Archive for November, 2014

Sunday, November 30th, 2014

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Willie Nelson, “Forgiving you is Easy”

Sunday, November 30th, 2014

Willie Nelson, King of Country Music (Newsweek 8/14/78)

Sunday, November 30th, 2014

Newsweek
August 14, 1978
King of Country Music: Willie Nelson
by Pete Axthelm

His rough, red-bearded face has been lined by years of tequila nights and Bloody Mary mornings, but the clear eyes sparkle as if each song, each cheer and each success is happening to Willie Nelson for the very first time. Surrounded by a merry band of pickers and pranksters, he travels the hard miles and one-night stands; but like the cowboys he celebrates in songs, Nelson can seem pensive and alone in the wildest of crowds. Willie has always carried himself with a kind of fierce innocense, defying those who would corrupt or label him. And now, to his whimsical delight, it is all paying off. At 45, the old outlaw has become music’s “in” phenomenon. The night life, Willie Nelson'[s life, has become a good life indeed.

Twenty years after he wrote “The Night Life” and other country classics — only to have them recorded by others because his own haunting, unusual voice was deemed unsuitable by record executives — Willie is now singing not only his own hits but ones that he didn’t even write himself. His new “Stardust” album, an evocative country-blues treatment of ten old standards, has topped the country charts for two months — after supplanting a wonderful No. 1 album that Willie did with his outlaw friend Waylon Jennings. His Western epic, “Red Headed Stranger,” remains on the charts three years after it smashed all the old rules about what a country musical album was supposed to be. With his hard-edged poetry and intensely personal blend of country, rock and gospel sounds, Willie has crossed over to the pop charts and reached out to enbrace a widening audience of good old boys, young rockers and almost anyone else who can see beyond narrow categories onto a brand of music that sometimes seems very close to magic.

“The nice thing about what’s happening now,” says Nelson, “is that I’m doing pretty much what I’ve been trying to do for 25 years. During a lot of those years, I wondered if anybody out there was listening. But now, the word seems to have gotten around about me.”

The message began to get out about 1973, when Nelson threw a Fourth of July picnic in Dripping Springs, Texas, and 50,000 of his friends showed up. Soon he was being hailed as a great synthesizer who could bring together rock groups and country stars, as well as hippie and red neck fans. Nelson’s music is described in catchall phrases like progressive country and redneck rock. But when ever the trend spotters thought they had him pinned down, Willie slipped away.

Just when people began to call him an avant-garde poet, this country genious turned back to old-time melodies like “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” and “Georgia (On My Mind) — and merely became more popular than ever.

Despite such apparent contradictions. Nelson is not really an elusive person. To know him, the trick is to keep listening. “I’ve come as close to keeping a real diary as anybody,” he says. “I just disguised it as a bunch of songs.”

My front tracks are bound for a cold water well
And my back tracks are covered with snow
And sometimes it’s heaven,
And sometimes it’s hell
And sometimes I don’t even know

Nelson sings of not only highs and lows but the confused moments in between. In the wreckage of his first marriage, he stared at the walls of a Nashville garage, while the rain hit the lone window like tears. The result was the ode “Hello Walls,” with the conclusion: “We must all pull together/Or else I’ll lose my mind/Cause I’ve got a feeling she’ll be gone a long, long time.”

Many of Nelson’s early songs dealt with pain and loss, but must were different from traditionally sudsy Nashville fare. Like a Greek dramatist, Willie sought wisdom through suffering and often it arrived in the form of brilliant insights like those in his thematic album about divorce, “Phases and Stages.” A later album, “Red Headed Stranger,” highlighted the stern frontier morality that can transform melodrama into something remarkably akin to tragedy.

Willie isn’t writing much these days. After all the early years of playing in Texas honky-honks behind chicken-wire fences put up to keep the drunks from hurling bottles at the band, he is reveling in the huge crowds that turn out during his tours. Unlike many performers, most notably the reclusive Jennings, Willie loves audiences — and his obvious enthusiasum infuses his concerts with tremendous energy. “I get restless when I don’t pay,” he says. “If I had a choice, I’d play four hours a night, seven nights a week. The playing is the fun, the writing is the work. To write, reflects the present state of Willie’s heaven-and-hell existence: “Life don’t owe me a living,” the song goes, “But a Lear and limo will do.”

Out in the land of Learjets and limousines, Nelson is a hot property. United Artists is planning a motion picture called, “The Songwriter,” inspired by Willie and written by his good friend, novelist-screenwriter Edwin (Bud) Shrake. Universal is planning a Western based on “Red Headed Stranger,” and there are long-range plans for a book and a movie about Nelson’s life. Willie will write the movie sound A Beverly Hills bartender put it in less Hollywood terms: “He’s the most interesting thing I’ve seen out here since the right-hand turn on red.”

