Willie Nelson has never exactly been a rock ‘n’ roller.

In fact, Nelson’s speak-sing vocals and gypsy guitars are practically synonymous with all that is beloved in country music.

But “Songbird,” produced by the poster child for modern alt-country Ryan Adams, shows Nelson backed by his producer’s band ,the Cardinals, rather than his own ensemble, and the results are not nearly as much fun as they should be.

It seems blatantly obvious that Adams had more of a hand in selecting the songs to be recorded than Nelson did. Adams contributed one song to the project, Nelson contributed three (one new, two from previous albums), and the rest are covers.

The title cut, Christine McVie’s Fleetwood Mac classic, is gorgeous, showing both Nelson and the Cardinals doing what they do best.

But Nelson can sing a good song well, and he can sing it poorly… as illustrated by his take on Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” The track is plodding, a painfully boring and ill-conceived take on a normally beautiful song.

Adams’ gospel-rock arrangement of “Amazing Grace” sounds more like “House of the Rising Sun,” and Nelson’s demure vocal fits it better than one would think. But his take on the Grateful Dead’s “Stella Blue,” a song one would normally think Nelson would handle admirably, crashes and burns terribly. The cacophony of guitar noise at the end is very stereotypically Ryan Adams, but the track is decidedly not for Willie Nelson.

The majority of the album is generally unobjectionable, it’s Nelson essentially playing it safe while Adams tries to play bloody hell with Nelson’s signature style. The end product of either would make for a generally enjoyable listen, but they don’t mesh at all well.

In the end, die-hard fans of either Nelson or Adams should pick this album up, as both seem to contribute equally to this project.

But as a starting point into either career, or into the country/alt-country genre in general, there are many better albums than this.