CD Odyssey Disc 1312: Waylon Jennings

I roll the albums in my collection randomly to determine what I’m going to review next, but sometimes all that random makes for interesting coincidences. For example, this is my second country album in a row from 1973.

This is my 18 album reviewed from 1973 (all genres) since I started this crazy journey over 10 years ago. My first was Tom Waits’ “Closing Time” back at Disc #40. I’m sure there will be more; 1973 was a good year for music.

Disc 1312 is… Honky Tonk Heroes

Artist: Waylon Jennings

Year of Release: 1973

What’s up with the Cover? A bunch of good ole boys enjoy a beer and a laugh between takes. Good times.

How I Came to Know It: I’ve known about Waylon Jennings since I was a little kid but he never punched through until my friend Ross started bringing him around and playing his music for me. That led me to this album, which features many of Waylon’s best. Thanks, Ross!

How It Stacks Up:  Waylon Jennings released over 40 studio albums in his life, but in my collection “Honky Tonk Heroes” is all by itself, and so can’t stack up. That may change soon, though.

Ratings: 5 stars

Delivering a perfect mosey is not an easy thing to do, but on “Honky Tonk Heroes” Waylon Jennings and his band do exactly that. The result is not only a country music classic, but a masterpiece by the standards of any genre.

“Honky Tonk Heroes” wanders with artful purpose. You never feel rushed but before too long (an economical 32 minutes in fact) you arrive at the end wondering where the time went but wanting nothing more than to spend it all over again.

Everything starts with the masterful writing of Billy Joe Shaver. Shaver writes or cowrites all but one of the songs on the record. He is a country music Tom Petty writing original melodies that seem so obvious you wonder how no one thought of them before. The songs are short, simple and perfect, wandering through your mind like a touring troubadour through the center of town. They are fragments expressing love and yearning and road-weary revelry, hinting at a hundred regrets and triumphs.

These songs need the right voice to deliver them, which is where Waylon Jennings comes in. He’s got the perfect combination of country warble and operatic power to pull it off. Everything seems to have more gravitas when Waylon singing it to you.

“Honky Tonk Heroes” is replete with travel songs, many of which express the hard cost of the itinerant lifestyle including “Willy the Wandering Gypsy and Me,” “Low Down Freedom,” “Omaha” and “Ain’t No God in Mexico.” They are all brilliant, managing to capture both the romantic nature of the experience along with a powerful sense of loss and regret. On “Low Down Freedom” Jennings refuses love and pays the price:

“Like them big wheels, I'll be rolling
Like them rivers, gonna flow to sea
'Cause I'd rather leave here knowing
That I made a fool of love before it made a fool of me

“Low down freedom, you've done cost me
Everything I'll ever lose
Your as empty as my pockets
From the top of where you start down to the bottom of my shoes”

And on “Omaha” he leaves home only to run afoul of the law out west:

“Rode my thumb to San Francisco, I worked down by the bay
Got some schoolin' paid for by the law
The hardest thing I learned was there ain't no easy way
To get ahead behind those county walls”

These restless songs of dubious adventure are juxtaposed masterfully with some of the sweetest songs of love and devotion in country music, including “We Had It All” and “You Asked Me To”. When Waylon says he’ll do anything his love asks him to, you know it’s a Big Deal. The man’s got the highway in his veins, and an oath to settle down (whether it sticks or not) is a big deal for him.

On top of all this, the band makes nary a misstep on the production and arrangement. The record is sparse and exact while never feeling forced. The band plays with a relaxed quality and while the songs aren’t difficult at their core, playing them with just the right sway and swagger is a big part of what raises this record to perfection. The solos are mostly just a few blue notes here and there, and you can feel everyone is having as good a time playing these tunes together as they are knocking back a few beers on the cover.

The record ends with “We Had it All,” the only song that isn’t by Billy Joe Shaver. It brings the themes together matching the memory of a perfect love that’s now just a memory. Writers Troy Seals and Donnie Fritts do the unthinkable and match Shaver’s brilliance, giving Jennings a late-record crooner with a saucy key-change to show that yes, he can do that too, thank you very much.

If you like country music, this album should be in your collection. If you don’t like country music, this album is as good a place as any to change your mind. It is the confluence of talent brought together in the right time and place to make great art; Shaver writes it, the band plays it, and Waylon makes you believe every word.

Best tracks: all tracks