Archive for November, 2016

Willie Nelson, “Honeysuckle Rose”

Wednesday, November 30th, 2016

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On July 3, 1980, Willie Nelson’s movie “Honeysuckle Rose” makes its world premiere in Austin, Texas.

Hundreds of reporters and Hollywood types converged at a local theater to watch the screening.  The gala was complete with celebrities and several shiny limousines.  But in his typical unassuming laid-back tradition, Nelson chose not to use a chauffer and drove himself and his wife, Connie, in a silver Mercedes.

Nelson, in the presence of Dyan Cannon and Slim Pickens, comes off well in the movie.  But then again he played the role of a country star bandleader who travels the country in a bus with a handful of renegade musicians.  There is plenty of singing and plenty of carousing — activities Nelson is not unaccustomed to in real life.

“I don’t think I ever really get nervous about it (filming the movie), but then I was never asked to do anything that hard.  I just kind of go where they point me, really,” said Nelson.

Ms. Cannon, who did a splendid job of singing a few country songs herself, said she was impressed with Nelson.

“Willie has a basic honesty,” she said.  “The screen just doesn’t lie.  It captured that about Willie.”

Nelson said he had two more movies to do in the next year, including one with Kris Kristofferson, but indicated music would continue to be his first livelihood.

“Honeysuckle Rose, actually will do much for Nelson’s music career.”

Part of Nelson’s contract with Warner Brothers called for him to write several songs for the movie.  Time went by and Nelson had not written any songs.  But then, during a flight with director Jerry Schatzberg shortly before filming began in Austin last year, the director reminded Nelson of his obligations.

Nelson pulled out his plane ticket and a pencil and wrote the movie’s biggest song, “On the Road Again.”

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Thanks to Phil Weisman for finding this cool poster.

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Willie Nelson and Family

Wednesday, November 30th, 2016

Willie Nelson and Family

Portrait of Willie Nelson and Family during photo shoot at the Golden Nugget Hotel.
Las Vegas, Nevada 8/1978
photo: Neil Leifer

Willie Nelson, Glen Campbell, Roger Miller

Wednesday, November 30th, 2016

Willie Nelson and Glen Campbell perform, “Just to Satisfy You”, then Roger Miller joins in for “Uncloudy Day”

Tuesday, November 29th, 2016

Willie Nelson

Support Farm Aid #GivingTuesday

Tuesday, November 29th, 2016
hands planting
Dear Linda,
Last month, Farm Aid received a donation along with this note:

In 1985, I pledged $20 through the concert telethon line when I was a college student. Later, I realized that I did not have the money to send in. Last night, my college roommate reminded me that we never sent our donations in. I am a single mom of two college students now and I don’t make a lot of money but I want to pay what I promised I would 31 years ago. Please accept my apologies. I wish that I could afford to do more. Thank you.

This generous sentiment energized all of us here at Farm Aid to keep up the fight for family farmers and good food. Here is a person who, despite her own difficulties, stayed true to her word by honoring a 31-year old pledge to do good in the world. Inspired by the first Farm Aid concert, she continues to believe —  like we do —  that family farmers are essential for the well-being of all of us.

We all have intentions that we don’t always follow through with for various reasons: We get busy, we forget, or our intentions are too big to fulfill at that moment. But the chance to follow through on your promise is always there.

Whether you’ve intended to give to Farm Aid in the past or you donate regularly, we hope you’ll see #GivingTuesday as a chance to fulfill your intention, and strengthen our mission to keep family farmers on the land and grow the good food movement. In 31 years, Farm Aid has raised more than $50 million to promote a strong and resilient family farm system of agriculture thanks to big-hearted donors like you.
Today is your chance to join millions of people who are using #GivingTuesday as a way to do good in the world! We hope you’ll use this opportunity to support Farm Aid and make a difference in the lives of family farmers and all of us who eat.
Thank you, from all of us at Farm Aid.

PS —  Today only! One of Farm Aid’s generous donors has pledged to match gifts up to the first $2,000 donated. Give a gift to support family farmers right now and see it doubled!
Photo © Lise Metzger

Tuesday, November 29th, 2016

#willienelson #theredheadedstranger #whiskeyriver #midnightrider #meandpaul #shotgunwillie #angelflyingtooclosetotheground

A photo posted by Willie, Waylon, and me (@williewaylonnme) on

Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, “A Horse Called Music”

Tuesday, November 29th, 2016

Pick of the Day, Willie Nelson, “American Classic”

Tuesday, November 29th, 2016

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Good People don’t smoke marijuana; great people do

Tuesday, November 29th, 2016

Willie Nelson & Family to play Florida Strawberry Festival (March 3, 2017)

Tuesday, November 29th, 2016

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www.StrawberryFestival.com

The Florida Strawberry Festival is an 11-day community event celebrating the strawberry harvest of Eastern Hillsborough County.  Each year, nearly 500,000 visitors enjoy the festival’s

headline entertainment, youth livestock shows, exhibits of commerce and, of course, its strawberry shortcake.

