Notes & Personnel Info |  | Personnel includes: Willie Nelson (vocals, acoustic & electric guitar); Dan Dugmore (acoustic & steel guitars); Jody Payne (guitar, background vocals); Bill Evans (saxophone); Bobbie Nelson, (piano); Jim Cox (keyboards); Glenn Worf (bass); Chad Cromwell (drums); Sheryl Crow, Toby Keith, Lee Ann Womack, Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora, Ray Price, Hank Williams III, Keith Richards, Norah Jones, Aaron Neville, Brian McNight, Patty Griffin, Matchbox Twenty, Emmylou Harris, Ryan Adams, Family, Vince Gill. | | Personnel: Jody Payne (guitar, background vocals); Jackie King (guitar); Richard Bennett (acoustic guitar, electric guitar); Dan Dugmore (acoustic guitar, steel guitar); Mickey Raphael (harmonica); Bill Evans (saxophone); Bobbie Nelson (piano); Jim Cox (keyboards); Chad Cromwell (drums); Paul English (snare drum); Billy Gene English (percussion); Robert Bailey, Jr. , Vicki Hampton, Kim Fleming (background vocals). | | Audio Mixer: Chuck Ainlay. | | Recording information: Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, TN (05/27/2002). | | Photographer: Rahav Segev. | | Willie Nelson's superstar guest album from 2002, The Great Divide, was promoted by a star-studded concert released later that year as Willie Nelson & Friends: Stars & Guitars. Some of the guests that fit well include Patty Griffin, Ray Price, Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow, and Vince Gill. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine | | Superstar guest albums are the bane of the veteran artist. Designed to introduce a new audience to a legend via duets with a variety of stars, they never do justice to the artist, their music, or even the guests who leap at the opportunity to record with an idol. So, you wind up with albums by John Lee Hooker and Santana that don't sound like albums by Hooker and Santana -- just an ad-hoc collection of marketing moves, good intentions, and bad ideas. Willie Nelson, a singer who always sounds unique, even fell prey to this curse on 2002's flop The Great Divide, which was promoted by a star-studded concert later released that year as Willie Nelson & Friends: Stars & Guitars. This live show has one advantage over the studio set: it sounds like Willie Nelson music. Ironically, it has even more guests that distract from the man himself, sounding like an open mic night where anybody with a record contract who happened to be in town could climb on stage with the legend. Perhaps everybody here loves Willie, and some are surely even influenced by him, but there's no rhyme or reason to who is featured here, and while some fit well -- Patty Griffin, Ray Price, Emmylou Harris, Sheryl Crow, Vince Gill among them -- many are downright bewildering or irritating. Ryan Adams twice reveals himself as a posturing blowhard, Norah Jones sounds sweet but out of place, Rob Thomas and Matchbox Twenty might be getting better all the time but share no affinity with Willie's music, and on and on. Perhaps the best illustration of why this doesn't work is Toby Keith's Waylon Jennings impersonation on "Good Hearted Woman," where he copies the classic Waylon & Willie phrasing down to the toss-off cry of "Willie" when handing off the verse. It's studied and kind of affectionate, but there is none of the chemistry between most of the guests and Willie -- the kind he had with Waylon, or countless others that he's performed duets with over the years. Even worse, most of the artists are so confined to their own style, they can't roll with Nelson's idiosyncrasies, which are always engaging. Listen to the last two songs, "On the Road Again" and "Move It on Over," performed by just Willie and the band. They've done these songs countless times over the years, but they sound fresher, livelier than anything else here, and it's hard not to think that a real tribute would be a live show cut at any other night in 2002 than this well-intentioned star-soaked dud. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine | | Considering STARS & GUITARS's pop idol-heavy list of guests, one might expect the album to be just a live retread of Willie Nelson's 2002 studio effort, THE GREAT DIVIDE. Fortunately, unlike that album, which attempted to fit the artist into the same pop box that helped Carlos Santana out of a career slump, this is ol' Willie's show through and through. As anyone who has seem him live knows, Nelson's onstage personality is such a powerful force of nature, no one can hope to tame it. STARS AND GUITARS shows, once again, that though Willie Nelson is capable of playing any type of music he chooses, his musical personality is so strong that most guest artists can only hobble along behind him, thanking their lucky stars for the opportunity. Notable exceptions are Willie's contemporaries Ray Price and Aaron Neville, both of whom make the reasons for their legendary status abundantly clear. Overall, the album has the relaxed feel of a jam session (as if Willie could do it any other way). Though it may not be an essential addition to Nelson's catalog, STARS & GUITARS is an interesting curio that shows how different artists deal with the enigma that is Willie Nelson. |
Producer: Gloria Medel; Tony Faske; Frank Callari; Jeb Brien; Allen Kelman; James Stroud |
Engineer: Greg Lankford; Bobby Lemmons; Thom Cadley |
Musical Guests | | Jon Bon Jovi | | Sheryl Crow | | Vince Gill | | Toby Keith | | Matchbox 20 | | Brian McKnight | | Aaron Neville | | Lee Ann Womack | | Rob Thomas | | Bill Evans | | Richie Sambora | | Ray Price | | Hank Williams III | | Keith Richards | | Ryan Adams | | Norah Jones | | Patty Griffin | | Emmylou Harris |
|
CD
