#LAST MAN SITTING WITH FULL#

With its understanding of life as something that is both evanescent and reverberant, Last Man Standing picks up in the territory where last year’s God’s Problem Child left off: The closing song, “He Won’t Ever Be Gone,” was a tribute to a fallen friend, Merle Haggard.

“There’s hope in the new album,” says Buddy Cannon.

#LAST MAN SITTING WITH FULL#

Last Man Standing is full of both lively beauty and hard truth, but it also offers grace notes. We live until we die - you, me, Willie Nelson, everybody - and will go through loving and harsh realities that don’t hesitate. He does something rather different that digs deeper: He demonstrates that every new season, every new night, offers a way forward with fresh promises - maybe joyous, maybe hurtful - until the end. Willie Nelson doesn’t preach or chide he doesn’t even claim the wisdom of his years as an exemplar for us all. Perhaps no other American artist unifies so many disparate listeners across a troubled land in this time. Nelson’s perseverance is not only extraordinary but heartening. He still performs something like one hundred shows per year, and records and releases an average of two top-rate albums per year.

The song is a wry concession to an overshadowing truth that accompanies Willie Nelson and his music every step at this stage of his life: He’s an 84-year-old man who is one of America’s most preternaturally active and creative artists, and he keeps on going. After a moment’s consideration, he adds: “On second thought, maybe I do.” Willie Nelson doesn’t want to be the last man standing, he declares on the title track of this new album, comprising songs co-written with producer Buddy Cannon.

Last man sitting with