Willie Nelson has officially announced Last Leaf On The Tree, the legendary artist’s latest studio collection. Set to release on Nov. 1, Nelson’s forthcoming set arrives on the tail of a jam-packed year of performance, recordings and accolades as the country star’s 76th solo studio album and 153rd release overall. Last Leaf On The Tree continues Willie’s tradition of honoring other iconic songwriters, this time with the support of his son Micah, who assisted in the artist’s selection of a range of familiar favorites suited for his inimitable style; the album also finds Micah in the producer’s chair for the first time on a Willie record, bringing a lifetime relationship of live and studio collaboration to new heights. Today, Nelson shares the preview single “Last Leaf,” which is available on all streaming platforms now.
“Last Leaf” draws on the songbook of the legendary singer-songwriter Tom Waits, whose fan-favorite “Come On Up to the House” Nelson recorded with his son Lukas and Sheryl Crow for 2012’s Heroes. Willie’s latest cover, sourced from Waits’ 2011 album Bad As Me, cuts deeper as the artist bears his soul alone on the mic, singing against a softly stirring backdrop of distant harmonica, shuffling percussion and scattered, atmospheric bass and guitar. His tone is bittersweet and retrospective; proud, peaceful and candid on a difficult topic. At 91, Willie has seen it all, and carries the experience necessary to reflect earnestly and thoughtfully on the finality of life. “There are little side-quests,” Micah says of the intentions and ordering principle behind the album. “But that became the through-line — facing death with grace.”
Micah, best known as Particle Kid for his own esteemed recordings, describes his part in the project as guided by a “sculptor’s approach.” “It’s an approach that I really love and have used a lot over the years — just throwing the clay down and stepping back, then maybe adding a little more, and then maybe shaving down here, and kind of building the tracks that way.” Micah is also credited for performances on more than two dozen instruments, from the conventional, like the guitar he typically touts onstage, to “sticks and branches, logs and dead leaves.” THe younger nelson also contributed the album’s illustrated cover and animated the music video for “Last Leaf” video alongside his wife, Alexandra Dascalu Nelson.
Elsewhere on the album, Micah and his father joined to select a broad range of songs to cover, including more contemporary indie offerings like the Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize??”—drawn from the massively acclaimed Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, which recently celebrated its 20th anniversary—and Sunny War’s “If It Wasn’t Broken.” “Willie singing ‘If It Wasn’t Broken’ is the sweetest and greatest thing that’s ever happened to me as writer and musician,” the latter’s Sydney Lyndella Ward shares of the release. “I used to play that song on the Venice Beach boardwalk and would have never imagined back then that Willie Nelson would ever even hear it. I feel grateful and inspired.” Nelson’s longtime harmonica collaborator Mickey Raphael recommended Warren Zevon’s “Keep Me In Your Heart,” which suits the central theme and figures alongside other classics like Buffalo Springfield’s “Broken Arrow” and Nina Simone’s “Come Ye.” Willie and Micah co-wrote the new entry “Color of Sound,” and Willie closes the collection with a new recording the beloved original “The Ghost,” first penned in 1962.
Before the arrival of Last Leaf On The Tree, which follows shortly after his May release of The Border, Nelson will return to the road for the third and final leg of the 2024 Outlaw Music Festival Tour. On Sept. 6, the country hero will touch down in Somerset, Wis. to kick off an eight-stop sprint through the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic; Nelson ad his Family Band will co-headline alongside Bob Dylan, with accompaniment from John Mellencamp and Southern Avenue. Read more on the continuing tour here, and find tickets and more information on Nelson’s live plans, including this year’s Farm Aid, at willienelson.com/pages/tour.
Last Leaf On The Tree is available to pre-order now. Read on for the album’s complete tracklist.
Willie Nelson – Last Leaf on the Tree
1. Last Leaf (written by Tom Waits & Kathleen Brennan)
2. If It Wasn’t Broken (written by Sydney Lyndella Ward)
3. Lost Cause (written by Beck David Hansen)
4. Come Ye (written by Nina Simone)
5. Keep Me In Your Heart (written by Warren Zevon & Jorge Calderon)
6. Robbed Blind (written by Keith Richards)
7. House Where Nobody Lives (written by Tom Waits)
8. Are You Ready For The Country? (written by Neil Young)
9. Do You Realize?? (written by Wayne Coyne/Steven Drozd/Michael Ivins/David Fridmann)
10. Wheels (written by Micah Nelson)
11. Broken Arrow (written by Neil Young)
12. Color Of Sound (written by Willie Nelson & Micah Nelson)
13. The Ghost (written by Willie Nelson)
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