Bonnie Prince Billy – Best Troubador – CD

With ‘Best Troubador’, Bonnie ‘Prince Billy pays homage to a long-time and forever hero, the late Merle Haggard. The songs sung on ‘Best Troubador’ are pulled from all over – from Haggard’s 3rd album in 1967 through to his 47th in 2011 – but this is no simple hits compilation.

‘Best Troubador’ flips through his song book, landing on pages unmoored from their time and located anew. Moving from 1978 to 1969 to 2003 to 1981 allows the album to circle Haggard’s music in a simulation of thought and memory, slipping around from spot to spot as if they were discrete impressions, unknown but knowable yet. Dedicated to new life and old, Best Troubador is wistful and bittersweet and no lament at all but a tribute instead, for the triumph of a life spent in unending pursuit of the goal: new and expressive music, as our inspirations and heroes once sang it.

1. The Fugitive
2. I’m Always On a Mountain When I Fall
3. The Day the Rains Came
4. Haggard (Like I’ve Never Been Before)
5. I Always Get Lucky With You
6. Leonard
7. My Old Pal
8. Roses In the Winter
9. Some of Us Fly
10. Wouldn’t That Be Something
11. Pray
12. That’s the Way Love Goes
13. Nobody’s Darling
14. What I Hate (Excerpt)
15. I Am What I Am
16. If I Could Only Fly
17. Mama Tried