Mickey Newbury – A Long Road Home

“Do you still have your dreams?”

Mickey Newbury drops this question about halfway through his new album’s title track, one of two songs on the disc that clock in on the long side of ten minutes. Newbury has sketched plenty of three-minute vignettes ripe for radio and remakes in the past thirty-odd years, but this time, the story demands grand, sweeping strokes on a vast canvas.

The result is, at last, a masterpiece, one that required considerable attention and energy in these twilight years, from a man for whom every breath is literally a battle anymore. At 61, Newbury deals daily with emphysema-related breathing problems that require him to be hooked up to an oxygen tank full-time. And yet he is driven, as an artist of his nature invariably is, to continue to create, to write, to sing…because he knows there remain songs inside him that simply must get out, while there is still time.

A Long Road Home is the evidence of his efforts, ten new songs (plus a re-envisioning of “Here Comes The Rain, Baby” from his 1968 album Harlequin Melodies) that echo deeply with a longing resignation toward what has come and gone, and a looming realization of what lies ahead and beyond. You could call the narrator’s perspective nostalgic, perhaps — but the pathos really runs much deeper than that.

The album opens with Newbury remembering his life “In ’59”, a fireblooded teen hell-bent on leaving Texas behind, running so fast and so hard that he “burned that two-lane highway down”. By the fourth verse, it’s ten years later and that highway is now four lanes, but he’s still running, if sometimes running aground. The years and the miles roll on through the song for eleven minutes, until he realizes that he’s now running — out of time. (Musically, “In ’59” seems vaguely akin to Tom Waits’ similarly titled “Ol’ 55”, an early hit for the Eagles; and in fact there are moments when Newbury’s still-soaring voice sounds uncannily like a young Don Henley.)

The heart of the album deals largely with deep sadness and romantic regret, from the straightforward sentiment of “I Don’t Love You” (that’s all the song says), to the wee-hours wondering of “Where Are You Darlin’ Tonight?” (“Do you think of me when you turn out the lights?”), to an even more haunting inquiry in “The Last Question (In The Dead Of The Night)”: “Where did the truth lie in your eyes?” Each is arranged exquisitely and delivered with a melody so melancholy that Waylon & Willie should re-cut “Luckenbach, Texas” and change the line to “Newbury’s pain songs”, all apologies to Hank Williams.

In the middle of all this comes “So Sad”, simultaneously the most heartbreaking and uplifting song of the proceedings. The words alternate between pure poetry — “In the morning light she glistened like a ruby in a stickpin” — and veiled confession — “I am not in prison, I am only doin’ time” — but it’s the rhythm that sets the song apart, a simple guitar groove that rocks gently and sweetly as Newbury quiets to a whisper in the chorus, letting the music carry the day. It immediately deserves notice as one of Newbury’s all-time best songs, which is saying quite a bit for a writer who has had nearly 100 of his tunes covered by other artists.

The clincher is “A Long Road Home”, which aches with the fading visions of a life’s journey’s over the course of ten minutes and thirteen verses, stopping along the way to revisit Galveston Bay, the East Texas woods, the Silver Moon Cafe, the Ryman and Tootsie’s and Tubb’s, finally heading west on Interstate 10 and north to Newbury’s present home in Springfield, Oregon. These places are part of his past, perhaps never to be seen again outside the realm of memories — but oh, what memories were made across that map of time.

Newbury concludes with a sort of denouement, “116 Westfield Street”, an ode to his childhood home and, in fact, to childhood itself. A piano reaches up for the notes as Newbury reaches out for his youth, even as he acknowledges the final truth of age: “Only a dream, so it seems, is sure to endure”.

Mickey Newbury still has his dreams.