What I have been listening to : The Highwaymen

I don't know that I have much to add on the death of Kris Kristofferson. He did write Sunday Morning Coming Down which in my mind may be the greatest Country Music song ever. He was great in Blade (I bring this up because that was the headline on my targeted social media which in many ways might be what he is best known for among Gen Xrs).

But I do think this gives me the opportunity to talk about the Highwaymen- the 80s country supergroup which consisted of Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings So when I was a young teen, I spent a lot of time around my aunt who worked at a factory that published magazines. So I always read every month a number of history magazines and Country Music magazine. Now, I am not a huge country fan, though I would probably have perused it regardless. 

The thing is late 80s Country Music was pretty great. After the Urban Cowboy fad but before Garth Brooks, even the top acts like Randy Travis, Shenandoah, and The Judds were good But I read about the stars of the day - a glimpse of Magazine covers online shows they were writing about Dwight Yoakum, Jo-El Sonnier, John Anderson, Rodney Crowell, Emmylou Harris, Jerry Jeff Walker, Steve Earle, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Riders in the Sky and many more. These artists were at worst, incredibly interesting and at best, some of my favorite artists to this day Not to mention a list of legends they would also cover like Nelson, Cash, Dolly Parton, Roger Miller, Bill Monroe, Webb Pierce and the Stanley Brothers to name a few. 

Yes, I think those days of Crowell, Earle and Yoakum were the best of country radio, probably until present day when we finally have the airways filled with Zach Bryan, Chris Stapleton and Eric Church. But one band I really loved in those days were the Highwaymen Although they are meme heroes of a time “long gone”, I don't know that people really love their albums. And that's okay. They are definitely of a production of their day. No Rick Rubin- this is 80s AOR with synthesizers. The songs themselves for the most part are not particularly outstanding- outside of the band's singles. 

The band gets Wilbury comparisons but as song performances and writing goes- it's typical 80s Nashville fare. Even by the time the second album came out in 1990, it sounded dated. But I don't care, I really love the Highwaymen albums. I think part of it may be that teenage me might have seen Johnny Cash as the badass that Rick Rubin would later make him out to be. Which is probably true. 

Though the album is slickly produced to 21st Century ears- that outlaw image whether it was from Willie and Merle's 1983 Pancho and Lefty album, Waylon narrating the Dukes of Hazard or Kris and Johnny portraying Jesse and Frank James in the 1986 TV movie was alive. And it was alive to me as a kid who had no concept of 70s classic albums like The Red Headed Stranger or Wanted! the Outlaws and too contemporary to notice artists like Steve Earle, David Allen Coe and Guy Clark were taking those 70s artists (and drawing from classic country artists like Loretta Lynn and George Jones) to really birth that into a completely new genre. Earlier this year, I began revisiting this supergroup a lot. 

I think most people know of the first two records (1985 and 1990) but there is a third 1995s The Road Goes on Forever. It is interesting of course that at this point (though record buyers wouldn’t have known it at the time) Cash is working with Rubin, Waylon and Willie are working with Don Was (and making albums that hold up in retrospect - Waymore's Blues-Part 2 and Across the Borderline); but dropping yourself into 1995, no one is talking about any of this (and Kristofferson is acting full time). It's not a bad album with Steve Earle's “Devil's Right Hand”, Frazier and Owens (and Elvis's) “True Love Travels A Gravel Road” and the Robert Earl Keen title track, but the band is no longer on Columbia, instead on Liberty ( a Capitol Records label). 

Listening in now, there's no obvious single on the third album like the first two, and more importantly, the label folds shortly after. Which leaves a record that if not a must have, is surely a nice hidden gem. There is also a live album from a 1990 tour called “Live- American Outlaws” which was released in 2016 and got a slimmed down re-release this year as “Live from Nassau Coliseum” with a track list focusing on “Silver Stallion” - their single at that time- and the four performing their most famous individual songs as a group.