Tougher Than Leather

Willie Nelson celebrated the opening of his new recording facility — Pedernales Recording Studio, in Spicewood, Texas — with his first album of all-new material since 1975’s *Red Headed Stranger*. Like *Stranger*, *Tougher Than Leather* is a concept album about the Old West, centered around the story of a gunfighter who falls for the wife of a man he shot down. The doomed couple is later reincarnated and reunited, only to be separated again, by what Willie might call “a little old-fashioned karma.” Inspired by Nelson’s own aging process and the brush with death he had in 1981 (after his lung collapsed while swimming in Hawaii), *Tougher Than Leather* displays a focus and vitality that Nelson had not shown for awhile. The playing and singing is full-bodied, and so is the production. There are a lot of aging country singers who can pull off a great tune or a deep performance, but only Willie could make an album like *Tougher Than Leather*, which cycles through tones and scenes like a autumn wind around the corners an old town.