Amy Irving to release Willie Nelson Tribute -Album, ‘Always Will Be’

Forty -five years after “Honeysuckle Rose,” Amy Irving will release an album with her interpretations of 10 Willie Nelson Songs – all choices suggested for her by Nelson, who also contribute a guitar solo to a song picked from that movie, “Angel Flying Too near the ground.”

The upcoming album, “Always Will Be”, today with a title track that has a guest appearance by Amy Helm, a singer writer in her own right and daughter of Levon Helm. (Listen below.) Steve Earle is among the other presented artists on the album, which will be released April 25 at Queen of the Castle/Missing Piece Records. Irving will market the new record with a handful of gigs, starting with a show May 4 at City Winery in New York City and another at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock, NY on May 31.

“Always will be” is the second musical effort from Irving, known for its performances in films such as “Crossing Delancey,” “Micki and Maude,” “The Fury” and “Carrie” and “Honeysuckle Rose.” It follows from the heels on the actor’s musical debut, 2023’s “Born in a trunk.” She says Amount What led her into the music area as well as the details of her greeting to Nelson’s material, which includes songs from some of the less covered corners of the country’s legend’s catalog.

“We stayed friends all these decades,” Irving says of Nelson. “We have been in each other’s life all this time. He is one of my favorite people, one of my best friends. We are pretty much in communication now daily. “(The will of that is a voice mail from Nelson that Irving threw into the title track.) Nelson sang on a track on her debut album two years ago, and after that collaboration,” Willie sent me a bunch of songs that he thought I should sing , and I chose the 10 I wanted to sing. “In the tradition of Nelson’s concept album in the 1970s, Irving shaped the material into what she considers to be a narrative sequence. “I wanted a track: you first meet someone, you go through life together, you lose them – I just thought I could tell that story with his songs.”

(In a press release, Nelson is quoted to say, by explaining his instructions of the project, “I knew she would probably do many of my songs and I knew they would be good. You know, I’m just an old hustler.” )

Irving says Amount That music is her focus right now – and maybe it will always be, even if she doesn’t have a track. “I am currently thinking that unless something irresistible would follow, which does not seem to happen much to women my age in the film world, I think I like to focus on music right now.” She says. “And I’ll see where it takes me. I’m not sure there will be something after the second album. The thing is that I don’t introduce myself as someone who says: “You have to come here, listen to me sing!”

Her son, Gabriel Barreto, produced the album and also acts as her manager, and she credits him by introducing her for some of the American artists presented on the album. Another important partner whose contribution has strengthened her is her organizer and band leader, Jules David Bartkowski, Alias ​​Goolis. “What he does with songs that I present to him takes it to another place,” says Irving. “And that’s what has really been fascinating to me, to see how a country song can be a punk song -just look at the process. … …

“I don’t have the ego required, I think, to sell myself as a singer. But I like it, and I know I can have a melody, and I like to be able to use my actors to tell the stories. Getting up and singing in melody is not enough: I think you have to release the whole song in your body and spit it, after being processed through all the elements you have of your entire life experience. As an actor, that’s what you do with roles, and now I do it with songs. It is very gratifying and I feel that I have something to offer that way. “

When it comes to the choice of Nelson material, “Some of the songs were personal to me,” says Irving. “For example,” Angel Flying Too near the ground “was written for my character in” Honeysuckle Rose. “And” If you want me to love you I will, “he wrote for me to sing for him in the movie. That’s the one we have turned into a punk song! He wrote some songs when I hung with him, and then are some of them from his past. And I only chose the ones I could relate to, and that I could let go of my body and spray it a little different Stay here in your eyes, “said Goolis (her band leader):” Let’s think about it as a French pop song. “You just approach things a little differently, and the whole tone changes. I mean, Willie sings many of these songs a little more Romantic, while we have gone to Brazilian carnival in one, we have gone to New Orleans for another. We take it and play, and it is a very interesting playground for me to be in. ”

Irving has sung in public before making her album debut in 2023, and not just in “Honeysuckle Rose.” “I have always loved to sing and sometimes I have taken some singing lessons, and as a teenager I played the guitar and did some busking on the street here and there and sang my Joni Mitchell songs. And then I grew up in my father’s company, which would make the children’s theater, and we would all sing in these shows. So I always did something. The most professional I ever did to sing was when I was invited to St. Louis Opera, and Isaac Mizrahi directed and designed a production of ‘A Little Night Music’, which I played in with opera singers and a 50-part orchestra, St. Louis Symphony. It was scary and exciting. “

By making these two new albums “suddenly took me places with my voice that I never knew I could do,” she notes. “I have acted on stage and in film since I was 9 months old. You know, I don’t necessarily get excited about it – and be granted, I don’t get the same roles anymore, but I didn’t have fun to do it. And this has just been an explosion, learning this new world and people who take me in my hand. I don’t need to know everything. It’s really nice that I get the little green in the room and they all have to learn, and it’s like getting lessons every day. In addition, I live in a barn, and I set an entire area with microphones and amplifiers and playback, and I can practice all day and I have just swung out. My dogs are really tired of some of the songs, I have to say. But it is a new energy and a new lease, where singing only makes you feel so alive. It makes you happy because all the oxygen that goes through your brain and your body just wakes everything. “

“Always will be” track list: