Twisted Willie
(Justice)

by Grant Alden

I got this phone call kind of late one weeknight from Randall Jamail, and it was later in Houston where he was calling from. He wanted to tell me that Kelley Deal and Kris Kristofferson were going to be recording Willie Nelson's "Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground" together, and that instead of a drummer they were sampling a sewing machine, and he said some other stuff that didn't altogether make sense (Kristofferson singing through a distortion pedal?) but sounded like a good enough idea anyway.

Randall owns a handful of patents, runs Justice Records, and produced the entire Twisted Willie affair. He really only knows I exist because a national magazine hired me to go hang out in a Seattle studio one night with him and Johnny Cash, Kim Thayil, Krist Novoselic and Sean Kinney while they recorded "Time Of The Preacher." And then a couple days later to watch Mark Lanegan and friends record "She's Not For You."

Sometimes this is a good way to make a living.

Anyway, I appreciated the phone call. Randall had some business to discuss, but mostly I think he wanted to share the wonder of the mad stew he found himself stirring.

Just to get it out of the way, here are the final ingredients: Johnny Cash (backed by members of Soundgarden, Nirvana and Alice In Chains), L7 with Waylon Jennings, Tenderloin, Supersuckers, Mark Lanegan (the Screaming Tree, backed by Mike Johnson of Dinosaur, jr., Barrett Martin from the Trees, Dan Peters from Mudhoney, and violinist Dave Krueger); The Presidents of the United States of America, Jerry Cantrell (the guitar player from Alice In Chains), Best Kissers In the World, Jello Biafra with Life After Life (who?), Waylon Jennings, The Reverend Horton Heat, Gas Huffer, Steel Pole Bathtub, Jesse Dayton, X, and Kelley Deal with Kris Kristofferson.

Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, does it? Ah, but it does.

The prominence of Seattle bands has a lot to do with the fact that the original idea for this project was hatched by Supersuckers' manager (and ex-Best Kisser) Danny Bland, because the 'Suckers had taken to opening their shows with "Whiskey River." But there's another point being made here. Jamail – and Willie Nelson, for that matter, who appears on several tracks – wanted to make clear the cultural connection between the outlaws Willie lead down Austin way in the '70s, and the outsiders who came to prominence in this last and most publicly adored wave of punk, much of which originated in Seattle.

Rock, and especially its post-punk offspring, has fallen in love with the auteur, the singer-songwriter. Bands don't regularly solicit songs from outside their sacred circle except in times of utter stagnation, and cover (as opposed to interpreting) songs more for cultural resonance than because they just felt like playing that tune. It is also possible to rise to prominence in rock these days without having served an apprenticeship as a sideman, or in a suburban cover band.

On the surface, though, Willie Nelson shouldn't be that daunting a singer-songwriter to adapt, what with his half-octave range and all. Yeah, well . . . Willie writes – at least for his own use – a kind of beat poetry, a loose jazz cadence in which the syllables go uncounted and sort of collect in random increments that make sense if Willie Nelson's singing them. Even Johnny Cash had trouble with parts of "Time of the Preacher."

So for many of the younger musicians this is an uncertain exercise.

And mostly they pull it off. To begin at the end, "Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground" is brilliant, a smokey Sonic Youth kind of dissipation wrung tired and spent through a song that feels like that anyway. Cash & Co.'s opening "Time Of The Preacher" neatly balances – no mean trick – Cash's classic vocals against Thayil's muted guitar screams.

Tracks in between alternate between quiet, more or less faithful reinterpretations and boisterous, outlandish revisions. Lanegan's acoustic "She's Not For You," recorded live, is gorgeous. Jerry Cantrell's "I've Seen All This World I Care To See" is (honestly, and I don't much care for his band) a revelation; sad, sensitive, revealing a voice of startling promise. And the Patsy Cline break L7 interject in the midst of a cacophonous "Three Days" is a whole other kind of surprise. If the prejudice is that punk (or grunge, or whatever) is only for musicians unable to carry a tune, those three tracks alone ought to dispel that myth.

