Willie Nelson’s new album (his 77th solo studio album and his 154th album overall) is an album that focuses on the songs of Rodney Crowell, the latest in Nelson’s storied history of focusing entire albums on a single songwriter’s work.

Willie Nelson and Rodney Crowell are two Texas singer-songwriters whose careers have intersected often since Crowell first heard Nelson’s earliest songs on the radio and saw his shows in Houston in the mid-1960s. Willie first recorded a Rodney Crowell song in 1983 and last did so 40 years later for 2024’s The Border.

Produced by Nelson’s longtime collaborator Buddy Cannon and featuring an amazing backing band of Nashville gunslingers accompanying Nelson’s vocals and inspired guitar work on Trigger, the album handpicks 12 songs from the last 50 years, including the title track as a duet between Nelson and Crowell.

From early tracks like 1976’s “Banks Of The Old Bandera” (recorded by Jerry Jeff Walker) and 1981’s “Shame On The Moon” (a hit for Bob Seger) to 90s tracks like “What Kind Of Love,“ (co-written by Will Jennings based on a Roy Orbison melody), “Stuff That Works” (co-written with Guy Clark), from early 2000’s cuts written for hit albums by Keith Urban and Tim McGraw to four cuts from Crowell’s beloved 2010s albums and a cut released as recently as 2021.

1. What Kind Of Love
2. Banks Of The Old Bandera
3. The Fly Boy & The Kid
4. Forty Miles From Nowhere
5. I Wouldn’t Be Me Without You
6. Making Memories Of Us
7. Oh What A Beautiful World (with Rodney Crowell)
8. Open Season On My Heart
9. Shame On The Moon
10. She’s Back In Town
11. Still Learning How To Fly
12. Stuff That Works

This certified ageless voice, dedicated, impassioned and simply beautiful opens his new recording opens his new recording on the free flowing twang of What Kind Of Love and the gently harmonica-driven Banks Of The Old Bandera, and then we get the playful bounce of The Fly Boy & The Kid, an emotively sculpted Forty Miles From Nowhere, before both the loving storytelling of I Wouldn’t Be Me Without You and the pleasingly smooth Making Memories Of Us are brought forth.

With the album out Friday, just before Nelson’s 92nd birthday on April 29th, 2025, next up is the jaunty harmonica title track Oh What A Beautiful World (with Rodney Crowell), which is itself backed seamlessly by the beautifully sumptuous ballad Open Season On My Heart, the serenely ornate Shame On The Moon, the bluesy piano piece She’s Back In Town, the album rounding out on the all-embracing Still Learning How To Fly, closing on the Americana, troubadour-hued ebb and flow of Stuff That Works.

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