Tracy Nelson – You’ll Never be a Stranger at My Door

Tracy Nelson’s Mother Earth was one of the first San Francisco bands to embrace country music, after relocating to Nashville in 1969 (before moving to Nashville was cool) and releasing Mother Earth Presents Tracy Nelson Country. Drop the first three words and that title would fit this long-overdue sequel, in which Nelson balances the big voice of a bluesy belter with the emotional understatement that allows her to glide through an eclectic selection including the jazzy “Cow Cow Boogie”, Johnny Cash’s “I Still Miss Someone” and the classic Ernest Tubb kiss-off “Thanks A Lot”.

Then as now, Nelson sounds like nothing you’re apt to hear on country radio (though she once had a Grammy-nominated duet with Willie Nelson on “After The Fire”). Instead, she sounds like she’s making the kind of music she likes to hear, songs she loves to sing, whether revealing a supple upper register on “I Never Loved Anyone More” (a hit for Lynn Anderson written by Linda Hargrove and Michael Nesmith), reviving an Everly Brothers obscurity (“I Wonder If I Care As Much”), or collaborating with Guy Clark and Alice Newman Vestal on “Salt Of The Earth” (the only new composition here, featuring all three writers on vocals).

That song finds its thematic echo in “Three Bells”, a country and pop chart-topper for the Browns, with Nelson multi-tracking the harmonies. Throughout the album, backing from guitarist Robert M. Britt and multi-instrumentalist Fats Kaplin keeps it country, though the singer, as always, sounds like she’s simply making Tracy Nelson music.