The Outlaws Ride Again...And This Time They Brought Some Friends...

Sequel time! My first compilation of Waylon & Willie, done years ago for my own personal listening pleasure, was an unexpected success, with a bunch of you appreciating some old school Outlaw country, vinyl crackles and all be damned. No such thing here for round two with our favorite outlaws, everything here has been digitally sourced. And, to make sure the Outlaw party keeps rockin', we have invited some ol' friends along for the ride. That includes original outlaws Tompall Glaser and of course Waylon's wife Jessi Coulter (who had a cameo appearance on The Outlaws Ride!). Both were originally featured on the 1976 Wanted: The Outlaws album, but I didn't carry their songs over to keep it strictly W & W on that first volume. Both get their due here, showing up with solo showcases. 

Another friend that can very loosely be lumped in with the Outlaws is Merle Haggard, whose take on a cowboy ballad with Townes Van Zandt's "Pancho and Lefty" got him and Willie a charttopper in 1982. But the real joker in the pack is an outlaws who wasn't always, or even most of the time, country: why, it's Uncle Neil himself! Actually, the idea for this sequel sprang, surprisingly, not from listening to the W's, but from me immersing myself in some mid-80s Neil while working on the automated Trans and its live companion. While listening to the cheapo Geffen years compilation Mystery Train I stumbled onto "Bound For Glory", Neil's duet with Waylon Jennings from Old Ways, and I was struck by how much it sounds like a classic Outlaws duet from the 70s, except with Neil's voice in place of Willie's. Which in turn brought me to check into the possibility of letting those outlaws ride again. 

And ride again they do. In addition to the aforementioned tracks and artists, I collected the most outlaw-ish tracks from Waylon & Willie, starting with "Write Your Own Songs", Willie's skewering of conservative-minded record execs, sung as a duet with Waylon. Two other times do the W's sing together, including on Steve Earle's outlaw anthem "Nowhere Road". Obviously we can't go with some trademark Waylon outlaw anthems: "Ladies Love Outlaws", "Slow Movin' Outlaws", "I'm a Ramblin' Man", his version of a different type of outlaw classic, "Midnight Rider". and his theme song for The Dukes Of Hazzard which is of course the first Waylon Jennings I ever heard. My favorite just might be "Too Dumb For New York City" with the protagonist's realization that he likes the midwest best cause he is "too dumb for New York City and too ugly for L.A.".

Ol' Willie recalls the first volume with the original Waylon-less version of "Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys" and a bluegrass take on "Good Hearteed Woman" that Willie rcorded at the sprightly age of 90, while otherwise showing his gift for balladry with songs like "So You Think You're A Cowboy" or "Hands Of Time". 

The Outlaws Ride Again! is, I'd say, as good a listen as The Outlaws Ride!, even if (or because?) it's taken from a much wider selection of albums. Tons of great Outlaw Country, just like you'n'me'n'everyone else  likes. So, let those outlaws ride once more, always remembering the old proverb. Where there's a Will(ie), there's a Way(lon). 

Waylon & Willie - The Outlaws Ride...

Not only are the days of summer slowly coming to an end, but also the days of summer holidays for the kids. Which is not a totally bad thing, because for now they are eating away at the adults' time, rarely being in bed before 10.30. Which means there's no time left for the adults to really invest in putting on a movie, or what not, so these days often we just hang out in front of the news or some easy going, not terribly long show. So testerday I stumbled on this documentary on Robert De Niro, which - while having nothing particularly new to teach me - reminded me of what a spectacular run De Niro had in the 70s and early 80s. THen the documentary was followed by one on Dolly Parton, someone I'm a lot less familiar with. Really interesting stuff, and even the wife was happy to have seen it and to have learned a ton about Parton. Great lady with a ton of humor. And by now it was definitely time to hit the bed, but that Parton documentary then segued into...a 1990 concert of the Highwaymen. Which means by this very long intro I will finally segue into the record of the day, which as you can see above is *not* the Highwaymen, but the two outlaw members of the group...

