Don Williams - Epilogue: The Cellar Tapes

I know this album got a little discussion a month or two ago when Leaving Louisiana in the Broad Daylight was released, but the whole album is out now.

A quick recap - the family of Don Williams was cleaning out the basement of the family home and found a collection of multi track tapes from the late 70s to mid 80s. These were songs Don recorded but never made it to an album. The vocal tracks were good and they were able to bring in his producer and road band to fill in any damaged instrumental tracks.

I just finished listening to it and like it. Very typical Don Williams with that mellow delivery. As Trigger from Saving Country Music wrote, none of these songs will end up in the pantheon of great Don Williams songs, or else they wouldn't have been left of albums back then. But, for fresh music from that era, and from someone as well known as Don, it's a nice little nugget from the time capsule.

I'll add that his version of Leaving Louisiana may end up being my favorite. The instrumentation is superb, with some harmonica and almost a Cajun fiddle sound to really fit with the lyrics.