worse.

“You there?”

“Yes, I’m here.”
The voice was kind, not chiding. He obviously recognized how stupid I felt. It appeared he felt for me: a young writer at a good paper who made a gaffe of Olympic measure. “Holly, I’ll make this simple: no one ever asks me about William Blake. I’m not sure most of the journalists I speak with even realize I know classic English poetry.

“The fact you did? You get all kinds of points for that.”

We talked for another 30 minutes; far longer than was booked, so he could answer all my questions. The story was good enough, it made the cover of the Weekend section, I believe left well and above the fold; though it might’ve been the entire bottom third all the way across.

Before he hung up, he asked another question. “You coming to the show?,” which I was.

“Okay, then do me a favor. I’m going to leave you a couple passes. I want you to come back and say, ‘hi.’ Can you do that?”

“Uh, sure,” I said, knowing full well rock stars never remember. They don’t. Ever.

Until I got to the box office. Not only were the seats the first row that rose up so you could see over the four or five rows on the flat, but there were the two backstage passes. My second fiancee, twice my age and never one to come to shows, looked at me with a cockeyed grin.

“Well, Gleason, look at that. Passes! You must’ve made an impression.”
I’d not told Jason about making an ass of myself, played it off as the promoter being grateful. My fiancée, who loved Willie and Kris, said, “Well, you need to go back there, say ‘hello.’ I think it’s important. Those are really serious artists…”
“Are you going to come?” That might’ve been even more embarrassing.

“No, I’m not going to come. Some things in this world, you need to do on your own. You need to walk back there and be Holly Gleason, the writer from the Miami Herald.”

“Yeah, okay, I’ll think about it.”
I was definitely not going back there. Sitting quietly, wondering when the show – a good 15, 20 yards away from us – was going to start. John Valentino, the dark, lion-haired promoter rep, was suddenly squatting down by my seat. He was smiling. “Hey, somebody backstage wants to meet you. I’m supposed to bring you back to say ‘Hi.’”

“Gosh, it’s awful close to showtime.”
“Yeah, I don’t think the show’s starting ‘til you get back there.”
Slowly I rose, grabbed my purse and fell in behind the nicest man in South Florida concert promotion, who told me how much he loved my story. He remarked that everyone attached to the show really loved it, so he was glad they sent him out to get me.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, clearly out of sorts. Pontoons on a choppy bay are no fun to walk on. Holding the ropes, feeling like my knees were buckling, I would lurch forward, hoping I didn’t fall straight into JV. When we finally climbed up on the stage, he took my hand, guided me around to the back and waved towards a gang plank down onto a boat. “Go ahead.”
Standing right where you’d step off, in a black tshirt and jeans, sinewy, slightly salt in his pepper and oozing charisma, Kris Kristofferson went, “Well, you must be Holly! And you look even younger than you sound.”

“I’m 19,” I said, used to people assuming a Herald writer must be in their 30s. “Hello…”
I put my hand out, he pulled into a hug. A big, friendly, warm and loving favorite uncle hug.

“That’s more like it,” he said. “And I wanna look you in the eye, and tell you that’s one damned fine piece of writing. I can’t believe you got all that from the scraps of conversation we had.”
He was smart: get me talking about the art of writing. Suddenly, we were writers, not a kid and an icon-in-the-making.  By leveling up, he made the awkward disappear.

“Are you kidding? Those answers were great. Your story’s amazing. And I got to write about all your songs, the way you use words. How could it not be great?” I asked.

“You’d be surprised,” he said a little too knowingly. I was young enough to not realize how cynical and crummy journalists could be once the white-hot moment had passed.
“I guess, but I still think if the songs are good, the conversation is excellent, the writing should lift itself.”
“You might think, but I promise: it doesn’t. You write like this at 19, I don’t know what you’re majoring in, but you should think about being a writer. You can write, and I know that’s not even what you’re studying.”
Holy crap! He remembered. He remembered me telling him my Dad wouldn’t let me study journalism or English, because I was a published writer from the time I was 14. Whoa.

The tour manager stuck his head over the side. “You ready?”
“I guess so,” he said. Then he looked at me. “Wanna watch from the side?”

