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Willie Nelson, ‘The Great Divide’
Track List: Maria (Shut Up And Kiss Me) Last Stand In Open Country Won't Catch Me Cryin' Be There For You The Great Divide Just Dropped In (To see what condition my condition was in) This <a href="http://www.cheapcigarettesonlineoutlet.com/buy-cheap-american-gold-lights-100s-box-gold-packing-p-472"><strong>cheap American Gold lights </strong></a> Face Don't Fade Away Time After Time Recollection Phoenix You Remain Billboard Magazine December 22, 2001 by:Â* Deborah Evans Price Upon a casual listen, Willie Nelson’s forthcoming Lost Highways album, ‘The Great Divide”, sounds like it could be pages ripped from the Red-Headed Stranger’s road-worn journal.Â* Themes of passionate rebellion, relationship discord, and the consequences of time are as comfortable to Nelson as a weathered bandanna. The songs feel intensely personal.Â* On ‘The Great Divide’, Nelson once again does what he’s always done best:Â* sing songs that strike a universal chord. He remains the quintessential Everyman, serving up tunes in a way that lets the audience know that he has been there, and he knows they have too. A prime example on ‘The Great Divide”, due January 15, 2002, is the poignant ballad, ‘This Face.”Â* It opens with the lines, “This face is all I have worn and lived in; Lines beneath my eyes, they’re like old friends; and this old heart’s been beaten up; My ragged soul, it’s had things rough.” Nelson admits his first instinct was to shy away from recording a song that drew attention to his face, because it was “calling a lot of attention to something I’d rather not call attention to.” He changed his mind “after other people heard it, and they convinced me it was a really great idea because they were relating toÂ*it in Â*their own individual ways,” he says of the song penned by Bernie Taupin, Matt Serletic, Jim Cregan, and Robin Le Mesurier.Â* “in the beginning, I thought it was me talking too much about myself, and then as I got into it and listened to it more, I realized it was everyone’s situation.Â* Everybody has a face, so everybody can relate to that one.” Known as one of America’s most accomplished songwriters, Nelson also has a book due in January through Random House titled, ‘The Facts of Life and Other Dirty Jokes, a collection of songs, jokes, and antecdotes he penned on his tour bus. On ‘The Great Divide, Nelson only contributes the title cut as a writer.Â* Far from being just an assemblage of great tunes, the songs he chose fit him like a well-tailored suit, and he gives producer Serletic a lion’s share of the credit.Â* “I turned it over to Matt and let him run the whole show,” Nelson says.Â* “When you take on a producer you have to let him drive the bus.Â* That’s what I did with him.Â* You have to have confidence that he knows what he’s doing, and I had that confidence.” For Serletic, it was a golden opportunity to work with a legend.Â* “Willie brings a magical sense of rugged American character to every phrase he sings, note he plays, and song he writes,” he says.Â* “The Great Divide is honest, passionate music, as told by the world’s most unforgettable storyteller.” The stories Nelson relays were crafted by a stellar cast of writers that includes Taupin, Leslie Satcher, Mickey Newbury, Cyndi LauperÂ*(he covers ‘Time After Time”), and Matchbox Twenty lead vocalist Rob Thomas, who contributed three cuts (“Maria,” “Won’t Catch Me Cryin,” and “Recollection Phoenix”). “I really like his writing,” Nelson says of Thomas, adding that if Thomas had submitted more songs, he would have cut them, too.Â* “He’s got a way of saying things that takes his compositions out of categories.Â* You could listen to his songs on any kind of radioÂ*station.” Thomas, a longtime fan whose first music purchase was one of Nelson’s albums, lends vocals to “Maria.”Â* In typical Nelson fashion, ‘The Great Divide’ contains multiple duet partners, including Brian McKnight on “Don’t Fade Away,” Kid Rock on “Last Stand in Open Country,” Lee Ann Womack on “Mendicino County Line,” Bonnie Raitt on “You Remain,” and Sheryl Crow on “Be There for You,” which the duo performed on the Country Music Association Awards show. “Someone told me the other day that I was in the Guiness Book of World Records for doing more duets than anybody else in history.