{"id":143130,"date":"2024-01-03T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-03T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/?p=143130"},"modified":"2024-01-02T13:17:21","modified_gmt":"2024-01-02T21:17:21","slug":"review-willie-nelson-bluegrass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/review-willie-nelson-bluegrass\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Willie Nelson Breathes New Life into Some Old Favorites on \u2018Bluegrass\u2019\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"750\" height=\"750\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Willie-Nelson-Bluegrass-album-cover.jpg?resize=750%2C750&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Willie-Nelson-Bluegrass-album-cover\" class=\"wp-image-143133\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Willie-Nelson-Bluegrass-album-cover.jpg?w=750&amp;ssl=1 750w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Willie-Nelson-Bluegrass-album-cover.jpg?resize=500%2C500&amp;ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Willie-Nelson-Bluegrass-album-cover.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Willie-Nelson-Bluegrass-album-cover.jpg?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Willie Nelson, <em>Bluegrass<\/em> (Columbia Legacy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ain\u2019t it funny how time slips away? Fifty years ago, Willie Nelson was on the verge of a Nashville breakthrough, recording his tune \u201cSad Songs and Waltzes\u201d (from the album <em><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4aJfCAm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Shotgun Wille<\/a><\/em>) on a still-shiny Trigger [his then-new Martin N-20 nylon-string], while Jimmy Day played weeping pedal steel in the background. Fast-forward to the present, more than 100 albums later, and Nelson is giving his picking fingers\u2014and a battered but intact Trigger\u2014a well-deserved rest. Instead of leaning on a band of Texas outlaws, he\u2019s tapped bassist Barry Bales and banjoist Ron Block (from Alison Krauss and Union Station), rounding out their sound with Rob Ickes (dobro), Josh Martin (steel-string acoustic) and Bobby Terry (nylon-string), and instead of writing new songs, he\u2019s reaching deep into his back catalog. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The <em><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3H23wVJ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Bluegrass<\/a><\/em> version of \u201cSad Songs and Waltzes\u201d begins with a fiddle intro that comes within striking distance of \u201cTennessee Waltz,\u201d then adds a fill on dobro that smoothly guides the tune from the V chord to the I. That\u2019s when Nelson takes over, and no matter how worn his voice has become, and no matter how many times he\u2019s sung this, his delivery has never been better. His phrasing, that seemingly effortless meeting place of country and jazz, takes its time to rise, fade, swoop, whisper, breathe, reassure, pause, explain, and simply and quietly share the drama of a \u201ctrue song as real as my tears.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Sad Songs and Waltzes\" width=\"1290\" height=\"968\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nWJ5J_4DtQQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Again and again, that\u2019s what this album does, from \u201cBloody Mary Morning\u201d to \u201cYesterday\u2019s Wine,\u201d showing Nelson\u2019s increasing mastery, the careless precision that grows from a lifetime of trying to find his place between song and speech. It\u2019s not really a band record\u2014Nelson is home in Austin while everyone else is recording in Nashville\u2014but it brings out the best in these musicians too, especially Ickes, who gets the lion\u2019s share of the solos, gliding smoothly over the changes as he remakes himself into the sound of Nelson\u2019s other voice.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nelson and friends put a bluegrass shine on a dozen of his original compositions on this new studio album.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":143132,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"Nelson and friends put a bluegrass shine on a dozen of his original compositions on this new studio album.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[885],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[1568],"class_list":["post-143130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-album-reviews"],"blocksy_meta":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Willie-Nelson-Press-Photo.jpg?fit=1000%2C622&ssl=1","authors":[{"term_id":1568,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"kenny-berkowitz","display_name":"Kenny Berkowitz","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Kenny-Berkowitz-Photo_web.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Kenny-Berkowitz-Photo_web.jpg"},"user_url":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143130"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143139,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143130\/revisions\/143139"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143130"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=143130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}