Saturday Morning Records: #1 — Willie Nelson’s Teatro

A new series for paying subscribers — celebrating favourite albums for the weekend.

I woke up today and chose Teatro. It’s one of the very best albums to wake up and put on the turntable.

When Teatro was released (1998), there were still Willie Nelson jokes doing the rounds about how he was killed in traffic because he was playing On The Road Again! And, “What’s got 300 legs and 25 teeth? A: The front row of a Willie Nelson concert!” He wasn’t a laughing stock, but he was old, and it wasn’t his era. I feel like, in some way, it’s been his era again ever since Teatro. It was his 45th album — and the one that made me, full-time, a fan. I had liked some of his stuff, of course, but country music wasn’t big in my house growing up. Once out in the world on my own I started collecting up the staples, Dolly and Johnny and Willie and Marty Robbins; Patsy Cline and Emmylou…