As producer, co-lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist on father Willie Nelson’s latest LP, Micah Nelson’s fingerprints are all over Last Leaf on the Tree.

Rather than detract from Willie’s magic, Micah’s input enhances it, turning Nelson’s 76th solo album, and 153rd altogether, into an ambient soundtrack of life’s winter as analog and digital recording and production color the songs in the same shade Micah uses under his Particle Kid nom de musique.

Willie sings and plays Trigger. Micah sings and plays acoustic, electric, bass and steel guitars; piano and synths; cello; drums; dulcimer; and more. Former Doors drummer John Densmore appears on four cuts. Daniel Lanois pops in on pedal steel; and Family members Mickey Raphael and Kevin Smith offer harmonica and double bass, respectively.

The team effort spills into the cover songs that fill the tracklist that includes Tom Waits’ melancholy “Last Leaf” and “House Where Nobody Lives;” Warren Zevon’s dying wish, “Keep Me in Your Heart,” and the Flaming Lips’ sonic existential crisis “Do You Realize??” among its highlights. And while it may be no surprise the Nelsons tackle Neil Young’s “Are You Ready for the Country” – Willie and Young are Farm Aid board members and Micah is a recent addition to Crazy Horse – the inclusion of Young’s Buffalo Springfield oddity “Broken Arrow” is both surprising and revelatory. 

It follows the contours of the original from the “Mr. Soul” snippet on the intro to the jazzy outro and the Nelsons do great justice to the song by simultaneously distinguishing their version and not obscuring the original. 

At 91, Willie Nelson is, of course, the titular Last Leaf on the Tree. But he’s not above a little fun. So after remaking his own “The Ghost,” Willie emerges from a fuzzy wall of dissonance to sing a short acoustic ditty – an untitled hidden track – that ends the LP with this warning: 

“Don’t fuck with the mentally sick.”