Milk Cow Blues

by

Willie Nelson

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Today saw the new release of Willie Nelson's new CD... "Milk Cow Blues".

I think it Willie's first blues CD, and, like always, it's "Willie" but this time with Keb Mo', Dr. John, Johnny Lang, Susan Tedeschi, Kenny Wayne Shepard and BB King.

Interesting part is that Keb, Johnny, and Susan are singing vocals only on this album, no guitar playing. BB Kine and Kenny Wayne Shepard do play on their songs. And, as an added benefit, Jimmy Vaughn plays guitar on one of the two Susan Tedeschi tunes.

But it sounds great and I've always loved Willie, always will I suppose. The main blues guitarist on this album is Derek O'brian. Also you'll hear a couple of songs with Willie singing with Francine Reed, who I know only from Lyle Lovett's Big Band.

Have you ever heard Willie standards like "Funny How Time Slips Away" and "Crazy" as full bore BLUES songs? You will on this album.

If you like Willie in general and you like the Blues you'll like this Album. If you like easy laid back -- mostly slow -- blues of any kind you'll probably like this album. Perfect dinner, or date, or relaxing music.

Willie shows us one more time, that he can sound at home with just about any genre of music -- what's next... Wille does a Hip Hop CD?

On this album Willie Nelson performs a number of different blues numbers, some of which he wrote (such as Rainy Day Blues) and some of which are great blues standards written by others (such as The Thrill is Gone, which was actually BB King's only top 40 hit). This album has renditions of several Willie Nelson classics such as Crazy and Night Life, and also includes guest appearances by such blues greats as BB King, Keb Mo, Johnny Lang, Dr. John, Kenny Wayne Shepherd and others. With that kind of talent, this CD should be better than it is. Unfortunately, I have the feeling that Nelson was never in the studio at the same time as the other performers. Instead, this CD sounds like one of those deals where the studio musicians laid down their tracks, Nelson showed up on a different day to lay down his tracks, and then the guest performers showed up on yet another day to lay down their tracks -- all separately done with very little musical interaction -- and the engineers did the rest.

The really great thing about albums which mix and match players in a REAL studio environment is that you can hear different musicians react to each other and almost provide a "jam" kind of feeling that occurs when performers with different musical styles collide and interact. On this album, however, all the performances seem to be siloed and sanitized, with very little dynamic interaction or even harmonies between Nelson's vocals and those of the other players. The vocals on Night Life, in particular, sound almost awkward in the way that King and Nelson fail to connect or interact. With this much talent represented on this CD, there are of course some high points but there are some low points as well, including a couple of painful flat notes from Susan Tedeschi on "Crazy." Overall, it's not a bad album, but it could have been much better.