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Teatro That ol' buzzard Willie Nelson, who was born back in 1933, has been banging around this world for a long time. His list of accomplishments would be a small encyclopedia unto themselves: actor in dozens of popular movies, President of Farm-Aid, relentless touring musician (remember "On the Road Again"?), member of the mega-selling Highwaymen (with Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson), Kennedy Center Hall of Fame and Grammy Award winner, and a songwriter with one of the most impressive catalogues of all time. If you count everything with his name stamped on it, the living legend has over 200 albums to his credit. With that much wealth, what's one more little album? Enter Daniel Lanois, a respected producer who is attributed with helping aging rockers reinvent themselves for the nineties. Artists like Emmylou Harris, the Neville Brothers, and Bob Dylan. Partnering with Nelson, Lanois has again lent his considerable talents to create an album with his trademark production techniques. A little reverb, some deep spaciousness in the tracks, and a whole lot of moody warmth later, and Willie Nelson emerges like a phoenix from the ashes of otherwise routine Country and Western music. Teatro is not a Country and Western album, however. Throughout his career, Nelson has always been an innovative risk-taker combining the best of many musical forms into a signature, purely American, sound. Like the old song says, "A little bit country, a little bit rock and roll," and Nelson is all that plus a few heap loads of blues, gospel, pop, and Tex-Mex besides. Teatro's sound is a stripped-down to bare essentials mix with Nelson's vocals as the clear centerpiece. His voice is unmistakably his own: clean crooning (with just a touch of nasality) that ranges somewhere between Hank Williams's braggadocio and Frank Sinatra's swagger. Nelson may be heading down the hill into his seventies, but he still sounds great. And country star Emmylou Harris provides a nearly ubiquitous presence by singing the BGV's on nearly all of these tracks. The music that backs him up consists of the breezy interplay of complimentary guitars, including acoustic, electric and slide; the occasional harmonica lick, a wash of various keyboards, including both a Wurlitzer and Hammond B-3 in addition to pianos, and the peppiest of all percussion works. In fact, if there was only one contribution that Lanois can clearly be credited with here, it's the insightful inclusion of percussion galore on an album that transcends the standard two-four time country stomp. Then, again this is not a Country and Western album. Nelson has always wrote accessible, comfort songs for the brokenhearted and downtrodden. Far from straying from what he's legendary for, Teatro finds him lending his rich, brooding and masterful melodies to the expected suitable arrangements. About half of them are Nelson originals from the early to mid-sixties before he rose to fame with breakthrough albums like 1973's Shotgun Willie. During that time, he was facing a difficult divorce to his first wife, and the pain associated with such a parting is played out in countless tracks, such as "I Never Cared for You," "My Own Peculiar Way" and the lounge inspired highlight "Home Motel." Nelson also shows his infamous sinister side most clearly on a sweetly delivered song called "I Just Can't Let You Say Good-bye," where obsession is played out to a chilling conclusion. It was beautiful yet disturbing songs like this one that helped earn him the reputation as a genial outlaw. But these darker periods are also balanced by songs of more innocence, and Nelson's retake of his 1962 number, "Three Days," proves to be one of the album's lighter and brighter moments: Three days that
I dread to see arrive The new material, which covers similar themes of loss and love, serves seamlessly beside the revamped older tunes in a collection that makes for a consistently compelling listen from one end to the other. With over forty years of recording history, Nelson still sounds like the Rodney Dangerfield of American music: a man who "can't get any respect" from the women he has loved and lost. This lonesome refrain echoes throughout his songs, as it does on the catchy highlight, "Somebody Pick Up My Pieces": Well, I sure
thought I had her Nelson also continues his ongoing tradition of more spiritually-oriented material with a cover of Daniel Lanois's "The Maker," which serves as the album's rollicking gospel number. Plus, the album opens with the Emile Stern and Henri LeMarchand instrumental "Ou Es-Tu, Mon Amour? (Where are You, My Love?)" and ends with an instrumental note of unbridled but bittersweet joy with the Nelson original "Annie." Teatro takes its name for the Oxnard, California, studio and former Mexican movie house where it was recorded. Given the impressive talent within those walls, it's no surprise that magical moments were poured into the recording of these performances. The man often referred to as the Red Haired Stranger is saying good-bye to the nineties with one of his best albums to date, and is well situated to conquer the next century when he celebrates his fiftieth year in the recording industry. Steven S. Baldwin 10/17/99
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