Kris Kristofferson Releasing New Album in January

11/28/2012
. Kris Kristofferson have set a January 29, 2013 release date for his new album, Feeling Mortal. We were sent these details:

Kristofferson is a Country Music Hall of Famer who ranks among the most versatile of American talents. He's been a Golden Gloves boxer, a Rhodes scholar, a college football player, an acclaimed actor, a military officer, a helicopter pilot, a Grammy-winner, a screw-up and an icon, and now he finds himself releasing the third Don Was-produced album in a twilight years trilogy. Feeling Mortal follows 2009's Closer To The Bone and 2006's This Old Road in examining hard-won grace.

"Wide awake and feeling mortal," he writes on the title track. "At this moment in the dream/ That old man there in the mirror/ And my shaky self-esteem."

"Going back to the beginning, the songs have been reflections of where I was at that point in my life," he says. "I always try to be as honest as I can in the songwriting, otherwise there's no point in doing it: I might as well be doing an advertising job or something. And what I'm finding, to my pleasant surprise at this age, is that I'm more inclined to laughter than tears. I hope I'll feel this creative and this grateful until they throw dirt over me."

The now 76-year-old Kristofferson did not always imagine this would be so. "If I look like a mean old man, that's what I am," he sang, back when he was still immortal and when he was sometimes a mean-feeling younger man. But now he's mostly truthful and thankful, as he sings, "For the laughter and the loving/ That I'm living with today."