“Hell yes,” I thought, but wanted to act cool. I said, “That would be nice.”
It was an open stage. I figured my boyfriend would see me. If he got mad and left, I’d figure out how to get home. Right now, I was going to stand a few feet away from Kris Kristofferson, so lean and cool, and watch him sing “Help Me Make It Through The Night,” “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” “The Silver Tongued Devil and I,” even “Jesus Was A Capricorn.”

Tasting the salt in the air, a tropical breeze blew across the stage and pushed his shaggy hair off his face. He really was beautiful, even more beautiful than in the movies. But his passion when he sang those songs, the vulnerability and willingness to show the broken places was mind-blowing. And talking about going to church with a lady named Connie Smith, walking to the altar and falling to his knees inspiring “Why Me, Lord?,” it opened a portal into blessings where it's all falling apart.

He and the band tromped offstage. They swept me up with them, then Kristofferson cut me from the pack. “C’mon,” he said, and walked me over to the other boat.

“Willie, this is the writer I was telling you about.”
Nelson was sitting with the writer from the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel. He smiled and nodded. “Come sit,” he said. “Visit for a few minutes.”
Kristofferson bounced off the boat, probably to towel off from the swelter. Willie Nelson, his braids shorn into a flat top, looked exactly like my grandfather who’d just died. I was dumb struck, literally unable to speak.
“That was a fine piece you wrote,” he said. “Kris said he thought you were young. I don’t think anyone thought you were…”
“This young?” I managed. “Weird, ‘cause we talked about school.”
“Sometimes the details don’t register.”
“I get that.”
“It’s really about the work.”
“I get that, too.” Never have I struggled so hard to stay in a conversation.

When the promoter came to take us away, he was buoyant. “I am so proud of you,” JV said. “I am so proud you wrote a piece that made them want to meet you.”
“Yeah, wow,” was all I could say.
My boyfriend was so impressed. He actually told me, “If Willie would’ve let you stand on the side of the stage, you should’ve…”
“No, they definitely showed me out.”
Clang! Clang! Clang! “Whiskey River” kicked into gear, bottles – and a few drunks – started raining into the water between seats and stage. It was raucous. Lots of bikers, as well as kickers and redbecks. They came to dance, throw down and get lit.

By the time Kristofferson returned to the stage for a bawdy “How Do You Feel About Fooling Around” and “Circle Be Unbroken,” the place was unraveling. This was the power of unadorned music thrown to the crowd like gold coins and roses; people scrambled to grab what they could of the moment, to pull those emotions towards them.

Imagining this must’ve been what the Allmans were like in their prime, I held the back of the seat in front of me, a little dizzy. One man had a hand in getting President Carter elected, the other made landmark films like “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” Both of them had talked to me; I would be in a daze for days.

 

“Here Comes That Rainbow Again,” to drop one song in among all the others, speaks so much to the way those men saw the world. Set in a café, dust bowl nowhere kind of town, a waitress took mercy on two hungry-eyed kids, telling them the candy they coveted was two-for-a-penny; it was exactly the money the children had.

A truck driver asks the waitress about why she did it. She asks, “What’s it to you?” believing in kindness over the straight bottom line. To her surprise, when the two truckers leave, there’s a small windfall at the table. Chastened by her kindness, they raised her ante and left a tip to say that kindness is the way.
An O. Henry short story over a classic folkie kind of melody, Kristofferson suggested what doesn’t kill you is worth indulging if it gives someone a little magic or breaks their melancholy. In the brightness and innocence that washed away the cynicism and world weary, the Songwriters Hall of Famer who received their Johnny Mercer Prize transformed anyone who listened.

 

When The Highwaymen, produced by Chips Moman, turned Waylon, Willie, Kris and Cash into the first true supergroup, the buzz was deafening. Tower Records’ PULSE assigned a cover story to me; all I had to do was juggle classes, superstar availabilities and not choke. At the time, this was the Mount Rushmore of the genre, and I understood even more now than when I’d done the Marine Stadium preview three semesters before.

First thing out of Kristofferson’s mouth, even before “Hello,” was “I just want to alert you: William Blake is still dead!” He laughed. I laughed, It was a riff on a “Saturday Night Live” bit, but it was also a small private joke, shared between the star and the humble scribe.

