This article originally appeared in Uncut Take 187 (December 2012) Ask Kris Kristofferson how he’s doing and he chuckles. “Pretty good, pretty good... pretty old.” At 76, the country legend certainly has plenty of life to look back on. Kristofferson had already been a Rhodes scholar, an arm...
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON
This Old Road
New West, 2006
Turning away from overtly political songwriting towards a more reflective overview, many songs feature just the singer alone with his guitar.
This was real easy. As you get older I think you get better at expressing what you want to express, making it more simple, and it really helps that me and Don are on the same page. Selecting the material has always been good with him, because I trust his judgement. This record has got a few songs I’d recorded before on other albums, like “Burden Of Freedom”, “Final Attraction” and “This Old Road”. I’m happy doing that. The songs are all pretty ingrained. There’s a lot of songs on that album that I’d like to bring back to my show, because being successful for me now is being able to recreate the emotion in the song and experience it again on stage. I know that I’ve got a lot better in the live concerts in the last 10 years or so. The selection of the material and the way I do them by myself seems to bring about a good communication with the audience. People really seem to appreciate whatever it is I’m trying to do.
KRIS KRISTOFFERSON
Feeling Mortal
KK Records, 2012
Economical, wry, raw, honest and open, his 17th solo studio album marks a return to classic Kristofferson territory.
For each one of my albums there has usually been a central theme to the songs that go on it. I could go through each song on this record to show you what I mean but, well, it starts out with a song called “Feeling Mortal” from an album called Feeling Mortal! So that’s a clue. At my age there’s more behind you than there is ahead of you, and as you go along your close friends and heroes start dying, so you definitely get more reflective of your whole life. A lot of the songs on this record go way back, I just hadn’t released them. I’ll carry things around with me for years before I use ’em. Singing them now takes me to the place I was when I wrote it, which is very rejuvenating at my age. For me it all connects back to when I decided I was going to go my own way. I left the path that others had decided for me, including being in the army, and just went off to do what I loved to do. And looking back, I just can’t believe how well it has turned out.
