Despite the new-fangled delivery system, Moon Child hews close to the classic singer-songwriter tradition that Jerry Jeff has always embodied. As well as a half-dozen JJW originals (including a reprise of the title track, which first appeared on the LP Jerry Jeff Walker in 1972), he also essays songs by Jimmie Dale Gilmore, John Denver, poet and longtime pal Charles John Quarto, Susanna Clark and Chris Wall. Moon Child is a worthy addition to a canon that includes the timeless standard, "Mr. Bojangles."

     The music ranges from country to near-folk to jazz-tinged pop to a lilting Caribbean groove, all bound by Jerry Jeff’s unique phrasing and inimitable voice.

     As he has so often in the past, Jerry Jeff turns his lyrical eye on the things that matter: the simple pleasures in a well-spent life and the ties that bind lovers and families together. "Down In Belize" and "Caribbean Moon" are musical postcards from the Central American nation where the Walkers have a second home. "The Vows" is a song Walker penned for his parents’ 60th wedding anniversary, while "This Wedding Day" celebrates the marriage of his daughter, Jessie Jane. And "What True Love Is All About," arguably the loveliest song on the album, is the latest in a career-long series of love songs to his wife, Susan.

     Despite his fealty to the acoustic guitar and the songwriter's pen, Jerry Jeff and Susan (who also serves as his manager, booking agent and president of their record label, Tried & True Music) have long been in the forefront of music business innovation, Moon Child's digital release being only the latest iteration.

     The Walkers were early champions of taking control of all aspects of Jerry Jeff's career, literally bringing his booking, management, record label, promotion and publishing under one roof. They championed and mentored younger songwriters early on, helping to build the vibrant Texas music scene and, in turn, introducing Jerry Jeff to younger audiences. And, long before the advent of Facebook and My Space, they took "social networking" to a whole new level with an international fan club that celebrates Jerry Jeff's annual Birthday Weekends and, more recently, trips to Ambergris Caye, off the shore of Belize.

     But in the end, all of that exists to serve a guy with a guitar and a rhyme. Jerry Jeff is proud of serving the troubadour's tradition, but sometimes even those close to him wonder why he keeps on keeping on, at age 67, when other singers his age have long since hung it up.

     Perhaps the answer can be found in one of the songs on Moon Child, when Walker weighs the virtues of a life spent in music: "We did it simply to do it/We did it to be tender and tough/We did it for the beauty of the music/Isn't that explanation enough?"

Somehow, one gets the idea that that is how Jerry Jeff has always pictured himself. Even when he was playing screaming cowboy rock 'n' roll to thousands of people in the 70s and 80s, the solitary troubadour was always on the inside, looking out.

Jerry Jeff has lived - and is still living - the troubadour's life. Lots of musicians talk about the road; Jerry Jeff really is the kid who rode his thumb out of his hometown in upstate New York to such exotic destinations as Key West (where he introduced another young musician named Jimmy Buffett to the pleasures of island life)...He really did sing for pennies on New Orleans streetcorners, alongside Mr. Bojangles...He really did strap his guitar on the back of a motorcycle and go busking across Canada...And he really did sing in the smoky cafes and folk clubs of Greenwich Village, following in the footsteps of Bob Dylan and Ramblin' Jack Elliott.

And that all happened before he became a star. Most folks know that story - how Jerry Jeff moved to Austin, Texas in the early Seventies and reinvented himself as a Lone Star country-rocker. He became, along with Willie Nelson and Asleep At The Wheel, one of the arbiters of the internationally famous Austin musical community. Since then, he has celebrated the music of peers such as Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt, and served as a fountainhead and inspiration to younger musicians such as Robert Earl Keen, Pat Green, Jack Ingram, Todd Snider, and a moderately successful country tunesmith named Garth Brooks.

A string of records for MCA and Elektra followed before Jerry Jeff gave up on the mainstream music business and formed his own independent record label, Tried & True Music, in 1986. Another series of increasingly autobiographical records followed under the Tried & True imprint. The latest, Moon Child, brings to 33 the grand total of Jerry Jeff’s album catalog.

He's played for four or five presidents, toured in Lear Jets and bought a second home in Belize (the fruits, in part, of having penned an American pop standard, "Mr. Bojangles").

But even with all that, Jerry Jeff still sees the world with a troubadour's eyes. His songs are the way he makes the world make sense, how he passes on stories of the people he meets, the way he feels on a given morning. He has come full circle, back to his singer-songwriter roots. You might say he was heading this way all along.