NEW YORK – Young musicians seeking longevity would be wise to heed the sensible word of Willie Nelson: Do as you please and if you’re lucky enough to have a statue built in your honor in your city, remember that it’s just something you “have to get down and clean the pigeon (implement) every now and then.”

Friday, Nelson, who is 91 years old, will release his “Last Leaf on the Tree”. second studio album this year – also his 76th solo studio album and 153rd album overall, respectively Texas Monthly’s the hierarchical hierarch his prolific discography. So how many more does it have in it? Nelson laughs into the phone: “I don’t know. I hope there are a few more.” Maybe it will reach 200? “Why not!”

“Last Leaf on the Tree” is an album of firsts and familiarities; is Nelson’s first album produced entirely by his son Micah, featuring some original tracks and covers from Nelson staples such as Neil Young, Nina Simone and Tom Waits, as well as some less-than-obvious inclusions such as re-imaginings of the Flaming Lips. Do you realize that?” and Beck’s “Lost Cause.”

“He’s a true artist,” Nelson says of his son. “He chose all the songs.”

Asked how he broke the news to his producer Buddy Cannon that Micah was taking over, Nelson jokes, “I surprised him.”

Micah Nelson’s artistic, alternative rock sensibility is present on the record, not only in his selection of cover songs and his delivery. For a cover of Young’s “Are You Ready for the Country,” for example, he used sticks and leaves for percussion instead of traditional instruments. “I didn’t notice anything different,” laughs Nelson.

His wife Annie Nelson, who joins Willie for the interview, adds: “He says it all the time. It’s great to play with your baby. And it’s even better if they’re good.”

After seven decades of songwriting, Nelson says the only way to spot a good one is simply, “You know it when you hear it. When you hear something and you’re like, ‘Damn, I wish I’d written that,’ that’s a good song.”

“There is no better songwriter alive than Kris Kristofferson,” Nelson once said of his Highwaymen bandmate at an awards show in 2009. Kristofferson, 88, has died last month at his home in Maui, Hawaii.

“He was a great composer. He left a lot of fantastic songs for the rest of us to sing as long as we’re here,” he reflects. “Kris was a great friend of mine. And, you know, we kind of had fun together and made a lot of music together – videos, movies. I hated to lose him. It was a sad time.”

In some ways, Nelson is the last of the Outlaw Country era – though he’s always experimented with genres and styles. The title “The Last Leaf on the Tree,” taken from a cover of Waits’ “The Last Leaf,” somehow resonates when he considers his contemporaries. “If you just take the music part and go back to, you know, Waylon (Jennings) and Kris and John(ny Cash) and, you know, we all work together, Highwaymen. And then I’m the only one left. And that’s not funny.”

The album also considers love and death – subjects he knows a thing or two about.

“Well, I’m 91 plus years old, so, you know, I’m not worried about it. I don’t feel bad. It doesn’t hurt anywhere. I have no reason to worry about dying. But I don’t know anyone who has lived forever,” he says. “I take good care of myself. And I feel like I’m in pretty good shape physically. Mental? That’s another story,” he says, laughing.

As for what he hopes his legacy will be, he has an answer for that, too: “I had a good time. And I did what I came here to do: to make music.”

He will continue to do just that and more. He says he’s already finished another album, and in a few weeks, Willie and Annie Nelson will release “Willie and Annie Nelson’s Cannabis Cookbook,” a lighthearted extension of the couple’s longtime belief that both marijuana and food have medicinal properties. . Annie says the book was born out of necessity when Willie had pneumonia and couldn’t smoke, so she started making edibles to ease his night terrors.

“It was a great taste tester,” she says.

Without missing a beat, he jumps in, “I’m still there!”