The Road Goes on Forever

Description

This is the remastered reissue with never-before-heard
song “If He Came Back Again” and five additional unreleased demos.
Don Was, the producer who transformed Bonnie Raitt from cult hero to pop star,
tried to jump-start the stalled careers of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings
by producing their recent albums, Across the Borderline and Waymore’s Blues
(Part II), respectively. This resulted in two artistic triumphs but no hits.
That didn’t deter Nelson and Jennings from hiring Was to produce their album
with Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson as the Highwaymen. The Road Goes on
Forever is easily the best of the three Highwaymen albums, even if changing
radio tastes will probably doom it to the poorest sales of the three. The two
earlier releases, 1985’s Highwaymen and 1990’s Highwaymen 2, were thrown
together as if the sheer star power of the four singers could carry the
project. Both albums had their exciting moments when everything clicked but
both also had a lot of filler. By contrast, Was approached the new recording
as if every song and every arrangement had to be good enough to be a single.
He picked one obscure but terrific composition from each of the four singers
and supplemented them with equally strong material from four of Texas’s best
songwriters–Steve Earle, Billy Joe Shaver, Robert Earl Keen Jr., and Stephen
Bruton. Nelson’s harmonica ace Mickey Raphael and Kristofferson’s singing
buddy Billy Swan are joined by top L.A. session pros like keyboardist Benmont
Tench and drummer Kenny Aronoff to create a sound that has the twangy picking
of old-fashioned country and the fat bottom of modern pop. The result is an
album with everything: first-rate material, grade-A playing, and inimitable
singing. The thread that ties Nelson, Jennings, Cash, and Kristofferson
together is the crustiness of their voices (a honey-voiced singer like George
Jones or Don Gibson would seem out of place in this crowd); when they sing
Shaver’s “(I’m Going To) Live Forever,” they sound as if they’re more than
halfway there. The Highwaymen are so naturally hard-bitten and world-weary
that they can slip a little sentiment into a song without spoiling it. They
use this to great advantage on the album’s two great outlaw songs, Earle’s
“The Devil’s Right Hand” and Keen’s title tune; the gruff tales of violence
lead up to a sobering admission of the price paid for such a life. That same
gruffness allows the Highwaymen to sing two religious meditations, Jennings’s
“I Do Believe” and Cash’s “Death and Hell,” without once sounding
sanctimonious. –Geoffrey Himes

Features:

Product Details:

• Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Product Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.88 x 5.55 x 0.47 inches; 3.32 Ounces
• Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ Universal Music Group
• Item model number ‏ : ‎ 2133745
• Original Release Date ‏ : ‎ 2005
• Date First Available ‏ : ‎ January 30, 2007
• Label ‏ : ‎ Universal Music Group
• Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1