From being a total dodo to having a private joke? That was what made Kristofferson so lovely. He wanted to take the beat-up kid, find a way to usher her into the club. He wanted to connect some of the dots on the songs; they had Woody Guthrie and Cindy Walker, Ed Bruce’s “The Last Cowboy Song,” Guy Clark and Jimmy Webb, Bob Seger, two Johnny Cash classics, a Steve Goodman/John Prine co-write. We talked songwriters like people swap baseball cards; he spoke of what was inside the ten selections that made the album
It was strength without bullying, manly, not machismo. There were themes of social conscience, of passing time and tough places. These weren’t party songs, but things to make you think about the state of the world, how people treat other, who we throw away. It was smart and sobering as a work, and rich in terms of what we talked about.

He thanked me when he hung up, told me it was always a pleasure. I thought, that’s because you’re so good to talk to. Anyone not enjoying talking to you? They’re not doing it right.

Of course, Kristofferson was getting ready to get back into the water as an artist. He had a film with Nelson called “Songwriter,” a madcap sticking it to the Boss Hog music industry guy that looked like fun to make – and gave you a sense of how Nashville was when the creatives really were their own class of people. Independent, figuring out how to work between the lines, ready to hit the road, willing to go to any length for a practical joke and looking for a hit without selling out.

But Repossessed, a decidedly political album of social reckoning, was coming. It pulled no punches, threw down and drew lines. “Mean Old Man” and “Anthem ‘84” set the tone for a cruel, consumed by consumerism world and “They Killed Him” called out a culture that killed its visionary leaders, slaying them to never have to consider the truths Ghandi, Martin Luther King and the Kennedys put forward.

It was bold, and it struck a nerve if you listened. Most people chose to tune the radicalism out, marginalize the movie star who’d not had a hit album in a long time. When the phone rang at my desk at the Palm Beach Post, Kristofferson asked me what I thought. I told him I had hippie babysitters, this stuff is critical – if we can’t come together in peace, we would perish in the divisiveness.

With a band that had Billy Swan and Donnie Fritts, there was plenty of funky grit to go around. An outdoor show, it was a motley audience who showed up. Women swooning, because he was so fine. Vets and bikers who respected his courage for speaking up. Some country music fans who believed in the catalogue of many of their favorite artists. Native Americans who honored the way Kristofferson spoke to and for their heritage.

A melange of humanity, coming together in the songs. We didn’t speak that day. No backstage passes, though I was sure he saw me in the crowd, winked and nodded. That was plenty. Why crowd a legend when you can interview them for the paper?

By 1990, the politics had sharpened. Songs like “Jesse Jackson,” “Third World Warrior” and “Sandinista” left little to the imagination. He didn’t care; wasn’t going to pull his punches. He’d rather make music he believed in, cut live in the studio with his guys, that spoke the truth no one wanted to discuss. He wasn’t desperate, but was raging against a machine that wanted to use pop culture to distract America from what really mattered.

Like Jackson Browne, he spent his time talking to thinkers, leaders, the people on the front lines. He used his platforms – he was still an in-demand actor – to spread what he knew, and he knew plenty. He put his career and his life into the causes he believed in. And he just kept coming.

Somewhere in all of that, he fell in love with an ashy blond who was as fresh-faced and smart as they came. He and Lisa built a life, a family, kids who went in varied directions, saw the world and raised people’s consciousness. Mostly, they were love in action – and they served as an example of what can be if you truly commit and support another human being.

Just the way he looked at Lisa and smiled, you understood why he was the thinking woman’s heart-throb. That is how every woman deserves to be seen, but also respected.

He may’ve been an international superstar, touring the world with the Highwaymen or making any number of films. But mostly, he was a family man and the lover of Lisa. That was his joy, his grounding. In Hawaii, where they moved, all the local children adored him, too, called him Papa Kris – and followed him around, laughing and loving him as their own.

He stood up for the underdog, the little guy, the bullied and the overlooked. When Sinead O’Connor appeared at the all-star Bob Dylan Tribute Concert, held at Madison Square Garden, the air was charged. She had recently torn up a picture of the Pope on “Saturday Night Live,” igniting death threats, boycotts and being denounced by every Catholic organization in the world.

