Kris Kristofferson now trusts his songs more than his memory

"The songs are the last thing to go, I guess," Kris Kristofferson says. "But I can remember all the songs."

The voice on the phone is the same friendly, worn-as-your-favorite-baseball-glove one we've known since the '70s, when a younger Kristofferson's songs were packed with world-weary life beyond his years.

Now, however, the voice and amiable laughs match the age of the 79-year-old singer and movie star, as he speaks frankly of an uncertain future for live dates such as Friday's, a co-bill with fellow songwriter and troubadour John Prine at the Palms.

"I don't do many shows with anybody, but I hadn't done one with John for years," Kristofferson says. "He can play better guitar than I can. He's always been one of my heroes."

Asked if he expects the two to team up at any point in the show, Kristofferson says he hopes so. But, he adds, "My brain is so destroyed. To me it's amazing I can still get up and go to the show. I'm sure I'll be following his lead."

The phone chat doesn't betray the memory issues Kristofferson alludes to more than once. At one point he laughs about "too many blows to the head" and at another says, "Fortunately I have someone to take care of me. My wife, Lisa, who is 20 years younger and her brain works. She does all the work and I watch television and do my gigs."

When he does perform, his voice is out there alone. When Prine headlined The Pearl in December, he sometimes created a chamber-music effect through a band of all string players, no bass or drums.

Kristofferson pares it down even more. "I haven't used a band for how many years now? I haven't used a band forever. Just me and the guitar, which is not a whole lot of music," he adds with a laugh, "but it works."

He performs the modern-day standards recorded by him and, often more famously, by other people: Of Janis Joplin's "Me and Bobby McGee," he is quick to say, "I'd rather hear her sing it, I promise you."

"For the Good Times" was a hit for Ray Price and "Help Me Make It Through the Night" for Sammi Smith, Gladys Knight, Elvis Presley and others. Throw in his "supergroup" work with Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson as the Highwaymen, and "these people are all my heroes. The only one missing is Hank Williams because he died. But it's been a great life."

The Highwaymen played the original showroom at The Mirage in October 1990, when then-chairman Steve Wynn detoured them from a tour of larger venues.

"I tell you, I look at every Highwaymen picture or album and I can't believe it. It's like my biggest heroes, and then the janitor is me," he says. "It's so cool when you get to be friends with your heroes."

When he does perform, is there a connection with the audience he can't get anywhere else?

"I think there must be. I've been living on it for a long time," he says. "It's an exchange of emotion and art and it works. Lifts their spirits and mine too."

After all, we can cue up "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" at home, but he doesn't know we are watching it, right?

The 1973 title was randomly chosen, thanks to the enduring cult appeal of his first major role. But the mention of the movie and its renegade director, Sam Peckinpah, brings this response:

"I'll probably watch it in the next day or so myself. Now that you mentioned it, those are good times ... (Bob) Dylan and Sam Peckinpah, it's almost like a dream."

"Sam was his own worst enemy," he says of the hard-drinking director. "Not that I was much better. We were both kind of dangerous."

Your Kristofferson touchstone might be more his 1976 remake of "A Star Is Born" with Barbra Streisand. Or for younger viewers, the "Blade" movies with Wesley Snipes.

But he hopes to be remembered more for the music. "That's what I am, is a songwriter," he says. "The movies came off of performing the songs," once Hollywood saw him open for Linda Rondstadt at The Troubador in 1970. "And it's been a free ride ever since."

By the time Kristofferson's second album started to sell big the next year, he had already been a football player, Rhodes scholar, soldier and helicopter pilot.

For the past 33 years he's lived in Hawaii, place that a dates back before all those things — to a job he had with a dredging company at age 17.

"These are the best people in the world. I found that out when I was in high school," he says.

"I had to get a job out on Wake Island with Hawaiian Dredging. And I got to realize these guys are different than other people. I was the only 'haole,' the only white guy, in the whole company ... I'm this little haole high school guy trying to work his way up into a football player.

"We had to live out there for three months on Wake Island and it was like being sent to Alcatraz. But these guys were so, I don't know, simple, and once you were one of them you were treated equally."

It doesn't sound like those memories are fading as fast as he claims. And Kristofferson stops short of calling Friday's show any kind of farewell.

"Nah," he says. "Who knows? ... I go where Lisa tells me to. At least I can still do that."

— Read more from Mike Weatherford at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com and follow @Mikeweatherford on Twitter.