It was the time of the preacher...

Let's talk briefly about Willie Nelson's acting career. Very briefly. Yeah, he was pretty great in "Half Baked" playing, well, a stoned Willie Nelson. Which is to say Willie Nelson on any day you might happen to meet him. And I wouldn't admit to having seen "The Dukes of Hazzard" if you held me at gunpoint, but we all know the only REAL Uncle Jesse is Mr. Denver Pyle. Or possibly John Stamos.

But from what I can find, Willie's only star turn was in 1986's "Red Headed Stranger", a bastard version of the album I'm here to discuss co-starring Morgan Fairchild and supposed to include in its cast the Band's Levon Helm, who apparently shot himself in the leg practicing quick draw techniques for his part. How many times do I have to say it? Method acting doesn't work, people.

The movie came a brief eleven years after Nelson's concept album of the same name. Before we really get to that album, it must be mentioned that with Johnny Cash dead, Willie Nelson is a strong contender for the title of Coolest Living White Person (and anyone who says Dylan is going to get some serious glares). Hell, even Bill Hicks paused in the middle of his anti-celebrity-endorsement rant (which includes a brilliant impression of Jay Leno's Dorito ads from my youth) to give Willie a pass. Anyone else who shills, according to Bill, off the artistic roster. But Willie, well...

Inexhaustible cool aside, Willie's not necessarily what you'd call "a big ideas guy". His strength, to my mind, lies in crafting brutally short songs that impart a feeling of utter openness, utter bereavement, in under two minutes. If you've never heard the album of his early demos, recorded for other artists when he first got to Nashville because his Texan accent was deemed too unpalatable to record, you need to. It's like being punched in the guts repeatedly for forty-five minutes, with tracks like "I've Just Destroyed the World I'm Living In" and "If You Can't Undo the Wrong, Undo the Right". But as big ideas go, the first one that springs to mind is Willie's recent "Countryman" album, an hour's worth of (wince now so you're ready for it when it comes) reggae versions of his early songs. I was in the middle of a semi-regular pilgrimage to SoundGarden in Syracuse, a good hour's worth of driving, when I was first assaulted with this album and I nearly turned right around and drove home.

But "Red Headed Stranger" is indeed a concept album. The story, constructed in loose poetics, follows a preacher gone drifting after killing a woman. Bare, stripped and haunting, the album is almost entirely rendered by Nelson on lead and backing vocals, acoustic and piano. Nelson produced the album himself, having left Nashville for Austin after his home in Tennessee burned down. Columbia Records was wary of releasing such a sparse country album in the mid-seventies, when most country had drifted even further towards an electrified Bakersfield sound, but Nelson, along with fellow Highwayman Waylon Jennings, pushed them on it and the album was a commercial and critical success. Country Music Television recently named the the greatest country album of all time, and if you can't trust CMT, who can you trust?

(Huh, I just checked that list, which I had to find on a Shania Twain fan forum and DAMN, CMT! Putting Ray Charles's "Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music" at number two? Pure balls! Not to mention completely defensible. I'll talk more about Modern Sounds later, but number two? Man, that's likely to get the head honchos at CMT lynched. In your face, Garth Brooks. And Chris Gaines. The folks on the Shania forum were pretty pissed, too. Ms. Twain doesn't show up til number eight. Also of note, former 120 Minutes host, Matt Pinfield was on the panel as a "music historian". That guy just makes me chuckle.)

My first encounter with the "Red Headed Stranger" predates my country music listening days: snippets of the album's recurring "Time of the Preacher" theme haunt the first issue of the DC Comics series "Preacher", which remains one of the more entertaining runs of a comic book you're likely to find. "Haunt" is certainly the right word: borne on Nelson's reedy tenor backed only with sparse guitar playing, the theme floats in and out of the album like an inescapable memory, trading dance steps with the main narrative of the title character so that the past and present crimes weave gently together. The entire first side of the album constitutes an elaborate murder ballad that abandons the standard trope of including the killer's capture and punishment in the narrative and shrugs off the idea of rule by law with the almost rueful line, "You can't hang a man for killing a woman who's trying to steal his horse." By the time the shooting rolls around, the title character is so detached from society at this point, the listener doubts the little town he's rolled into could punish him if they wanted to, they're left to only hope "maybe he'll ride on again." Unlike the usual perpetrators in murder ballads (think "Cocaine Blues"'s Willie Lee or Tom Dooley"), the punishment doesn't come from society, the punishment is a kind of exile from society. The Red Headed Stranger, no longer a preacher, floats nameless through towns that cannot and will not hold him, separated from his fellow man by his past crimes, but not the noble outsider of the traditional western or the image of "the Outlaw" Nelson and his fellow Highwaymen affected. A pariah, diminished.

The album's second half offers the hope of redemption and reattachment. The title character meets a woman in Denver who grounds him once again. The pair dance across two instrumental arrangements before the plaintive "Can I Sleep in Your Arms?" Granted, the narrative falls apart a bit here, softening the hard and cold edges of the album's first half, but the sweetness of songs like "Can I Sleep in Your Arms" and "Hand on the Wheel" are effective in painting an image of the title character slowly and carefully rising out of a period of emotional numbness, returning to reality.

The brilliance of the album lies in its restraint, both lyrically and sonically. The narrative never dominates and the set pieces can easily stand alone. The one possible misstep is the upbeat honkytonk number, "Down Yonder", which serves as the couple's second dance. The plunking piano seems out of place between the gentle "O'er the Waves" and "Can I Sleep in Your Arms", but aside from that, the album drifts over the listener with the slow cadence of the best westerns. None of which include Morgan Fairchild.