Willie Nelson, “Take the politics out of Veterans Affairs Funding”

Sunday, November 30th, 2014

Sunday, November 30th, 2014

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Sunday, November 30th, 2014

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The Full Nelson (by Joe Nick Patoski)

Sunday, November 30th, 2014

The Full Nelson

by Joe Nick Patoski
www.joenickp.com

He’s the country music outlaw who stages the annual Farm Aid concerts, survived a public battle with the internal Revenue Service and made “On the Road Again” a national anthem. Back home, he’s just Willie, no last name necessary — the most beloved man in Texas (sorry, Mr. President).  But no matter how little or how much anyone knows about 69-eyar-old Willie Nelson (below, in 1994), they’re about to learn a whole lot more when Willie Nelson:  Still is Still Moving kicks off the 17th season of American Masters (PBS, October 2, check TV Guide listings).

“Willie is an intensively private and reticent person,” says producer director Steve Cantor.  “It took a while, but it turned out to be something intimate and personal, in a way he hasn’t opened up before.”  Having a lens pointed at his face was hardly unusual for the road warrior, who sleeps on his tour bus even when he’s not touring.  His longtime tour manager, David Anderson, and Nelson’s daughter, Lana, have been shooting behind-the-scenes footage for years, some of which is woven into Cantor’s 90-minute documentary, allowing him to capture parts of Nelson’s life rarely seen in public.  In one scene Nelson plays chess with the blind entertainer Ray Charles, who soundly beats him at the game.  “Now that’s something you don’t see every day,” Nelson says.  “He kicked my ass.”

Willie Nelson in Concert at Harrahs (4/6/78)

Sunday, November 30th, 2014

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Willie Nelson and sons

Sunday, November 30th, 2014

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Micah Nelson, Willie Nelson, Lukas Nelson

Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson, “Songwriter”

Sunday, November 30th, 2014

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Thanks, Phil Weisman, for sending this picture.

Saturday, November 29th, 2014

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Thank you, Patricia Lopez Wiggs, for this great photo, from Willie Nelson’s birthday party concert, at the BackYard last year.

Two Legends, Three Nights: Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard (Whitewater Amphitheater, Mar. 26, 27, 28)

Saturday, November 29th, 2014

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Tickets on sale:
www.WhiteWaterRocks.com

Willie Nelson, Bobbie Nelson, Sibling Act

Saturday, November 29th, 2014

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Willie Nelson and Sister Bobbie
Photograph: Todd V Wolfson

www.theguardian.com
by: Neil Spencer

In his advancing years, the Texan troubadour, 81, is speeding up rather than slowing down, this being his fifth album in two-and-a-half years. Accompanied by keyboardist sister Bobbie (a founding member of Nelson’s Family band), it’s a ramble through his vast back catalogue (Walkin’, Sad Songs and Waltzes etc), adding favourites such as Irving Berlin’s Alexander’s Ragtime Band – a set inspired by tourbus jam sessions. Indulgent perhaps, but Nelson’s worn, almost conversational vocals remain arresting. There’s the odd new composition – the droll I Don’t Know Where I Am Today – and screeds of his idiosyncratic guitar playing, rich and rococo on Ou Es-Tu Mon Amour. Bravo.

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Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton

Saturday, November 29th, 2014

www.rollingstone.com
by: Stephen L. Betts

Something to be thankful for this (and every) Thanksgiving: that country music gave us musicians like Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson. A bonus? The time those two icons performed together for a 1983 TV special that also featured Kris Kristofferson and Brenda Lee, both of whom had appeared alongside Parton and Nelson on a 1982 double album called The Winning Hand. Coincidentally, Johnny Cash — who wrote the liner notes for The Winning Hand — also hosted the syndicated TV event.

In the mid Sixties, Parton, Nelson, Kristofferson and Lee were all signed to Monument Records in Nashville, a label whose roster (at one time or another) also included Roy Orbison, Connie Smith, Jeannie Seely and Ray Stevens. In 1982, with Parton and Nelson at the height of their popularity, the label released a collection that included previously unreleased songs by the two songwriters, as well as songs by Lee and Kristofferson. Many of those songs were edited together to create duets for the artists, including two by Willie and Dolly: “Happy, Happy Birthday, Baby” and “Everything’s Beautiful (In Its Own Way).” In spite of the similar title, the latter tune was not a cover of the 1970 hit by Ray Stevens, “Everything Is Beautiful,” but rather an unreleased tune Parton had written and recorded for Monument around 1967.

In the above clip, Parton (with a whole lot of hair piled on her head) is dressed in an off-the-shoulder top and long denim shirt. She holds hands with a small boy as they walk onto the set, where children are painting with watercolors. Meanwhile, Nelson – pre-pigtails – strolls onto the set during the second half of the verse, holding the hand of a little girl. He’s also decked out in denim, with his signature red bandanna around his head (and a blue one around his neck). There’s even a patented Dolly ad-lib at the end of the performance, which marked the very first time the two musicians had actually sung “Everything’s Beautiful (In Its Own Way)” together.

“Everything’s Beautiful (In Its Own Way)” marked Parton’s first chart duet with someone other than Porter Wagoner. The tune was a Top Ten country hit in 1982, and The Winning Hand reached the Top Five on the album chart. Monument Records was later revived by Sony Music in the late Nineties and was home to the Dixie Chicks, among other country acts.

Saturday, November 29th, 2014

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