Who'll Buy My Memories? Vol 2 The IRS Tapes

Sound DNA

• Folk
• Traditional Folk

• stripped-back
• intimate
• smoky

About

It’s hard to know if Willie Nelson <i>really</i> believed the solemn, bare-bones recordings that make up 1992’s <i>The IRS Tapes: Who’ll Buy My Memories?</i> would help settle his $32 million back-tax bill. But hey, the album certainly didn’t hurt: Nelson’s public showdown with the government was heavily covered in the media, and sales of some of his older, more mainstream works spiked around the time of <i>The IRS Tapes</i>’ release, including songs like “Always on My Mind” and “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before,” and albums like <i>Willie Nelson Sings Kristofferson</i> and the <i>Honeysuckle Rose</i> soundtrack. The material that made up <i>The IRS Tapes</i> was nowhere near as commercial as those earlier works. There are no big hits or obvious picks here, and even the songs more casual listeners might know—“Yesterday’s Wine,” “Opportunity to Cry,” “Slow Down Old World”—sound sparer than he’d ever sounded before. (The Columbia Records executive Bruce Lundvall had famously—OK semi-famously—worried that <i>Red Headed Stranger</i> sounded like it’d been recorded in someone’s living room; you wonder what he would have thought of this.) Still, it’s a beautiful album, and a reminder that for all the connections Nelson drew between country, jazz, folk, and pop, one of his greatest legacies is the ability to make something so informal sound so complete. And the mythic resonance of his fight with the taxman only added to the album’s appeal: Here he stood, the Lone American, facing down the Man. Another artist might’ve put on a big show. But that wasn’t Willie’s style.

via Apple Music

Tracklist

Credits