Â* I don’t doubt it,” Nelson says with a laugh.Â* “I like to sing with other singers.Â* There was a time when it was difficult to do because of label restrictions.Â* When Waylon Jennings and I got goether and did our stuff, he was on RCA, and I was on another label.Â* It was really the first sort of outlaw movement.Â* It’s nice to know we can do it openly now with blessings of most of the record companies.” During the last week of December, Nelson will shoot a video with Womack for “Mendocino County Line,” the album’s first single.Â* “She’s great,” Nelson says of Womack.Â* “She’s a Texas gal.Â* She sings and comes from a good place.Â* She has her head on straight.” ‘The Great Divide’ is Nelson’s fifith album with the Island Def Jam Music Group (following Spirit, Teatro, Milk Cow Blues and Rainbow Connection).Â* The previous four were on Island Records, and Divide marks his first release on Universal’s Lost Highway label.Â* As for how Nelson moved within the Universal system from Island to Lost Highway, Luke Lewis, chairman of Mercury and Lost Highways, says, “I begged for it.Â* That’s pretty much how it happened.Â* It made my year just knowing he’s here.” Though unsure at first about the change, Nelson says he’s impressed with <a href="http://www.cheapcigarettesonlineoutlet.com/newport-2010-menthol-box-100s-cigarettes-for-sale-p-425"><strong>Discont Newport cigarettes</strong></a> Lost Highway.Â* “Lost Highway has a great staff working for them,” he says.Â* “They are coming out with a huge hit with ‘O Brother Where Out Thou?’, and they’ve done a great job with that.Â* It is going to be a great hit.” Lewis says, “The Leslie Satcher song, ‘You Remain,’ just slays me.Â* The fun of it for me is the pure pleasure of having him on Lost Highway, because it speaks to what we’are all about, and the Island Def Jam people are being really supportive.Â* We have all our muscles working on this one.Â* He’s made a bunch of brilliant records the last few years, but I’ve got a feeling this one is magic.” Lewis is not alone in that prediction.Â* “It’s pretty damn cool,” says Jeff Stoltz, senior music buyer for the Torrance, California based Wherehouse chain.Â* “A lot of people are saying <a href="http://www.cheapcigarettesonlineoutlet.com/"><strong>Newport cigarettes on sale</strong></a> it’s like Santana’s Supernatural, but Willie is the king of duets.Â* He’s been doing them his whole career.Â* ‘Maria’ with Rob Thomas is a strong pop song.Â* The Lee Ann Womack song is beautiful.Â* Then he’s got some neat old stuff, like, ‘I Just Dropped In to See What Condition My Condition Was In’ and the Cyndi Lauper song.Â* Willie is the man.Â* He’s the original American outlaw.” Annie Balliro, director of marketing for the Island Def Jam Music Group, says the label willc ross-market ‘The Great Divide’, Nelson’s book, and Old WhiskeyRiver bourbon, which is named after the Nelson hit ‘Whiskey River.’Â* “The back flap of the book has an album mini,” Balliro says.Â* “In the album, I have a tag for the bourbon and the book and links to the enhanced portion of the CD.Â* The bourbon tags the record.Â* Never before has there been such an effort to do such cross marketing for one person.” ‘The Great Divide will also benefit from a new piece of technology called the CD Key.Â* “You put it in your computer’s CD-ROM player and go to a special web site listed inside the album,” Balliro explains.Â* “You’ll get all kinds of cool extra stuff – behind-the scenes footage of making of the record, excepts from the book, and special photos no one has ever seen before.” Nelson is booked by Los Angeles based David Snyder with the William Morris Agency.Â* He’s managed by Mark Rothbaum of Danbury, Connecticut based Mark Rothbaum Associates.Â* A BMI-affiliated writer, Nelson is signed to Warner-Tamerlane Publishing. Retirement is not in the Abbott, Texas, native’s vocabulary.Â* Nelson just got his black belt in Tae Kwon Do and already has three additional albums in the can:Â* a reggae album produced by Don Was; a jazz album recorded with freind Paul Buskirk; and a duet album withÂ*his old boss, Ray Price, who counted Nelson as a member of his famed Cherokee Cowboy Band in 1961. This entry was posted on Sunday, August 28th, 2011 at 9:54 am and is filed under Albums, Magazines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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