When Bob Dylan wrote "he who is not busy being born is busy dying," he could easily have been talking about Willie Nelson. Although Nelson is one of contemporary music's few genuine icons, the 65-year-old singer, songwriter, guitarist and actor remains a restlessly creative soul. And like the proverbial phoenix, he has continually renewed his artistic vision throughout a career that spans more than 57 years, 100 albums, and literally countless miles on the road.
     Nowhere is that more evident than on Spirit, Nelson's stunning first album for Island Records. Recorded with an intimate acoustic combo of friends and family at his home base of Pedernales Studios outside of Austin, TX, Spirit features an entirely new crop of Nelson originals in a setting that proves "less is more." Like his monumental Red Headed Stranger album, it's a song cycle where the deceptively simple setting brings an even greater depth and hypnotic potency to the affair, which features Texas legend Johnny Gimble on fiddle, sister Bobbie Nelson on Piano, and veteran Family member Jody Payne on rhythm guitar, and Nelson's trademark voice, songs, and gut-string guitar picking front and center. A soul-searching rumination on love and spirituality, the album draws from Nelson's deep well of American influences like country, gospel and traditional pop to create something altogether original, just as he has done numerous times before in his muical  journey.
     Spirit arrives at a pivotal point in Nelson's career. Although the headline news in recent years may have been his problems with the IRS, a pot bust, and his departure from his ling time label, Columbia Records, in actuality the 1990's have already proven to be an era of both great creativity and well-deserved salutes for Nelson. In recent years, he has recorded a string of critically-acclaimed albums like Across The Borderline (his last record for Columbia, produced by Don Was), Moonlight Becomes You (a gorgeous collection of standards a la Stardust and Just One Love (a bracing return to straight-ahead Texas-style country). along with two albums as a member of the The Highwaymen (with Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson). Nelson has also been the subject of an alternative rock tribute album (Twisted Willie), three boxed sets (on RCA, Columbia and Rhino), and a star-studded 60th birthday television special. He's continued to tour regularly with his Willie Nelson & Family band as well as with the Highwaymen (and settled his IRS debt in 1993).
     He's also become the first country artist signed by Island Records in the label's 33-year history. To wit, Nelson's current creative renaissance promises to find full flower with Island, where plans for Spirit to be followed by a Willie Nelson reggae album.
     Such musical universality has been a hallmark of Nelson's career. Born in the central Texas town of Abbott on April 30,1933, Nelson got his first guitar at age six, and was weened on the music of such fellow Texans as Bob Wills and Ernest Tubb as well as the big bands of the day, their Tin Pan Alley pop songs, and a young crooner named Frank Sinatra. While still in his teens, Nelson started playing dances and honky-talks with Bud Fletcher, a local musician and hustler who gave the feledgling singer and guitarist his first essential stage experience opening for Wills and other stars. By the time he graduated from high school, Nelson has his own regular local radio show.
     After a brief stint in the Air Force, Nelson returned to Texas, where he began working as a radio deejay while singing and playing in nightclubs on the weekends. After chasing jobs around Texas and out west to Portland, OR, Nelson finally made his first commercial recordings for D Records, which was run by Pappy Daily, who had discovered George Jones. But instead of Nelson's own singles hitting the charts, a cover of his "Family Bible" by Claude Gray on the D label hit the country Top 10. Its success prompted Nelson to move to Nashville, where he landed a job with Ray Price's publishing company and a #1 hit in 1961 with Faron Young's version of "Hello Walls." Hits like "Crazy" by Patsy Cline and "Night Life" by Price kept the money flowing, but Nelson's recordings for Liberty, Monument and RCA-good as some of them were-failed to connect commercially during his decade in Music City.
     When his Nashville home burned down just before Christmas in 1970, Nelson took it as an omen and moved to the one place his live performing career had actually found an audience-his home state of Texas. But this time around, he not only had fans at such stalwart roadhouses as Floore's Country Store outside San Antonio, but also at the recently-opened Armadillo World Headquarters rock palace in Austin. Uniting both the ropers and the dopers, Nelson signed with Atlantic Records and recorded two albums to critical acclaim and his best sales ever Shotgun Willie and Phases and Stages.
     His 1975 debut on Columbia, Red Headed Stranger, a country concept album starkly recorded for a mere $30,000, defied all expectations by yielding a pop hit with "Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain" and spearheaded a traditional country revival. The following year, RCA packaged previously-issued Nelson material with songs by Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter and Tompall Glasor on one disc as Wanted: The Outlaws. It became the first million-selling country album and sparked a musical revolution.
     By 1978, Nelson changed musical course once again with Stardust, a collection of pop standards that spent more than a decade on the country charts. By that time, he had not only become country music's biggest star, but a genuine musical phenomenon. As well, Nelson embarked on an acting career that came to include films like "Thief," "The Electric Horseman," "Red Headed Stranger," "Honeysuckle Rose," "Barbarosa," "Songwriter" and others. His fourth of July picnics, which began in 1973, have become the stuff of legend, while his annual Farm Aid shows have helped call attention to the plight of the American farmer since 1985. Those years also found Nelson recording duets with such diverse stars as Julio Iglesias, Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Leon Russell, Dolly Parton and Neil Young as well as country peers like Jennings, Kristofferson, George Jones and Merle Haggard, and such legends and influences as Ray Price, Webb Pierce, Faron Young and Hank Snow.
     Throughout it all, Nelson continues to pursue his passion for performing with months of touring, year after year. Yet he also manages to always fit in time for a good round of golf, as well as card games with his friends or an afternoon playing dominoes in the little Texas town of Luckenbach.
     "I was always dumb enough to think I could do anything." Nelson recently told New Country magazine," and got lucky and done it sometimes." Modest words from someone whose talents and artistry span genres and cultures, but maybe that's Willie Nelson's secret. By remaining a man of the people, and faithful to his muse, Nelson's found the rare freedom to create music that is timeless. One listen to Spirit tells you that he's done it yet again.

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