THE IN-LAW.

A guide to Willie Nelson's recordings

Nine-forty-five on a Thursday morning, and the songwriter and singer Willie Nelson is on a bus parked on the north side of West Fifty-third Street, steaming soy milk for a friend's decaffeinated cappuccino. He is on the bus--which is called Honeysuckle Rose 3, to distinguish it from two nearly identical predecessors, and which bears an airbrushed scene of cactus and desert on its side--partly because he needs to be on the bus (the north side of West Fifty-third Street backs onto the stage entrance of the Ed Sullivan Theatre, where later that day he is to record two appearances on the David Letterman show), but mostly because ...