Brave, she took the stage, eyes piercing and seeking. She had come to sing for arguably the greatest songwriter who’d ever lived. Before she could get the first note out, an avalanche of boos hit that stage like a mountain collapse. Unable to withstand the velocity, the Irish songwriter/vocalist collapsed into a cloud of tears — and Kris ran from the wings to shepherd her off, cloaked in his arms.

As soon as he reached the shuddering musician, she proceeded to vomit. The vitrol she’d absorbed had to go somewhere. Kristofferson held her for a moment, assuring her the artists were with her; offering strength and comfort in a dark place, a pummeling moment.

If he didn’t suffer fools, he was generous with his praise. When an Oxford American think piece for his meditation on aging Feeling Mortal crossed the family’s horizon, he marveled that “Holly wrote that?,” no doubt picturing the kid from decades prior. When he saw me, he laughed and told me I’d clearly grown up.

And when “Better As A Memory,” a two-week No. 1, received it’s BMI Award for Most Played Songs of 2008, it was chaos as I teetered up to the stage in my 5” stiletto ballet slippers.

“Can you walk in those things?” BMI Nashville head Jody Williams inquired. “If you can, close your eyes and open them when I say…”
Like a good dancer, his hand slipped to the small of my back. Turning me 80 degrees, I heard now, and opened my eye lids to see Kris with his fingers in his mouth leading a standing ovation with Don Was. Surreal doesn’t begin to cover it, but my feet hurt, my heart was in my throat and tears were in my eyes.

“Can you believe it?” Jody asked. I shook my head no, because, well, it was hard to take in.

Pictures taken, someone escorted me off the stage. Before I could make my way across the room to say “thank you,” they were gone. The CMA Awards were the next day, so most likely they had an early call for rehearsal, or meeting because they were actually in town.

Walking out of our own rehearsal, I was talking to Clint Higham, Kenny Chesney’s longtime manager, about how the runthrough had gone. Coming in and cutting against the grain of rushing talent support teams, Kris was making his way towards us.

“I was so proud of you last night,” he said, taking my hands and looking into my eyes. “That is a damned fine song, Holly. A damned fine song, and you wrote it.”
I just looked at him. Cry? Laugh? Whoop? Busting a smile that was as wide as my face, I said “Thank you, and thank you. When I saw you and Don, I almost lost it.”
“We almost lost it, too,” he said. “Lisa had to tell me it was you…”
“Because you’ve never seen me in a dress.”
“Yes,” he admitted, laughing.

“Well, now you have.”
The talent wrangler came and got him, but we hugged. He told me I’d done good as he walked away, and I felt a little bit taller. If people had scoffed about me writing a song, they forgot I did it under another name so the song could have a life… and it did. If people acted like anyone could do it, like it was my proximity to Kenny that got the song cut, I didn’t care in that moment. Kris Kristofferson told me I’d written a damned fine song.

And when Kenny Chesney went on to co-produce Willie Nelson’s A Moment of Forever with Buddy Cannon, that Kristofferson title track wrecked me. A quiet performance, contemplative, yearning and yet thrilled with what has been shared, Kristofferson’s song was about the hope and wonder that even a transitory connection can yield. It’s not what was lost, it was what was felt.

Listening to Nelson in the studio, a witness to so much living, loss and adventure, the song felt like the wisdom of time. It also felt like a leavening exhale in a realm of shrinking connections, devastation and people lost not to fights or other lovers, but leaving this world.

When Kris began to fade several years ago, a bad diagnosis that Lisa refused to accept, they both hung in, seeking answers that would refute the diagnosis. One came, Lyme disease, and health returned, though the fragility of aging crept up in small degrees.

Still, there was Kris out playing with Merle Haggard’s kids, showing up at Farm Aid, being honored on the Outlaw Country Cruise. There was a tribute album. There was picking up Jerry Lee Lewis’ Country Music Hall of Fame medallion and delivering it to the Killer in Memphis.

Always something, always love.

Always love.

 

The last time I saw Kris, it was from eighteen rows back at the Hollywood. Rosanne Cash, beaming, walked across the stage as her rich, coppery alto followed the gorgeous imagery upwards. “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again)” may be Kristofferson’s most gorgeous song, and Cash grew up knowing poet laureate of the Outlaw movement long before she was herself a formidable songwriter and artist in her own right.

