Willie Nelson’s new album (his 77th solo studio album and his 154th album overall) is an album that focuses on the songs of Rodney Crowell, the latest in Nelson’s storied history of focusing entire albums on a single songwriter’s work.

Willie Nelson and Rodney Crowell are two Texas singer-songwriters whose careers have intersected often since Crowell first heard Nelson’s earliest songs on the radio and saw his shows in Houston in the mid 1960s. Willie first recorded a Rodney Crowell song in 1983 and last did so 40 years later for 2024’s The Border.