The vocal part of it is a little different. 'This record was all about me playing' on the back pick-up of a '66 Fender Telecaster on an entire record for the first time in my life. 'I was out to unapologetically 'channel' Waylon as best as I could.' Earle says. So You Wannabe an Outlaw is an homage to outlaw music and is dedicated to the late Waylon Jennings. 'And I'm always going to be somebody who learned their craft in Nashville. 'Look, I'm always gonna be a Texan, no matter what I do,' he says. Earle has lived in New York City for the past decade. 'I'm just acknowledging where I'm coming from.' So You Wannabe an Outlaw is the first recording he has made in Austin, TX. 'There's nothing 'retro' about this record,' Earle says. Records since 1997'sEl Corazón, explores his country songwriting roots and features collaborations with Willie Nelson, Johnny Bush, and Miranda Lambert. So You Wannabe an Outlaw, Earle's first album for Warner Bros.

It's undoubtedly distinctive - and it sounds more distinctive with each passing year - but it's strictly an intellectual triumph and, after a pair of albums that were musically and intellectually sound, it's a bit of a letdown, no matter how successful it was.Musician, songwriter, actor and author Steve Earle and his country rock band The Dukes will release So You Wannabe an Outlaw on June 16 on Warner Bros. Now, this all reads well on paper, and there's much to admire in Nelson's intimate gamble, but it's really elusive, as the themes get a little muddled and the tunes themselves are a bit bare. It's difficult because it's old-fashioned, sounding like a tale told around a cowboy campfire. For all its success, it still remains a prickly, difficult album, though, making the interspersed concept of Phases and Stages sound shiny in comparison.

It was a phenomenal blockbuster, though, selling millions of copies, establishing Nelson as a superstar recording artist in its own right.

It's defiantly anticommercial and it demands intense concentration - all reasons why nobody thought it would be a hit, a story related in Chet Flippo's liner notes to the 2000 reissue. Willie Nelson's Red Headed Stranger perhaps is the strangest blockbuster country produced, a concept album about a preacher on the run after murdering his departed wife and her new lover, told entirely with brief song-poems and utterly minimal backing.

Red headed stranger willie nelson rar