Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes - Live Set, KUT, Studio One, Austin, TX, 2-18-1996

Willie Nelson is clearly one of the country music greats, and I'm a fan of his music. But I'm not such a big fan that I have lots of bootlegs of him. However, this one stands out. You may well like it even if you're only a casual Willie Nelson fan.

First off, note this is a full collaboration between Nelson and Kimmie Rhodes. Rhodes isn't very well known - none of her albums have ever made the charts. But she's a talented singer-songwriter who has been putting out albums since the early 1980s. Nelson has done a lot of collaborating with her, both on stage and in the studio. Most notably, he sang two duets with her on her 1996 album "West Texas Heaven," and then did a whole duets album with her, "Pictures in a Frame," in 2003.

I haven't been able to find any write-up about this particular concert. But Nelson and Rhodes made a joint appearance on KUT, a public radio station in Austin, Texas, in 1996. It seems from Nelson's comments between songs that he expected a relatively short appearance, since he asked only after a few songs if they still had time left. However, the DJ had a long block of time on the station, and allowed them to keep going and going. They ended up playing for two hours and 15 minutes!

There are several things I like about this. For one, although they played with a small band, there's little to no drumming, and the other instruments are generally acoustic, so it's kind of an "unplugged" concert. Also, you can tell they're winging it, deciding what songs to do on the spot, probably including many songs they'd never practiced before, and yet they nailed the songs time after time with almost no flubs at all. What's especially great is that Nelson and Rhodes sing nice harmonies on most of the songs, even though one can they were winging that too. Plus, Nelson's lead guitar work can be heard all over this as well.

Basically, in my opinion, it's as if these musicians got together just to have fun and sing songs together in a no-pressure situation, and that's exactly what they did, except it happened to be recorded live on the radio. What a lucky break that we get to be flies on the wall.

As far as sound quality goes, it's excellent all the way through. I hardly had to make any changes, except balancing the overall volume levels for some songs. But one thing I did have to do was fix the song titles. I found a couple different bootleg versions of this floating around the Internet, but many of the song titles were wrong on those versions. For instance, one version labeled a song "Fine Top," another one called it "Pine Tops," but the true name is "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie." In particular, most of the instrumentals were given the wrong names. But I took the time to listen to the studio versions to make sure I correctly fixed them.

Oh, by the way, apparently this radio show really was called "Live Set," because it's mentioned as such in the banter between songs. (I'd originally assumed that some bootlegged hadn't known what else to call it.)

01 I Just Drove By (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
02 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
03 Our Father's Face (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
04 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
05 Down Yonder [Instrumental] (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
06 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
07 Just One Love (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
08 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
09 Won't You Ride in My Little Red Wagon (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
10 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
11 Spirit of E9 [Instrumental] (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
12 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
13 Hard Promises to Keep (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
14 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
15 Mariachi [Instrumental] - I'm Waiting Forever (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
16 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
17 Bells of Joy (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
18 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
19 Amazing Grace (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes with Johnny Gimble)
20 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
21 Wedding Bells (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
22 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
23 There'll Be No Teardrops Tonight - Look What Thoughts Will Do (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
24 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
25 I've Been to California (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes with Johnny Gimble)
26 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
27 We Don't Run (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
28 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
29 Your Memory Don't Die in My Grave (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
30 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
31 White Freightliner Blues (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
32 I Never Cared for You (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
33 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
34 'Till I Gain Control Again (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
35 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
36 Still Water Runs the Deepest (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
37 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
38 In the Garden (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
39 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
40 Pine Top's Boogie Woogie [Instrumental] (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes with Bobby Nelson)
41 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
42 Milk Cow Blues (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes with Johnny Gimble)
43 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
44 I Guess I've Come to Live Here in Your Eyes (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
45 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
46 I'm Gonna Fly (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
47 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
48 Valentine (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
49 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
50 Matador [Instrumental] (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
51 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
52 Wild Roses (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
53 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
54 She Is Gone (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
55 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
56 Red Headed Stranger (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
57 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
58 What a Way to Live (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
59 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
60 Night Life (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)
61 talk (Willie Nelson & Kimmie Rhodes)

https://www.imagenetz.de/jCPUk

For the album cover, I wanted a photo of Nelson and Rhodes together. I could only find a couple, period. The one I chose is decent, although the colors seem a bit off. I don't know when or where it's from though.