As the first verse  concluded, she reached her arm to the wings – and Kristofferson, eyes the purest blue of early morning, walked towards her in a parsons coat. Hair white, but flowing over his collar, he beamed right back at her, clearly knowing this was a moment to transcend all of our mortal realities. Rosanne continued to sing, Kris leaned into her and the mic, found his way.
They tangled voices, words, emotions on a song about letting go of someone you loved so they can find something better. Triumph in the sadness, a light that shines from doing the right thing. They both sang from a place of intimacy, a knowing that few can share. Though they had never been lovers, they had been life companions since Rosanne was still a girl – and when he looked into her eyes, you could see the pride he felt for the woman she’d become.
“Dreaming is as easy as believing it was never gonna end…” the song extols. Looking at the legend, Rosanne almost melted with her heart on her sleeve. Kris was savoring all that was, looking at her in pure delight. It was perfect, so perfect Cash dropped out, and let Kris have that final “do again…,” collapsing into his arms in an embrace that spoke to how precious their connection remains.

Turning away from my editor at POLLSTAR, I could feel the tears on my skin. Here was a man who’d seen so much, who should be eternal and always. Here was a man who wrote about hangovers (“Sunday Morning Coming Down”), needing human congress to survive the ache of living (“Help Me Make It Through The Night”), who knew that even when it’s over there’s a place for one last time (“For The Good Times”) and who understood the life-saving grace of surrender (“Why Me Lord”).
He was robust, tender, willing to let go. He spoke to the ‘70s zeitgeist when he wrote, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose…” on “Me & Bobbie McGee.” There was no room for anything but being wholly present, leading with love and standing on the convictions of right and wrong.

For all that he was, he was a distiller of hearts. He offered generations of people seeking to understand a better way to express their longing, frustration and truth. He was fearless, joyous and willing – and as he wrote, “Don’t Let The Bastards Get You Down.”
I promise I won’t. But I can’t say that I won’t cry all night. I can’t say that I won’t stare into space on a plane to the West Coast tomorrow, wondering about losing another beacon of light to the stars above. Too many precious ones are leaving, and I imagine them all sitting around a poker table, laughing and raising the stakes: John Prine, whom he helped launch, and Steve Goodman, Cowboy Jack Clement, his dear Johnny Cash, Ray Price, Sammi Smith, Bobbie Nelson, Waylon, Donnie Fritts, known to all as “the leaning man from Alabam” and so many more rogues, characters and dreamers.

It was inevitable, of course. People age, people fade. But the ones who write such truth, they seem as if they’re immortal.
After suggesting that you were young enough to dream, and I was old enough to learn something new, Kristofferson summed up the seekers condition adroitly. With a demi-chorus, he explained,

“And come whatever happens now
Ain't it nice to know that dreams still come true
I'm so glad that I was close to you
For a moment of forever”

