Willie Nelson to sing reggae, but he wanna go home when daylight come

I've always enjoyed Willie Nelson's reedy voice but I hadn't bought any of his albums until recently when I got a best-of CD after listening to the Pet Shop Boys' dancetronic rendition of "Always on my mind." I might just decide to buy his new album once it comes out...

Jul 10, 2005 Willie Nelson to Release Reggae Album
By JOHN GEROME Associated Press Writer
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Willie Nelson is so prolific that sometimes even he forgets he has another record coming out. At a recent show here with Bob Dylan, Nelson performed a long list of hits, but not a single song from his new long-awaited reggae album. "I keep forgetting," Nelson said a few days later by telephone from the road, which he's called home for most of the last 30 years. "The set is so short." Nelson is indeed releasing a new reggae album, "Countryman," out Tuesday, and, at least sporadically, he's been working some of the songs into his shows. He began work on the album in 1995 for Island Records, but the project was shelved after Universal bought Polygram, and Island founder Chris Blackwell left the company. It languished until Nelson moved to Lost Highway Records. Produced by Don Was, who's worked with the Rolling Stones and Bonnie Raitt among others, the album includes reggae versions of Nelson songs such as "Darkness On the Face of the Earth" and "One in a Row." There also are covers of Jimmy Cliff's "The Harder They Come" and "Sitting in Limbo," and a song called "I'm a Worried Man" by Johnny and June Carter Cash that Nelson recorded as a duet with Toots Hibbert of Toots and the Maytals. "When he (Cash) found out I was doing a reggae album, he said, 'Hey, I've got a reggae song that I wrote when I lived there,'" Nelson recalled. "Toots heard it and liked it." That Nelson's country songs stand up so well to reggae's offbeat syncopation and upstroke guitar strums is a testament to their durability. Nelson said he recorded them about 10 years ago in Los Angeles with Jamaican musicians, including some from the late reggae star Peter Tosh's band. "The musicians told me that reggae was invented really by listening to country music coming from the United States. They put their own rhythms to those tunes," he said... At 72, Nelson continues to record and perform at a breakneck pace. He believes his best record is still ahead of him. "I feel like we're doing one now that's going to be better than anything else we've ever done," he said.

On an unrelated note, Cylon muscians on break from their relentless pursuit of the Battlestar Galactica jammed to a sellout crowd of naked Lt. Sharon Valerii robot clones on occupied-Caprica. Sets included New Order's "Bizarre Love Triangle," U2's "I still haven't found what I'm looking for" and The Beatles' "Love Me Do."