The Troublemaker

Sound DNA

• Folk
• Traditional Folk

• stripped-back
• serene
• spiritual

About

Recorded in early 1973 but not released until late 1976, <i>The Troublemaker</i> is in some ways one of the earliest examples of Willie Nelson doing his own peculiar “Willie Nelson thing.” Born from a conversation with the famed R&B producer and Atlantic Records executive Jerry Wexler—who’d helped out Aretha Franklin with a not dissimilar project called <i>Amazing Grace</i>—the album is, in some ways, a relatively straight collection of the hymns Nelson had sung as a kid: “Uncloudy Day,” “In the Garden,” “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” and so forth. But as the musical reminiscence of a now-minted outlaw who’d left Nashville to carve his own idiosyncratic path, <i>The Troublemaker</i>—like a lot of Nelson’s great albums—doubles as a subtle argument about what tradition is, and how it can work. Country and gospel had always been linked, with country maintaining its spiritual side, even as the genre drifted from its rural roots into more cosmopolitan territory. The point of <i>The Troublemaker</i>—however unconsciously made—was to not only nurture that connection, but also remind audiences that the Biblical teachings of Jesus had a more hippieish tint than either the progressive left or the religious right seemed willing to admit. Nelson was a uniter; that’s what he did. That such a sentiment should occur to Nelson in the early 1970s, during the horror of the Vietnam War, just goes to show that some gestures of protest are more—shall we say—poetic than others. “He’s rejected the establishment completely/I know for sure he’s never held a job/He just goes from town to town, stirring up young folks/’Til they’re nothing but a disrespectful mob,” he sings on the title track. Makes you think, don’t it? And should you note the bright and chiming piano, that’s Nelson’s sister Bobbie, who was joining him for the first time.

via Apple Music

Tracklist

Credits