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Album Details

• Artist: Willie Nelson
• Album: Countryman
• Label: Lost Highway
• Year of Release: 2005
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: dscanland on 2006-10-03

Willie Nelson doing reggae doesn't sound near as funny as Alan Jackson doing reggae. Why is this? Is it Willie's open use of pot that makes this connection quite easy to make? Do hippies and Jamaicans have a lot in common? Regardless, Countryman is quite an interesting album. It's been in the works for almost a decade, originally slated for Island Records, but ultimately being released on the newer roots label Lost Highway. Now if you can imagine Willie singing over some heavy dub then you might be able to imagine this album. The hard thing to get over is the slide guitar right beside the dub. On a few tracks it works. I enjoyed "Darkness On The Face Of The Earth" with the great backing vocals. Don Was should be mentioned for his impressive production work. This couldn't have been an easy task. Toots Hibbert (Toots and the Maytals) makes an appearance to give Nelson a little more reggae credibility, on a cover of Johnny Cash's "I'm A Worried Man", probably one of Countryman's better songs. I think this album would be best absorbed one song at a time. After listening to the whole album I really did tire of this country/reggae combination. But, on a one-off, most of these songs would go down nicely.

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