Tenderloin's "Shotgun Willie" is gloriously ramshackle, and the Best Kissers' "Pick Up The Tempo" is way over the top; both could either stop, start, or be the soundtrack to a bar-clearing rumble. Jesse Dayton is an otherwise fairly conventional country hooligan who records for Justice, so maybe his addition here is suspect. Except he turns in a mutant "Sad Songs And Waltzes," full of treated vocals and subtle mayhem, that single-handedly makes the case for the whole project.

Of course it doesn't all work. The Presidents Of The United States Of America (predictably) have too much fun with "Devil In A Sleeping Bag"; I'd probably like it fine on their record, but it doesn't fit here. Waylon Jenning's "I Never Cared For You" is so straight-forward it seems oddly out of place. X, perhaps the most obvious choice for this collection, add surprisingly little to "Home Motel," and The Rev. Horton Heat can't summon the slightest hint of pathos for "Hello Walls," even with Willie chiming in. Oddly, the 'Suckers "Bloody Mary Morning" goes by without a trace. I think they were originally going to do "Whiskey River," which plays more to their strengths.

But remember the point here was to find a way not to make another tribute album, and to suggest connections between musical camps widely believed to be oblivious to each other's existence. And, though nobody's said as much, perhaps Twisted Willie is also intended to suggest that Nelson's songs are more durable and flexible than his status as an aging country outlaw might otherwise imply.

Played as an extended essay on the possibilities of music, created at a time when the genres and subgenres of pop music are becoming increasingly Balkanized, Twisted Willie is an enormously sophisticated and ambitious project.

But does it have an audience?

How many of Willie's long-time fans will be able to see the humor in L7's track? How many of the Johnny Cash fans who sat on their hands during Mark Lanegan's opening set last fall will be receptive to his rich and haunting voice? And how many Alice In Chains fans will appreciate how good the Jerry Cantrell track is, and why it makes sense?
Time will tell. We're straddling the same two worlds, Twisted Willie and me. The record comes out the end of January. Meanwhile, my neighbors are going to have to get used to it.

WHISKEYTOWN
Faithless Street
Mood Food

"I'll ride with you tonight, I'll ride forever/There's no way to predict this kind of weather." It's the kind of opening line that sets a tone, sticks with you, serves as a harbinger that something significant is looming on the horizon.

That something is Whiskeytown, whose debut long-player Faithless Street is the best debut album of the year. As word starts getting around about this "alternative-country" thang and folks begin to look beyond the Wilcos and the Son Volts and the Bottle Rockets for further proof that similarly-styled young bands are coming out of nowhere, this Raleigh, North Carolina, outfit is at the top of the list.

Front and center is Ryan Adams, who's barely past drinking age but clearly has that innate gift for songwriting that separates the real-deals from the also-rans. The irresistibly infectious rockers "Drank Like A River" and "If He Can't Have You" are instant winners, the former coming on with a riff in the chorus that's like Wilco's "Casino Queen" squared. "Faithless Street" – a retitled remake of the title tune from the 7-inch "Angels" EP from earlier this year – and "Black Arrow, Bleeding Heart" indicate Adams has nearly as talented a touch with ballads. "Mining Town" is an effortlessly engaging slice of lazy acoustic pop; the leadoff cut "Midway Park" is more subtle but slowly, surely emerges as the best cut on the disc.

If great songs were the only element, this would still be a solid record, but Adams' bandmates are no slouches themselves. Caitlin Cary plays a mean fiddle that adds a churning urgency to the rockers and a lamenting lilt to the ballads; she's also a fine singer, offering vitally spunky harmonies on "Drank Like A River" and taking a Freakwater-esque lead on "Matrimony". And the pedal steel playing of Bob Rickers is an essential element on mid-tempo cuts such as "Too Drunk To Dream" and guitarist Phil Wandscher's "What May Seem Like Love".

Things begin to wear down in the final stretch, as the rave-ups "Hard Luck Story", "Top Dollar" and "Oklahoma" sound like bar-band knockoffs compared to what's up-front. But by then it hardly matters; it's merely the difference between a great album and a full-on classic. Me, I'll settle for great, particularly from a band I hadn't even heard of six months ago. Here's hoping that's no longer the case for the majority of alternative-rock fans six months hence: Faithless Street demands to be heard.

– PETER BLACKSTOCK