"Don't Take Your Guns To Town"

Despite the songs, the close friendships, and the very shared genre of country music that binds them together, I’ve always seen Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson as two men who coexist in an unusual harmony yet maintain a distinct separation.

Allow me to explain what I mean by that statement.

The obvious counterargument to my theory is Cash and Nelson’s involvement as half of the renowned 1980s country supergroup, The Highwaymen, alongside Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson. While The Highwaymen presents a compelling case, I contend that Johnny and Willie were more connected through their friendships with the other half of the group than with each other. Johnny and Waylon Jennings had a longstanding friendship dating back decades before The Highwaymen, even sharing living quarters at one point in Nashville. Cash and Jennings were known for exchanging music with each other, as well as navigating their respective addictions together. As for Willie and Waylon, the legendary nature of their friendship and collaborations is such that simply uttering the word “outlaw” in country music circles will lead one to think of either man.

(For further proof, look up a funny story about the time Willie Nelson persuaded a reluctant Jennings to play at a hippie-style Texas nightclub called the Armadillo World Headquarters, a venue that would serve as a springboard for both men and would help usher the Outlaw Country movement of the 1970s.)

Johnny’s friendship with Kris Kristofferson is equally noteworthy. Kristofferson, a Rhodes Scholar who left the U.S. Army (even turning down an English teaching position at West Point) to relocate to Nashville, displayed such determination to become a songwriter that he famously took a job as a janitor at Columbia Nashville Studios, where Cash reigned as the label’s king. Cash’s 1970 recording of Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down”, not only marked a breakthrough for Kristofferson but also marked the emergence of a new breed of country songwriter, whose lyrics were as likely to draw comparisons to Bob Dylan or the poet William Blake as to Hank Williams.

In the subsequent years, Kristofferson also formed a close bond and collaboration with Willie Nelson, extending beyond music into film. Both men starred in the entertaining 1984 comedy-drama Songwriter, and they went on to collaborate in several made-for-TV movies, some of which even featured Cash and Jennings as co-stars. The best-known example was a 1986 TV remake of the Western classic Stagecoach, placing Cash, Nelson, Kristofferson, and Jennings in Old West clothing that each man slipped into effortlessly.

Nevertheless, this doesn’t undermine my argument that Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash coexist yet maintain a certain separation within the same world. Part of this might be attributed to timing. Cash’s peak in the early 1960s aligned with Nelson’s decade-long struggle to establish himself as a recording artist. Despite achieving success as one of Nashville’s top songwriters with classics like “Crazy” and “Hello Walls,” Nelson’s distinctive back-phrasing singing style didn’t align with the traditional sounds of Nashville during that era. When Nelson eventually achieved significant success in the 1970s, propelled by the hit single “Blue Eyes Crying in The Rain,” Cash’s career was starting a slow decline, with his last #1 country hit, 1976's “One Piece at A Time”, making its way to the airwaves a year after Nelson’s breakthrough album, Red Headed Stranger, went gold.

As Nelson ascended to the peak of popularity, highlighted by the first of his Farm Aid benefits in 1985, Cash experienced a contrasting fate. Cash, once considered a powerhouse in the industry, faced a shocking dismissal by his label Columbia in July 1986 after a 30-year tenure. The 1990s witnessed both men navigating highs and lows. Cash orchestrated a career comeback with Rick Rubin, juxtaposed with a decade of declining health. Simultaneously, Nelson’s acclaimed work in the ’90s, collaborating with producers like Don Was and Daniel Lanois, almost managed to overshadow Willie’s widely reported financial troubles with the IRS.

Nelson and Cash seemed like two parallel roads, running close to each other but never truly intersecting. That’s why it felt almost revelatory when they finally united one night in May 1997, performing in front of a live audience for a special, intimate, and acoustic-based evening in New York as part of an episode of VH1 Storytellers. Storytellers, a counterpart to MTV’s successful Unplugged, features artists in a stripped-down setting, focusing on the essentials while sharing stories about their hits or favorite songs. For this particular episode, Cash and Nelson wielded just their acoustic guitars. Nelson brought his iconic “Trigger” while Cash, on the other hand, played his dependable Martin D-28 Black acoustic, which had been the centerpiece of 1994’s American Recordings.