www.hollygleason.com

Wash Me Away….Willie Nelson

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Sometimes the moments just ripple… lap in at the shoreline, and then fall away. When you learn that you can't hold them anywhere but your memory, you learn to sink into the beauty of a few seconds completely. And so it was somewhere south of Nashville that Willie Nelson did what he does best: pour that quivering tenor that reeks of turpentine on fence planks, liquid heartstrings and vulnerability steeped with dignity over songs that're almost as good as he is. Because when you're one of the truest stylists of modern American music, it's hard to find songs that can meet your gift square on. Kenny Chesney is an unlikely source of inspiration. Big time newest wave country star who's tearing up the country charts, melting the concert trail and setting every record set on fire. That someone who blows it up as loud and ferociously would be the last guy you'd think of to tenderly minister to Willie Nelson's tremulous haiku vocal sensibility -- and yet, there are few who hold the Texas treasure in such high esteem and deep understanding. Willie Nelson is a reason to believe in how much can be said between the notes… the way he pauses, collects the sentiment without even seeming to think about it… Willie Nelson is the master of slight of breath… He takes your hand, your thought, your soul without you even realizing how he's elevated your very being before the next word is delivered with an ethereal gravity that defines Nelson's gift. Not that Willie Nelson ever set out to be Buddha. No, that just happened -- based on a clarity that transcends judging. Willie Nelson is able to embrace the world as it comes, always present, always there, yet not weighed down by the need to weigh in. But in that quiet, storms seethe… and rage… and resolve. Farm Aid, trying to make sure the American family doesn't go the way of the buffalo, and a way of life that is what this country is supposed to be about -- more than profit margins, chemicals to maximize growth and eradicate nutritional value. Bio-Willie, to heighten awareness and raise consumption of ecologically sounder fuel sources in a world of Hummers and SUVs as a means of expressing how great thou art (screw the rest of you poor slobs in your compact cars). Willie Nelson just is. Like water. Still. Imperturbable. Cool. Much swirls around him. All that motion, yet the tranquility emanating from the man who is a hank of tobacco, a bit of sinew and raw fiber is palpable. So it is, with the musicians scattered around big room -- each in their assigned area, yet instrumental parts weightlessly rising and mingling and merging like wafts of smoke effortlessly climbing towards the chandeliers. There is reverence for sure; this is holy work. The lunging back and forth of the parts, the rising and falling of emphasis as the band moves through a collection of jewels from the best of the Great American Songbook. Kristofferson. Dylan. Randy Newman. Guy Clark. Dave Matthews… Kenny Chesney understands about songs. He grew up eating meat'n'three lunches as a young Music City hopeful, starving for the wisdom of the elderest vintage songwriters -- Whitey Shafer, Dean Dillon, Bill Anderson -- as he was for the three side dishes that rounded out those meals. Kenny Chesney also grew up on Willie Nelson, hanging on to the way those notes would hold suspended in the air with no means of support, yet do things more obviously muscular singers couldn't. The Red Headed Strangers' talent wasn't so much about riding the trends, but floating above them… oblivious to how the wind blew and maintaining a sense of zen beauty to even his raucous clips of music-making. “Whiskey River” bumped and thumped and throttled… “Stay All Night” cooked with a certain good-timing rambunctiousness… Even the clambering “Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” had a certain manifesto manifest that made it more than a cautionary flex. That was the beauty of Willie Nelson -- he could haunt you even in the tempest. And then there were the ballads. “Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground.” “Blood Mary Morning.” “Last Thing I Needed First Thing This Morning,” “Always On My Mind.” “Seven Spanish Angels” with the spirit-stirring Ray Charles and “Pancho & Lefty” with working man honky tonk poet Merle Haggard. When that's the Willie Nelson you're raised on, you're gonna pick your songs with care. You're gonna wanna maintain a standard of grace and feeling that stands apart. You wanna bring your very best game: both in terms of what you stand up for and how you wrap the gift that is a Willie Nelson record that matters. It's tricky fare, recording Willie Nelson. With that voice and that sense of timing, the delivery that stretches out lines beyond reason, or clips through what seems to be a slow ride, he transforms what was written and turns it into something more. Gifts like that make song selection deceptive. Anything will sound good… even lackluster or average. It is about finding the songs that allow the gift to be more instead of the other way… and it means paying attention rather than becoming intoxicated by the highwayman's ability of distraction that is what pours from the elder statesman's mouth. Sometimes it means forgetting the rules. Thinking outside the box and coloring outside the lines. It's about embracing the obvious, too, the things that've been discarded because, well, it's been done. And it can also entail taking on the writers you know to be good, to trade