In 2006, the poet laureate of Americana re-emerged from singular focus on his acting career to release his first album of new material in over a decade, a lean set of songs with a consciousness made for the Bush era. This CD lived in my car stereo for several months & was never far for the whole year thereafter. Its deceptive simplicity & honest poetics felt like a balm in tumultuous times. It seems like protest music was everywhere in the 2000s, & it felt a lot more accessible than during the Trump era. Only 1 song here explicitly addresses the Iraq war ("In the News": "the billion-dollar bombing of a nation on its knees/everyone not marching to their tune, they call it treason/everyone says God is on his side"), but cuts like "Pilgrim's Progress," "Wild American" & "The Burden of Freedom" shore up the album's philosophical leftist orientation.
You can blame the Dixiecrats for making conservatism part of white southern identity, to the point where people had to invent a whole new word--"Americana"--to distinguish the country music they liked from Toby Keith boot-in-your-ass bullshit, despite its blue-collar pro-union roots & the iconic status of flagrant leftists like Johnny Cash & Willie Nelson (2 of Kristofferson's bandmates in the Highwaymen supergroup). Kris's music was always on the rugged side, but here he seems especially determined to distance his album sonically from glossy radio country. The result is the most rustic production job he's ever had, more folky than honky tonk. You can hear plosive pops in the vocal mic, as well as the occasional background noise. The whole album uses a simple instrumentation: acoustic guitar, piano, upright bass, drums, & frequent harmonica. (The only exception is a bit of steel guitar that peeks its head out of the very last song, "Final Attraction.") Almost half the songs are solo acoustic tracks, just Kris & his guitar, including "Pilgrim's Progress," "Wild American," "In the News," & "Holy Creation."
The rough & ready production serves the album's themes of reflection, gratitude, & fighting till the last breath for what is right. Kris made this album at 70, & you get the feeling that he approached it as if it would be his last. He's made 4 albums since & is still kicking at 85, but back then he must have felt in the mood to sum up his life & career while he still could. The opening title tracks set the stage for reflections on the landmarks of life's journey. We get songs about the heady rush of being a young, idealistic musician ("The Show Goes On"), the birth of his children ("Holy Creation"), & just plain getting old ("The Last Thing to Go"). But although the album feels like a summation, he never sounds anywhere close to giving up or resting easy. He opens "Pilgrim's Progress" by asking "am I young enough to believe in revolution?" (a question I ask myself every day) before concluding "I want justice, but I'll settle for some mercy."
Another highlight is the slinky full-band blues number "Chase the Feeling," a song about 12-step recovery. With his trademark economy of well-chosen words, Kris digs deep into the mind of a struggling addict, presenting it with neither approbation nor judgment--he's been there too. "It takes one to know one [...] Let it take the joy you love & turn it to despair/you know you knew better, baby, you just didn't care/'cuz you were loaded again."
Not every song is a winner (I'm not a big fan of "Thank You For a Life") & Kris's voice doesn't always connect. A few times, especially on "In the News," he reaches for notes he can't quite hit, & for a lot of the record he sounds a bit wheezy & tired. But the attraction of Kris's voice was never its technical quality but rather the authenticity & emotion he brought to the performance, & the grizzled old tone only enhances that here. My minor quibbles can't negate the impact of the songwriting, or the hard-hitting brevity of this 37-minute ode to all the ups, downs & sideways detours that make up a life well-lived.
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