New York — Faces are like road maps. Every crease and fold can tell you where a person has traveled.
No wonder Willie Nelson's visage shows more wear than most.
"I can definitely see the miles in me," says the world's most famous road rat, as he sits in a Manhattan hotel room. "I see scars. But I earned every one of them."
Nelson even serenades the lines of age on his new album, "The Great Divide."
"This face is all I have/Worn and lived in," he sings. "I never looked like you/Cool and streamlined/I have this honesty that grows with time."
And he's not reluctant to share it. At 68, Nelson continues to play more live dates than guys one-fourth his age. This year he'll play 250 of them. He has a trio of albums in the can (bringing his total to around 200). And Random House just published his first book, "The Facts of Life. And Other Dirty Jokes."
Never one to miss a marketing opportunity, the grizzled singer even has a new batch of whisky hawked under the name of his classic song "Whiskey River."
But Nelson's most notable recent accomplishment is "The Great Divide," his first commercially attuned work in years. It was produced by Matt Serletic and has songs written by Rob Thomas, two key players in Santana's resurrection.
"That's certainly a success story I wouldn't mind repeating," Nelson says with a wily smile.
Mimicking Santana's formula of including lots of special guests, Nelson's album features contributions from Kid Rock, LeeAnn Womack, Sheryl Crow, Brian McKnight and Bonnie Raitt. Not that Santana has a corner on duets. Nelson has been performing them for more than three decades, going back to his work with Waylon Jennings.
"It just seems obvious to me that when you have two singers, you combine two audiences and you stand a better chance of getting on a bunch of different radio formats," the singer says.
Nelson trusted Serletic's instincts enough to let the producer commission most of the material on the album rather than writing it himself. The title track is the sole Nelson original. Yet the songs all seem tailor-made for the singer, drawing on his experience and echoing his wry approach to sadness.
"My first wife, Martha, had a saying," Nelson offers. "You don't have to worry about how things are gonna turn out in life. Cuz ain't nothing gonna turn out right."
Stories from a life
Nelson favors such homespun defeat in his book. "Ninety-nine percent of the world's lovers are not with their first choice," he writes. "That's what makes the jukebox play."
His book isn't big on discipline. It's a mash of notes, jokes, anecdotes and song lyrics cobbled together like an aimless road trip.
Nelson says he chose to center the book on joke-telling to reflect his childhood passion. "I grew up in small-town Texas, before TV. So we had to entertain ourselves. And some of my favorite entertainers were comedians. It's a kind of performance to tell a joke. And it's a story, too."
Nelson has a million tales in his catalogue of songs, but in conversation he's far from expansive. While he extends a deep and empathetic stare, he speaks with the laconic reserve of a cowpoke.
Ask him about his movingly wounded performance of "America the Beautiful" at the telethon for the Sept. 11 Fund, and he'll only say, "It was very emotional."
Probe him on why he's so prolific and he'll say, "I like to work."
Matters of substance
In fact, the most animated he becomes is when talking about one of his favorite pastimes: smoking pot. He likes the observation that his heavy work load belies the belief that weed leads to laziness.
"It's an absolute lie," Nelson says. "It's been such an injustice, an intentional misunderstanding, to turn you away from (pot). Lots of horrible things have been said about it, going back to 'Reefer Madness.' Eventually, (the laws) have to be repealed. But it will take an activist in a suit and tie. Someone like me wouldn't be a good one to get out there. I'm not what you call a good role model."
Maybe not in the world of politics. But to musicians Nelson remains an idol. Especially in the world of country, though the kind of music that gets on Nashville radio stations these days hardly honors his outlaw style. In turn, Nelson isn't impressed with commercial country. "There's not much substance there. There's a lot of happy songs: 'I love you more than anything/You love me more than anything/Aren't we happy?' That's not really what life is. And it's not helpful."
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