Willie Nelson – Spirit

One of four vintage Willie Nelson albums vinyl reissues

Celebration continues for Willie's 90th birthday!

Releases focus on albums from the 1990s and 2000s

1996's stripped-back Spirit on 180-gram vinyl!

Four classic albums by music superstar Willie Nelson are to be released on vinyl, some for the first time, as celebrations of the country hero's recent 90th birthday continue.

The releases focus on albums of Nelson's from the 1990s and 2000s and begin on June 23 with his 2002 collaborative album The Great Divide, first issued by Lost Highway. This is followed on August 4 by a 25th anniversary reissue of 1998's acclaimed and cinematic Teatro, produced by Daniel Lanois. Nelson's 2000 ode to the blues, Milk Cow Blues, will return on September 15 as a double LP, before 1996's stripped-back, emotionally raw Spirit completes the set on October 20, just before his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on November 3, 2023.

The Great Divide and Milk Cow Blues have never been available on vinyl before, while Teatro and Spirit return to the format due to popular demand, having been available in limited volume, but now long out-of-print.

Spirit marked a return to Nelson's roots for an album that was seen by critics as his most focused of that decade. It was self-produced and featured a stripped-back band of Willie and Jody Payne on guitars, Bobbie Nelson on piano, and the great country fiddler Johnny Gimble, from Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. It included 12 original compositions on the themes of love, loss, redemption, and the human experience and, in 2020, was ranked by Texas Monthly at No. 10 among Nelson's more than 150 albums.