in the mainstream, but to mine the jewels that fall closer to the banks than the middle. Kenny Chesney, a fan of music of all kinds, is uniquely suited to the job. As new fangled as the multiple Entertainer of the Year may be, he is old school when it comes to country music. Old school enough, too, to know how to make the oddest candidates resonate like jukebox tears wept back when it was vinyl skipping because the dance floor got too full. In that strange alchemy, though, the best of what makes Willie Nelson special emerges before you even know what's happened. It is in that louche slouch of the mind-altering stress melter “Worry Be Gone” that slinks with an almost marching band beat and the wafting bacon-in-the-air pungency of longtime Family member Mickey Raphael's harmonica. As good as the laconic track is -- and it's a week in the Jamaican sun poured all molasses and cane syrup thick over the laidback shuffle -- Willie Nelson turns it into an instant vacation. Just exhaling the melody, cresting along on the waves of acoustic notes, it's a cork on the ocean -- bobbing up and down light'n'easy. Willie Nelson doesn't need any more than that to find the solvent for the turmoil, the torqued up mess and the gridlock that's somehow encroached upon his piece of mind. Politicians, sad songs, people not treating each other right, not to mention tv, dumb celebrities and the rest of the list can all just be damned, this is about release and relief, not stringing oneself up on a laundry line to stuff that's beyond one's reach and ability to do something about. The best singers wear songs like their most broken in clothes: flannel shirts, old leather boots, jeans that mold and fold to one's backside. When it's that natural, you don't even notice what someone's wearing -- just how good they look, and you can't help but be drawn to them. So it is on the sorrowful, yet sinewy “Gravedigger,” the darkly inviting yet foreboding force of melody from Dave Matthews. In Nelson's supple throat, it's almost an exhortation -- “dig my grave shallow, so I can feel the rain,” he bluesmoans -- a challenge and an embrace of something so dark and yet so inevitable, fear can't be a factor. Standing it down, Nelson opens up a whole other sense of the future. It is what it is. Something to respect, but not to live in response to. Caution, yes, bondage by way of mortality, no. Just as “Moment of Forever” is less about the pain of what happens when it fails then the revel of what there is in the most euphoric moments. Kris Kristofferson knows how to sow details as a way to anchor the elusive nuances of emotions… the little things that invest what in so many others' hands is mere cliché. When Nelson celebrates what's worth surviving the pain for, love becomes noble rather than doomed. The glory of connection so alive, so vital, so revelatory, that the singe of one's wings which is as likely as the transcendence of “making it,” one gets the feeling there's no real risk involved. Hearing that song sung so well, it's the moment of definition… a chance to feel more alive for four minutes than most of us do in a year. Willie Nelson isn't just a sorcerer, he is a witness to life lived in full, wholly inhabited and absolutely taken full frontal. One of the reasons “Moment of Forever” works is because Nelson has obviously loved that deeply, that fiercely, that softly, that completely consumed. That he gets to feel that way at all -- even for a matter of moments -- is exactly what we should hope for. Sustainability is obviously desired, but not required. A taste is enough to know it's real. Confirmation, the sensation, can sustain one as they journey through the vastness -- because it's in knowing that one can swing freely. There is much that can be said about these sessions… much to remember about the things that matter when it comes to make music. The notion of camaraderie and laughter.. the idea that the instruments will push each other on, inspire magic and even silence when necessary… the dynamics of building and ebbing… and especially that simple works incredibly well when you're dealing with the best of everything. Paul Craft's “Keep Me From Blowing Away,” a centerpiece of Linda Ronstadt's seminal mid-70's Heart Like A Wheel, takes on a genuine pathos in its lean, almost tumbleweed barren performance. To hear Willie Nelson intone, “Lord, if you're listenin'/ I know I'm no Christian… and I ain't go no money, I know…” is to genuflect at the altar of blind faith in the human wasteland -- because as the chorus moves on, the faithless recognizes belief may be the only chance there is. Chance as something that isn't random, but rather as an opportunity is something Willie Nelson knows too well. No matter what has befallen him -- from being sewn into a bed sheet and beaten with a broomstick, selling “Family Bible” for $50 and thinking it a fair trade “because my family was hungry, and that bought us groceries…” in the moment rather than being embittered about the lost publishing, the IRS snafu in the early 90s, the occasional arrest for counterculture proclivities -- there is always another day, another side of the question… That other side seems to inspire him. Willie Nelson & Family played 132 cities this year alone -- and he'll start 2007 off in Amsterdam. The world spins, the man makes music with a gut string guitar with a pick-nicked hole beneath the pickguard. It is that passion for songs, the road, the fans who keeps him ablaze, questing for the next great performance… and showing the jam bands how easy it is to be