(Despite being a VH1 production, the live album of Storytellers was released through Rick Rubin’s American label, the same label overseeing Cash’s comeback albums.)

In the relaxed Storytellers atmosphere, freed from heavy expectations, Cash and Nelson treat the proceedings as an old-fashioned get-together between friends. They both run through their respective hits, which for Nelson include his classics as both songwriter (“Crazy”, “Night Life”) as well as a performer (“Funny How Time Slips Away”, “On the Road Again.”) Meanwhile, while Cash mostly takes the same approach, dropping in the expected hits like “Folsom Prison Blues” and “Ring of Fire”, he also finds space to slip in some lesser-known obscurities both past and present. Cash dropped a 1970 single “Flesh and Blood” that charted well but would likely have gone over the young audience, as would have “Worried Man”, a song co-written by June Carter Cash that had appeared in 1974’s politically-themed album Ragged Old Flag. Similarly, though the title track of Cash's 1996 Rubin-produced Unchained was likely to have been heard by a few heads, it certainly could have been overshadowed by his popular and surprising cover of Soundgarden’s “Rusty Cage” from the same album. By comparison, “Drive On”, one of the highlights of American Recordings, is as strong and engaging as ever, despite being a nearly intact copy of the original 1994 version (which, itself, was also a live recording from a performance at L.A.’s famous Viper Room.)

If I were to highlight my favorite numbers from the album, they would likely be those that saw each man infuse new styles into familiar classics. Take, for instance, Nelson’s rendition of his timeless “Crazy,” where he trades guitars with Cash and adapts his playing style to steel guitar strings of Cash's black Martin. Nelson unravels the melodic thread of Patsy Cline’s version, reshaping the song’s feel to align with the back-phrasing form of his voice. Performing the song with Cash’s guitar also redefines Nelson’s sound subtly yet profoundly — an imperceptible reinvention of the Willie style for those accustomed to the nylon jazz twang of “Trigger.”

The “Trigger” sound returns when Nelson contributes soulful backing on Cash’s warm and intimate rendition of “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town.” Nelson’s guitar solo adds an unexpected touch that complements the soft tone of Cash’s weathered voice. As both men approach their 70s, the specter of age permeates the ballad. Cash's gunfighter lament becomes a poignant reflection of an aging soul from the Old West looking back on Billy Joe as a perpetually youthful ghost who learned the perils of trying to be the fastest gun.

(Nelson’s guitar playing also lends as much new flavor as it can to Cash’s “Ring of Fire”, though it can’t fully overshadow the iconic Mexican trumpets of the original.)

The presence of aging does provide context to where Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson stood in 1997. As that year drew to a close, deteriorating health compelled Cash to conclude his days as a live performer, redirecting his remaining energies toward recording. The unforeseen silver lining in this setback was that Cash proceeded to record ample material for four additional American albums before his passing in 2003, with two of these albums seeing posthumous release.

(There is also the amount of material that would compile Cash’s 2004 box set Unearthed, which showed just how much work Cash and Rubin did during their 10 years working together.)

Such is Cash’s legacy that he found his way into both the big Halls of Fame, Country and Rock and Roll, decades before two other icons of country music, Nelson and Dolly Parton, would each take a deserved spot in both halls.

As for Wilie Nelson, one of my favorite TV moments to watch last year was Willie, on the eve of his Rock Hall induction, performing a wonderful version of “I Never Cared For You” on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Today, he is more than just the living embodiment of not just country music, or any music. Along with this year’s 98-year-old Daytime Emmy winner Dick Van Dyke, Willie is among those who occupy that rarefied space for legends who transcend the limits of age to remain vital and determined to continue their chosen craft until the final breath.

Ultimately, VH1 Storytellers: Johnny Cash & Willie Nelson is precisely what it claims to be — a genuine and intimate experience with two music legends who weren’t seeking to play the legend game that night but simply sharing their songs. These were two legends who carved their paths, adhering to their own rules, and whenever granted room and space, endeavored to discover fresh ways and sounds to narrate stories that resonated across generations both before and after that memorable night.

Perhaps, in that sense, these men were more united than divided in what truly counted.

Sincerely: Random Access Moods