Amy Irving to release Willie Nelson’s album, “always be” – Variety

Forty-five years after “Honeysuckly Rose”, Amy Irving is ready to release an album with her interpretations of 10 songs by Willie Nelson, all elections offered by Nelson, who also contributes to solo a song guitar pulled out of this movie, “Angel flies too close to the ground. “

The upcoming album “Always Be” today is annoyed with a title song that presents a guest of Amy Helm, a singer of songs on his own and the daughter of Levon Helm. (Listen below.) Steve Earl is one of the other performers in the album, which is due to be released on April 25 at Queen of the Castle/Missing Piece Records. Irving will promote the new record with a handful of concerts, starting with a show on May 4 at City Winery in New York and another at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock, New York, May 31.

“It will always be” is Irving’s second musical effort, known for its performances in films such as Crossing Delancey, Micki and Maude, The Fury and Carrie, as well as Honeysucel Rose. This follows on the heels of the actor’s musical debut, “Born in the Ruggourse” in 2023. She says Variety What brought her to the field of music, as well as the specifics of her greeting to Nelson’s material, which includes songs from some of the less covered angles of the country’s legend catalog.

“We have remained friends all these decades,” Irving tells Nelson. “We have been in our lives all this time. He is one of my favorite people, one of my best friends. We are almost in communication every day. “(Covenant for this is a voicemail from Nelson, which Irving threw into the title song.) Nelson sang on a song on his debut album two years ago and then the cooperation” Willie sent me a bunch of songs that he thought he should have to Sing and I chose the 10 I wanted to sing. “I somehow wanted a trajectory: first you meet someone, you go through life together, you lose them – I just thought I could tell this story with his songs.”

(In a message about the press, Nelson was quoted, saying, explaining the promotion of the project: “I knew it would probably do many of my songs and I knew they would be good. You know, I’m just an old Havle.”)

Erving says Variety This music is her focus right now – and maybe she will always be, even though she has no trajectory exposed. “At the moment, I think if something irresistible does not appear, which does not seem to happen much for women my age in the world of the movie, 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 this second album. The thing is, I don’t introduce myself as a person who says, “You have to come here, listen to me to sing!”

Her son Gabriel Barreto produces the album and also serves as her manager, and she credits him to present it to some of the American performers presented on the album. Another key associate whose contribution has invigured her is her arrangement and leader of the group, Jules David Bartkovski, also known as Goolis. “What he does with songs I present to him takes him elsewhere,” Irving says. “And it was really fascinating to me to see a country song can turn into a punk song – just watching the process. …

“I don’t have the ego, in my opinion, to sell myself as a singer. But I like it and I know I can wear a tune and I like to be able to use my acting chops to tell the stories. Getting up and singing in tone is not enough: I think you have to play the whole song in your body and spit it out by processing it through every element you have from all your life experiences. As an actor, you do this with roles and now I do it with songs. It is very pleasant and I feel that I have something to offer this way. “

As for the choice of Nelson material, “some of the songs were personal to me,” Irving says. “For example,” Angel that flies too close to the ground, “was written for my character at Honeysucel Rose. And “If you want to love you, I’ll do it,” he wrote about me to sing in the movie. This is what we have turned into a punk song! He wrote a few songs when I was hanging out with him, and then some of them were from his past. And I just chose those I could contact, and that I could enter my body and throw it away a little differently, with the help of Goolis’s arrangements. For “I suppose I came to live here in your eyes,” Gulis (her leader of the group) said, “Let’s think about it as a French pop song.” You just approach things a little differently and the whole tone changes. I want to say that Willie sings many of these songs a little more romantic while we went to the Brazilian carnival in one, we went to New Orleans for another. We accept and play it, and this is a very interesting playground for me. ”

Irving sang publicly before making his debut on his album in 2023, not just at Honeysucks Rose. “I always loved to sing and from time to time I took some singing lessons, and as a teenager I played the guitar and did some bus on the street here -there, singing my songs by Johnny Mitchell. And then, I grew up in the company of my father, who would make a children’s theater and we all sang in these shows. So I always did something. The most professional thing I have ever sung was when I was invited to the opera in St. Louis, and Isaac Misrachi directed and designed production of “Little Night Music”, in which I participated with opera singers and an orchestra of 50 parts, St. Louis. It was horrifying and exciting. “

Making these two new albums, “Suddenly, I took me places with my voice that I never knew I could do,” she notes. “I also act on the stage in the 9th month old. You know, I don’t have to be excited about it – and I no longer get the same roles, but I didn’t have fun doing it. And it’s just an explosion, learning this new world and people take me by the hand. I don’t have to know everything. It’s really nice that I’ll be the little green in the room and they all have to teach me, and it’s like getting lessons every day. Plus, I live in a barn and put an entire area with microphones and amplifiers and playback and I can train all day and just shake. My dogs are really sick with some of the songs, I have to say. But this is a new energy and a new leasing of life where singing just makes you feel so alive. It makes you happy because all the oxygen passes through your brain and your body just wakes up everything. “

List of songs “Always be”: