LOS ANGELES (Launch) - Country music legend Willie
Nelson is heading out on the road again, embarking later this week on a U.S. tour in support of his latest album, "The Great Divide," which was released Tuesday.
The CD features a collection of duets performed by the Red-Headed Stranger with a diverse range of recording stars, including Lee Ann Womack , Sheryl Crow , Kid Rock , Bonnie Raitt , Brian McNight and matchbox 20 lead singer Rob Thomas .
The album also draws on the songwriting skills of Thomas, producer Matt Serletic, longtime Elton John lyricist Bernie Taupin and Nashville composer Mickey Newbury .
Although an accomplished songwriter in his own right, Nelson contributed just one song to "The Great Divide" as a writer, penning the title track with jazz guitarist and sometime bandmate Jackie King. Nelson performs it as a solo ballad.
His duet with Womack on "Mendocino County Line," written by Taupin and Serletic, is the album's first single.
Rounding out the package are his covers of Cyndi Lauper " Time After Time " and Leslie Satcher "You Remain," written as a tribute to Nelson himself.
"The Great Divide," which has generally received critical praise in early reviews, is the latest of several Nelson albums in recent years from Universal's Island Def Jam Music Group and the first from its Nashville-based Lost Highway label.
A number of the songs dwell on themes associated with aging, and the 68-year-old musician acknowledges the CD may resonate more than earlier records with listeners of a certain age. "It's not really a teenager record," he told Reuters in a telephone interview.
The album and tour, which begins Friday in New Jersey , coincide with the release of Nelson's journal-like book "The Facts of Life and Other Dirty Jokes," by Random House. The book is a collection of anecdotes, lyrics and photos peppered with mostly off-color jokes, and Nelson himself describes it as "one-part song lyrics, one-part photographs and 10-parts bull."
Nelson, who broke with Nashville to help pioneer the "outlaw" country movement, sprang to fame in 1975 with the concept album "The Red-Headed Stranger" and went on to record such signature hits as "On the Road Again," "Always on My Mind" and the Waylon Jennings duets "Good Hearted Woman" and "Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys."
Following an epic battle with the Internal Revenue Service in the early 1990s, he renewed his flagging recording career with such albums as "Across the Borderline," "Spirit," and "Teatro."