The Highwaymen period isn't seen by anyone as a highlight of the career of the four men involved. As a matter of fact, the group ws put together when the career of these wily country veterans had all begun to slow down considerably, so they wisely through themselves together. The adventure smacked a bit of n oldies package tour, and the concert we saw yesterday didn't entirely dispell that notion, but man, getting to see four legends (well, three and a half, with no disrespect to Kristoffer Kristian Ktistofferson) in one fell swoop retrospectively looks like a pretty great deal. In concert, these guys didn't bother too much with songs from the record they di in 1985 or the brand new record they were promoting in 1990, but rather ran through the greatest hits of each men. A toe-tappin' good ol' time was had by all - including OBG and his wife - which means we really, really went to bed later than we should. 

So here I was anyway, contemplating what to post next on this here lil' blog that could, and so the outlaws pushed themselves all the way to the front of the line. What I have here for you is one of the very first homebrewed compilations I ever did, about fourteen years ago. I had borrowed four vinyls from my dad - the Waylon & Willie album that lends its cover artwork, the Wanted: The Outlaws compilation from 1976, Willie's Red Headed Stranger and Waylon's I've Always Been Crazy - transferred them from vinyl to digital and compiled my favorites from these four albums involving Waylon & Willie. Seven of the generous 29 track selections are duets by Willie & Waylon, the rest alternates between both of them trading songs. 

There are of course their two famous duets, "Good-Herated Woman" and "Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys", plus a couple of lesser-known duet tunes like "Don't Cuss The Fiddle" (with its "Good Hearted Woman" reprise). Waylon's songs include highlights like the hilarious recounting of a New York Police drug bust in "Don't You Think This Outlaw Bit's Done Got Out Of Hand?", "A Long Time Ago" and "Girl I Can Tell", while Willie favorites other than the story-songs from Red Headed Stranger include "A Couple More Years" and "If You Can Touch Her At All", plus his classic "Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain".  

So, what's more to say? A ton of classic songs from the heydays of the outlaw movement and two of its best representatives. I have been grooving to this album, whenever I get the need for some honky tonkin', wheelin' and dealin', shufflin' and hufflin' outlaw country, for fourteen years, so maybe ut's time you get to do that, too...

From Father...: It's Good Ol' Waylon

Folks around here know that I am a fiend of all things country rock of the 70s, as well as the Alt Country movement of the 90s onwards that most recently was featured on the Americana disc I compiled. But of course I also like some of the genre forefathers, like rockabilly-turned-outlaw country star Waylon Jennings. Out of the famous Outlaw movement I have a clear favorite, and it's ol' Waylon. Willie is fine, has some very fine songs, but he also has a voice that can become a bit grating at times. Waylon's mighty, booming baritone, however? I'll take that all day every day. Well, maybe not quite as often, but you catch my drift. 

The One Buck record of the day is a live recording from 1984, recorded for the Silver Eagle radio program (though I added out the Silver Eagle commercial break announcements and such). It's a pretty good set list and a pretty good performance, especially considering that by 1984 Waylon was entering his purple phase as a performer. I am fond of Waylon's last album from his classic era I've Always Been Crazy, which my dad had on vinyl, together with Waylon & Willie from the same year, Willie's classic Red Headed Stranger and the Wanted! The Outlaws album from a couple of years earlier. For years my Outlaw country was a comp I made out of those albums, and I still have that and listen to it from time to time. 

The set list has a number of my favorites, not only classics like the Willie-and-Waylon warhorses "Good Hearted Woman" and "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys", but also Crazy's "Don't You Think This Outlaw Bit Has Done Got Out Of Hand", a story-song about his run-ins with the law in the mid-to late 70s: "Someone called us outlaws in some old magazine / New York sent a posse down like I ain't never seen..."

And speaking of outlaws: It also has my very first brush with Waylon Jennings, the "Theme From The Dukes Of Hazzard", which was a show that I first saw years after it came out when the magic of private television brought us kids all the low-brow tv shows the state-owned channels wouldn't touch: The A-Team, Knight Rider and The Dukes of Hazzard, among others. Other highlights here: the classics "I Ain't Living Long Like This" and "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way". The band is steadily ticking along behind ol' Waylon and gives these songs the raw, muscular sound that originally separated Waylon from the (Nashville) pack and started the whole Outlaw thing in the first place.

So, 15 fine tracks from the finest of the old school country outlaws...so, folks, are you ready for some country with the only daddy that'll walk the line..?