Willie Nelson - Run That By Me One More Time (2003)

Willie Nelson and Ray Price reconvene for a second outing of Texas honky tonk and Western swing tunes, 23 years after their first duet recording, the venerable San Antonio Rose. Recorded and engineered by Joe Gracey at the World Headquarters studios in Luck, TX, Run That By Me One More Time was produced by Nelson and Price. It features 11 really glorious selections that run the gamut from the classic Fred Rose numbers "Deep Water," which opens the album, and "Home in San Antone" to a sentimental reading of Floyd Tillman's "This Cold War With You" and co-writes like the amazing "I've Just Destroyed the World I'm Living In," by the dynamic duo itself. While Price wrote the beautiful and moving "Soft Rain" that appears here, a pair of Nelson cuts -- "I'm So Ashamed" and "I'm Still Not Over You" -- are the finest things on the record. Both of them have appeared on Nelson outings available only on the Internet, but with Price's voice added to the mix, they have a deeper resonance. With the exception of Rose's "Home in San Antone," which appears in the dead center of the recording, the album is comprised of nothing but broken love songs offering a counterweight to the good-time feel of the disc. Speaking of feel, the sound of this album is quite remarkable. It's been a while since Willie's guitar playing has been given this kind of showcasing or has sounded so rich and full, and the Texas fiddle band setup is recorded as such without a boatload of embellishment. Price's voice, considerably more ragged but even more right, lends texture, warmth, and a kind of west Texas edge to the sound of the band here, as does David Zettner's pedal steel. Of all the Willie Nelson recordings out there from 2000 to the present, this is easily the best of them. It's consistent and full of warmth, good-natured looseness, and absolutely killer songs.