The headline at the top of this blog post probably isn't fair. Willie Nelson did not actually record a duet with Jobe Smith, a gardener with intellectual disabilities who gets plugged into a virtual reality supercomputer and becomes a godlike digital super-being. But when you have the opportunity to make a graphic that puts a beloved 92-year-old music legend next to a 1992 CGI nightmare, you have to do it.
Let's back up. Jeff Fahey is grizzled character actor with more than 40 years of experience. He has literally hundreds of film and TV credits — Lost, Wyatt Earp, a bunch of Robert Rodriguez movies, Darkman III: Die Darkman Die, etc. He is exactly the kind of actor who might end up co-writing a Willie Nelson song; it's really not that weird. But when you play the titular role in Brett Leonard's 1992 Stephen King adaptation Lawnmower Man, you will always be the Lawnmower Man to some of us.
Fahey has played many roles in independent films over the years, and he sometimes offers to write music for those films. In a recent podcast interview, Fahey says that he and his songwriting partners have four songs on the soundtrack of The Gray House, a new limited series from Amazon Prime, and that he's "riding this wonderful wave."
Fahey has no songwriting history listed on Wikipedia and only a little bit on IMDB, so it seems safe to say that one of the first songs that he's actually placed was recorded by Willie Nelson, which is pretty cool. Along with Erin Enderlin and Jim "Moose" Brown, Fahey co-wrote Nelson's new single "Heart Of America." It's on the soundtrack of The Gray House. Back in 2024, Enderlin gave some context on Instagram:
When Moose invited me to write with him and Jeff, I said yes because Moose is one of my favorite co-writers, then I kept saying yes cause he and Jeff wanted to write cool stuff, like western cowboy stories and dark and twisty tales. I had no idea if it would “go anywhere” I just knew I felt super creative and excited about the work. Then in January, Jeff said I’ve got a series we are going to write for. The story line is so powerful, music came easily inspired. We even got to work hands on with Leslie Grief - who has produced some of my favorite series including Texas Rising and Hatfields & McCoys.
Nelson's recording, she added, is one of four songs for the soundtrack the trio wrote. The others are sung by the War and Treaty, Larkin Poe, and Drake Milligan and Shania Twain.
The Civil War-set The Gray House is coming to Amazon Prime Video next month. Roland Joffé, the auteur behind The Killing Fields and The Mission, directed all the episodes, and the cast includes people like Mary-Louise Parker, Ben Vereen, and Keith David. Jeff Fahey, you may notice, does not appear to be in the cast of The Gray House. But the series is produced by two of Fahey's longtime colleagues, Kevin Costner and Morgan Freeman. Fahey and Costner both had their first big film roles in the 1985 Western Silverado, and Fahey's most recent film role was in the Costner-directed passion project Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1.
Costner shared this statement about the new song:
What a lucky day for us that Willie would take on performing a song for The Gray House. I’m not sure what Willie’s process is, but it’s clear that Willie was ready and willing to go deep when thinking about that terrible moment in American history where our country was divided and at war with itself, a moment in time that I believe we still have not fully recovered from. Willie’s talent, while always on display, found a new depth at least for me. God Bless our country and bless this man!
Freeman and co-executive producer Lori McCreary add:
Some songs don’t belong to one project… they belong to a people. "The Heart of America" that Willie sings for The Gray House, feels like a new kind of anthem, one meant for every American.
Anyway, good job Jeff Fahey, keep writing them songs. Willie Nelson's tender version of "Heart Of America" is out now, and you can see his video for the song below.
The Gray House (Original Soundtrack From The Amazon Series) arrives via MCA with the series premiere on Prime Video 2/26. It also includes songs from Killer Mike, Scott Stapp, and Lainey Wilson, among others. Here's the tracklist:
01 The War And Treaty - “Blood In the River” (Erin Enderlin, Jim “Moose” Brown, Jeff Fahey)
02 Adrienne Warren - “Unholy Water” (Jon Bon Jovi, Butch Walker, Desmond Child)
03 Yolanda Adams - “Love Will Rescue Me” (Anthony Evans, Nick Pothoven)
04 The War And Treaty - “If This Day” (Diane Warren)
05 Scott Stapp - “Red, White, & Blue” (Scott Stapp, Marti Frederiksen, Desmond Child)
06 Lainey Wilson - “Dead End Red Dirt Road” (Lainey Wilson, Trannie Anderson, Paul Thomas Sikes)
07 Larkin Poe - “The Devil’s Boat” (Erin Enderlin, Jim “Moose” Brown, Jeff Fahey, Michael Trotter Jr., Tanya Trotter)
08 Killer Mike Featuring Lena Byrd Miles - “Smiling Eyes (Smiling Faces)” (Barrett Strong, Norman Whitfield, Vidal Garcia, Cosmo Hickox, Robert Mandell, Max Perry, Michael Render)
09 Shainia Twain and Drake Milligan - “I’ll Be Here With You” (Erin Enderlin, Jim “Moose” Brown, Jeff Fahey, Drake Milligan)
10 Willie Nelson - “Heart Of America” (Erin Enderlin, Jim “Moose” Brown, Jeff Fahey)
