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WILLIE NELSON
Rainbow Connection
Island
Here's another connection between two secret sharers: Bob Dylan and
Willie Nelson both convince you they just did whatever they did off
the top of their heads. That's why Nelson's two big statements of
the '90s--1993's Don Was-produced Across the Borderline and 1997's
Daniel Lanois-produced Teatro--lack the magic of the austere
Spirit, the instrumental Night and Day, or even the casual
remakes on last year's unnoticed Me and the Drummer. And it's why this
half-assed half-kiddie album hits harder than last year's concept-controlled
Milk Cow Blues. Named after and leading with a Kermit
the Frog favorite, it tosses off many other gems this great lover
of American song never got around to telling us about before as it
works its way to Mickey Newbury's funereal "The Thirty-Third of
August." But for all the charms of "I'm My Own Grandpa" and "Just
Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)," each
delivered with a canny guilelessness that cuts through the silly
and the pretentious with equal ease, the summation is one Willie
wrote himself last year: "If we're backin' up it's just to get a
runnin' start/'cuz everything we do we do with all our hearts/and
it don't really matter what they say/we wouldn't have it any other
way."
Rolling Stone, 2001
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