real. Being real grounds the man who is a legend in ways that make him everybody's friend. Easy in his walk through the world, eyes crinkling in the warmest of smiles, he is a witness to all that goes by, yet he's also quick to embrace people from a welcoming place. But that doesn't mean he's easily spun. To that end, the man with the almost waist-length ponytail trailing down his back can embrace a 30 year old song and find a deeper truth in it -- one that illuminates modern problems in very concise, yet direct ways. “Louisiana (1927)” is a Randy Newman song about the flood that engulfed New Orleans early in the 20th century, It is now prophetic in the grandest ways - right down to the verse about the government man who blows in, proclaims it a shame and then moves on without looking back. The song is very much post-Katrina New Orleans, the rest of Louisiana and Mississippi -- and Nelson's quietly ruminative interpretation is as melancholy as you'd expect. Listening to the piano gliding up, Raphael's harmonica bleating in a mournful, desolate moan, it is a prayer for grace, relief, hope.. It sweeps you away, the notion of the Pontchatrain River swollen, swallowing an entire city whole -- you can almost see it when you close your eyes and Nelson twists the notes with honest pain and helplessness about the situation. It is Spanish moss scraping waters as high as the oaks and cypress trees that grow tall and spread broad throughout that most fetid of states… and in the slow, steamy arrangement, one can feel that thick, muddy water rising well past the point of reason. That would be enough. But that is not all. No, no. When Nelson gets to the repeated “They're trying to wash us away,” it's not so much about the toll of the rains and the bloated rivers, as it is the government's willingness to let these communities drown. The flooding becomes a means to wipe away these poor and struggling places -- a clean slate where poverty once stood, never mind the lives and people and families destroyed in this solution of neglect labeled “an act of God.” Willie Nelson is nobody's fool. Nor is he ready to be anyone's God. But he misses nothing, and when he tackles that line, his cognizance seeps through He recognizes that the solution as delivered may well be about an unspoken reality -- and his interpretation puts a light on the true bottomline of motivation for a government that just couldn't get it together in a way that offered real help or meaningful answers. He -- like Chesney -- is a real person's populist. His revered status has never eradicated his feeling for common people, but he also is wise enough to realize that his celebrity means that he can heard in ways most of the unseen people can't. He brings his gift to boil in a way that gives art an added truth… a truth that illuminates that which the powers that be would prefer obscured, offering the overlooked a voice for their truth, too. Thankfully, he does it from high enough ground, his witness is unassailable. When Willie Nelson turns his heart inside out, there is nothing more chilling. The level of bare revelation is riveting… and here it is about the unseen American populace, reduced to grids, columns, stats and gross generalizations being given their due rather than written off by what's convenient for the powers-that-be. It would be easy to call “Louisiana” a lament, but it is far more emboldened. An elegy if what is happening can not be turned around, perhaps; certainly a cautionary song rendered with a sadness that indicts the innate greed of the haves in the face of a genuine disaster. Yet for all the reckoning, this is not preachy. It is almost straight reportage of how it is -- right from the banks of the devastation. It is a great, big round truth that can swallow the moment completely and absolutely, and in that, the seeds of solving the problem are available to be sown. That's the beauty of sitting, knees to chest listening to playbacks… The compassion and kindness floats to the top. You can feel how moving this performance is -- and marvel at a song's capacity to carry so much emotion in such tiny dimensions -- a few minutes, 10 notes, some musical instruments. Kenny Chesney gets that, too. It's not about how much you glop on, but more how much it can make you feel. In a world where the truth is often measured out in drops, the more concentrated it can be, the more potent its message. Sometimes, you just play the song… You let the singer sing. But perhaps as importantly, you find material that is worthy, seek out the licks and riffs that best support that vocal performance, give it plenty of room to stretch out and breathe. It's a simple thing, but you gotta understand what you're trying to do to embrace that notion. After all, in most instances, it's faster, harder, shinier, glossier, slicker, more -- or so they think. Willie Nelson is the greater reality, though. For him, it's simpler, clearer, easier. Let the voice and the heart do the work… find the songs that live up to it… get out of the way… know when enough is plenty… recognize magic when it happens… laugh more than you ever have… believe in what stands out rather than second guessing. It takes one to know one… to celebrate one… to push one, even as you recognize how great the basic self is. Kenny Chesney and Willie Nelson are in many ways odd bedfellows, yet listening to the songs rolling out of the studio's monitors, they make more sense than just about anything anyone's heard coming out of Nashville in years.
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