Published on Aug 30, 2005
Willie Nelson is an adventurous guy who is not afraid to branch
out into new directions. But on his newest release
Countryman, he makes a wrong turn — to Jamaica.
Countryman is an album of reggae music, mostly original
tricks penned by Willie himself. But it’s reggae in name only. The
instrumentation mimics reggae style but never captures the deep
spirit of the music, with the funky drop-beats and off-handed,
lackadaisical style that colors classic reggae music watered down
to a mere shadow of their origins.
Reggae is not just a style, it’s a culture with its own deep
roots. The familiar vibrant rhythms and natural, spiritual flow are
a huge part of what makes it so powerful. Here those elements are
mimicked with some degree of skill, but lack any depth, leaving
them bland and soulless. Part of the beauty of reggae is the
organic nature of the music. This stuff sounds stiff and
lifeless.
I don’t want to dis Willie outright — he’s a talented guy who
has done a lot of great things. I’m sure this was a labor of love
for him, but I feel it was a misguided one. It’s simple enough to
cop a reggae vibe and apply it to any song, which is what this
sounds like. But it’s not reggae and it’s not country, nor is it a
clean mixture of the two. It just sounds like the same old Willie
singing to a different beat.
Case in point: the opening track, “Something To Think About.”
The mock-reggae beat sounds canned and Willie sings in an identical
manner to what he would do if the same song were done in his
typical country style. Laying a pedal-steel guitar over a dub beat
doth not reggae make. It’s too bad because the original songs
aren’t bad, they’re just played to the wrong rhythm. One of
Nelson’s originals, “Darkness On The Face Of The Earth” is a good
song that might be great if he just played it in straight-up Willie
style. As it is, it gets a sort of upbeat treatment and robs the
lyrics of their depth. The biggest flaw, really, is Nelson’s
inability to sing outside his tried and true personal style. His
simple, twangy delivery, which works so well in his own musical
realm, flattens the emotion of many of the songs. Oddly the two
songs that almost work are the two songs by reggae pioneer Jimmy
Cliff. If Willie has taken a different track, performing reggae
covers in pure country style, they probably would have been very
good.
Why anyone ever thought there would be an audience for this is
beyond me. Reggae fans will despise this and country fans probably
will likely reject it unless they smoke as much locoweed as Willie
has.
Steve Legget of Allmusic.com put it far more succinctly than I
ever could “There isn’t enough ganja in Kingston, or enough whiskey
in Nashville to make this work”.