This Old Road The South By Southwest music festival of 2006 was, as ever, the playground of the rock buzz bands and artists of the day, from to Corinne Bailey Rae. But its vast line-up of 1,400 acts also welcomed more than a few roots, country and Americana notables. Among them was a man about to celebrate his 70th birthday with an excellent new album, , which only added to the almost mythological allure of Kris Kristofferson.
Short of hanging out with him in Nashville, in the bars of Broadway, there was something appropriate about meeting this outspoken frontiersman in the improbably liberal bolthole of Austin, Texas. Kristofferson grew up in the south of the state, which has since become one of the most Republican in the Union. He’s spent a lifetime using his charisma on record, stage and the big screen to challenge perceptions of himself, of America and of the whole world around him.
As he proved again on the album, released on his own label at the beginning of 2013, and on which he confronts his advancing age with fearless guile, he’s still doing it. Seven years ago, articulate, engaged and effortlessly cool, he would prove to be mesmerising company. Kris Kristofferson beamed as he drew the direct connection between his largely unplugged, deliberately unembellished album and the spirit that existed when the Texan first hit Tennessee back in the mid-1960s.
“It’s really going back to the way it was when I went to Nashville and wanted to be a serious songwriter,” h.