“We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee,” Willie Nelson sings through a cloud of irony thicker than the haze on his tour bus. 

America’s biggest nonagenarian stoner is, of course, singing Merle Haggard’s anti-marijuana screed “Okie from Muskogee.” And the joke is nearly as delicious as hearing Bobbie Nelson and Paul English playing alongside Willie once again. 

All of this happens on Workin’ Man: Willie Sings Merle. It’s Nelson’s 78th solo studio LP and features 10 additional Haggard compositions and the final recordings of drummer English, who died in 2020, and Little Sister Bobbie, who died in 2022. 

The result is an otherwise-impossible Family band reunion. And the joy is palpable as Willie calls tinkling piano solos with “play it, Little Sister,” answers her on Trigger and sings behind the beat of English’s lightly brushed signature snare. 

Harmonica blower Mickey Raphael adds plaintive textures to the songs he co-produced with Nelson and the pair wisely included playful studio banter to accompany such titles as the Grateful Dead-adjacent “Mama Tried,” “Workin’ Man Blues,” “Tonight the Bottle Let Me Down,” “Mama Tried” and “Somewhere Between.”

Come for the irony. Stay for the memories