Legacy Recordings will release Let's Face The Music And Dance, a collection of new studio performances by Willie Nelson and Family, on Tuesday, April 16.
The album is the first in a series of releases and events celebrating the artist's 80th birthday year.
A collection of deep pop country repertoire classics performed with transformative patented ease by Willie Nelson and Family, his long-time touring and recording ensemble, Let's Face The Music And Dance was recorded at Pedernales Recording Studio in Austin, Texas, produced by Buddy Cannon and mixed by Butch Carr at Budro Music Repair Shop in Nashville, Tennessee.
Willie's also celebrating more than forty years on the road and in the studio with Family, the band he formed with his sister, Bobbie Nelson (on piano), drummer Paul English and harmonica shaman Mickey Raphael–their name taken from his 1971 studio album Willie Nelson & Family. Rounding out the Family line-up on Let's Face The Music And Dance are Billy English (Paul's brother) on electric gut string and snare drum, Kevin Smith on upright bass and Jim “Moose” Brown on B-3 organ with Willie's son, Micah Nelson, adding percussion on select tracks. Willie Nelson and his guitar, Trigger, appear on all the songs.
2013 is shaping up as a banner year for the pop country patriarch, who turns 80 on April 30. His rollicking memoir, “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die – Musings from the Road,” published by HarperCollins in May 2012, is currently a New York Times bestselling non-fiction title and Let's Face The Music And Dance is an essential addition to the outlaw country artist's catalog of timeless recordings.
Compiling the repertoire for Let's Face The Music And Dance, Willie chose a range of pop, rock, jazz and country classics drawn from the 1930s (“Let's Face the Music and Dance,” “Walking My Baby Back Home”), 1940s (“You'll Never Know,” “I Wish I Didn't Love You So,” “Shame On You”) and 1950s (“Matchbox”) covering evergreen songwriters Irving Berlin, Mack Gordon, Carl Perkins, Frank Loesser, Django Reinhardt and Spade Cooley, among others. Willie turns in a beautiful new version of his composition “Is The Better Part Over,” a song he introduced on 1989's A Horse Called Music.
Let's Face The Music And Dance is Willie's second release for Legacy Recordings. The first,Heroes was released last May and debuted at #18 on the Billboard 200 best-selling albums chart (Wille's highest number on the chart since Always On My Mind hit #2 in 1982) and wound up spending five consecutive weeks at #1 on the Americana Radio Chart.
Let's Face The Music And Dance
Willie Nelson and Family
tracklisting
1. Let's Face the Music and Dance (Irving Berlin, 1935)
2. Is the Better Part Over (Willie Nelson, 1989)
3. You'll Never Know (Mack Gordon, 1943)
4. Vous Et Moi (Claude Francois-Jean Bourtayre)
5. Walking My Baby Back Home (Fred Ahlert-Roy Turk, 1930)
6. Matchbox (Carl Perkins, 1957)
7. Twilight Time (Al Nevins-Morty Nevins)
8. I Can't Give You Anything But Love (Dorothy Fields-Jimmy McHugh)
9. I'll Keep On Loving You (Richard Coburn-Vincent Rose)
10. I Wish I Didn't Love You So (Frank Loesser, 1947)
11. South Of The Border (Jimmy Kennedy-Michael Carr)
12. Nuages (Django Reinhardt)
13. Marie (The Dawn Is Breaking)
14. Shame On You (Spade Cooley, 1944)