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On every Willie record of late\u2014he\u2019s made ten in the last five years, the most recent being Workin\u2019 Man: Willie Sings Merle<\/em><\/a>, out last November\u2014we search for signs. We look for clues of how he\u2019s doing at 88, or 90<\/a>, or, now, an extraordinary 93. How\u2019s he feeling? What\u2019s he going through day-to-day? We listen, after all these years, to discover: Can he still sing and play? Does he still have things to tell us about life, love, death\u2014and whiskey?\u00a0<\/p>\n On his newer releases\u2014say, the last fifty albums<\/a>\u2014Willie doesn\u2019t reveal a whole lot about himself. And for the most part, his latest album, Dream Chaser<\/em>, is no different. But still we search, because even at this late stage of his career, his music gives us something worth listening for.<\/p>\n In Dream Chaser<\/em>, it\u2019s the songwriting. While Willie has spent most of the past decade doing albums full of songs written by other artists (Merle Haggard<\/a>, Rodney Crowell<\/a>, George Gershwin, Cole Porter), he\u2019s back to writing and co-writing; this is the first album in eight years where Willie had a hand in writing the majority of the songs. Mostly he does this with his frequent collaborator from Nashville, the producer and writer Buddy Cannon<\/a>, but he\u2019s also brought in Music City pro Bobby Tomberlin.\u00a0<\/p>\n Another writing partner? Bob Dylan<\/a>. The two have toured together, sung together, and admired each other for decades. Last year in The<\/em> New Yorker,<\/em> Dylan elaborated<\/a> at length about Willie: \u201cCowboy apparition,\u201d he said of his old friend, \u201cwrites songs with holes that you can crawl through to escape from something.\u201d Dylan\u2019s written a few such songs of his own. The two Great American Songwriters of the Past One Hundred Years have only collaborated once before, in 1993, on \u201cHeartland.\u201d A third of a century later, \u201cI Can\u2019t Read Your Mind\u201d is as inscrutable as you would imagine, beginning, \u201cI don\u2019t know how to read your mind \/ The letters are too small.\u201d The music is a mournful mix of pedal steel and piano battling the scrappy, thumping notes of Willie\u2019s guitar, until he sings, in his best Zen voice: \u201cWhy don\u2019t you just go away \/ And why don\u2019t you just stay?\u201d<\/p>\n The best tune on the album is the title track, a song that sounds more pop than country, with Willie leaning into the yearning vocal melody. Again, he doesn\u2019t write a whole lot about his own life, but \u201cDream Chaser\u201d takes us back: \u201cWasn\u2019t I just a kid \/ Moving to Tennessee \/ With an old guitar and eyes full of stars \/ Chasing a crazy dream.\u201d Then he moves on, laying bare one of the reasons we love Willie so damn much. \u201cLast night a new song came to me \/ Faster than I could write it down \/ Sometimes I wonder if there\u2019ll be another \/ Then another comes around.\u201d<\/p>\n Even in the eighth decade of his career, Willie refuses to quit doing what he loves to do. It sustains him. It sustains us too.\u00a0<\/p>\n He\u2019s been working with a familiar supporting cast, led by Cannon, with whom he\u2019s done almost twenty albums since 2012. And much of Dream Chaser<\/em> is sprinkled with sentimental, mid-tempo, three-minute songs that sound like products of a Music City song factory. But Trigger<\/a> is here, Mickey (Raphael)<\/a> is here, and most importantly, Willie\u2019s here. You can hear occasional catches in his voice, like ruts worn into a dirt road, but all things considered (decades of singing, too many doobies, emphysema), he sounds pretty good on most songs. On the rollicking \u201cAfter All,\u201d Willie invokes his 1970\u2019s prime.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re still searching for a sign on how Willie is doing, whether he can still sing and play, he\u2019s got a tour planned this summer. And then there will be more albums full of more songs. As he\u2019s told us\u2014and shown us time and again\u2014they come to him faster than he can write them down.<\/p>\n