The 2017 Florida Strawberry Festival where “We’re Playing Your Song!” takes place March 2-12 in Plant City, Fla.

Willie Nelson Holiday Gift Ideas

Tuesday, November 29th, 2016

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Lots of fun new Willie Nelson & Family souvenirs at www.WillieNelson.com

 

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Tuesday, November 29th, 2016

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Antones proudly presents Willie Nelson and Leon Russell

Monday, November 28th, 2016

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This Day in Willie Nelson history: Grand Ole’ Opry Debut

Monday, November 28th, 2016

On November 28, 1964, Willie Nelson made his Grand Ole Opry debut, as a member of the Grand Ole Opry.

Grand Ole Opry

The Grand Ole Opry is a weekly Saturday night country music radio program broadcast live on WSM radio in Nashville, Tennessee. It is the oldest continuous radio program in the United States, having been broadcast on WSM since November 28, 1925. It is also televised and promotes live performances both in Nashville and on the road.

History

The Grand Ole Opry started out as the WSM Barn Dance in the new fifth floor radio station studio of the National Life & Accident Insurance Company. The featured performer on the first show was Uncle Jimmy Thompson, a fiddler who was then 77 years old. The announcer was program director George D. Hay, known on the air as “The Solemn Old Judge.” He was only 30 at the time and was not a judge, but was an enterprising pioneer who launched the Barn Dance as a spin-off of his National Barn Dance program at WLS Radio in Chicago, Illinois. Some of the bands regularly featured on the show during its early days included the Possum Hunters, the Fruit Jar Drinkers, the Crook Brothers and the Gully Jumpers. They arrived in this order. However, Judge Hay liked the Fruit Jar Drinkers and asked them to appear last on each show because he wanted to always close each segment with “red hot fiddle playing.” They were the second band accepted on the “Barn Dance.” And, when the Opry began having square dancers on the show, the Fruit Jar Drinkers always played for them.

In 1926, Uncle Dave Macon, a Tennessee banjo player who had recorded several songs and toured the vaudeville circuit, became its first real star. The name Grand Ole Opry came about in December, 1927. The Barn Dance followed NBC Radio Network’s Music Appreciation Hour, which consisted of classical music and selections from grand opera. Their final piece that night featured a musical interpretation of an onrushing railroad locomotive. In response to this Judge Hay quipped, “Friends, the program which just came to a close was devoted to the classics. Doctor Damrosch told us that there is no place in the classics for realism. However, from here on out for the next three hours, we will present nothing but realism. It will be down to earth for the ‘earthy’.” He then introduced the man he dubbed the Harmonica Wizard — DeFord Bailey who played his classic train song “The Pan American Blues”. After Bailey’s performance Hay commented, “For the past hour, we have been listening to music taken largely from Grand Opera. From now on we will present the ‘Grand Ole Opry.’” The name stuck and has been used for the program since then.

As audiences to the live show increased, National Life & Accident Insurance’s radio venue became too small to accommodate the hordes of fans. They built a larger studio, but it was still not large enough. The Opry then moved into then-suburban Hillsboro Theatre (now the Belcourt), then to the Dixie Tabernacle in East Nashville and then to the War Memorial Auditorium, a downtown venue adjacent to the State Capitol. A twenty-five cent admission began to be charged, in part an effort to curb the large crowds, but to no avail. In 1943, the Opry moved to the Ryman Auditorium.

On October 2, 1954, a teenage Elvis Presley made his first (and only) performance there. Although the public reacted politely to his revolutionary brand of rockabilly music, after the show he was told by one of the organizers that he ought to return to Memphis to resume his truck-driving career, prompting him to swear never to return. Ironically, years later Garth Brooks commented in a television interview that one of the greatest thrills of playing the Opry was that he got to play on the same stage Elvis had.

The Ryman was home to the Opry until 1974, when the show moved to the 4,400-seat Grand Ole Opry House, located several miles to the east of downtown Nashville on a former farm in the Pennington Bend of the Cumberland River. An adjacent theme park, called Opryland USA, preceded the new Opry House by two years. Due to sagging attendance, the park was shuttered and demolished after the 1997 season by the Opry’s current owner, Gaylord Entertainment Company. The theme park was replaced by the Opry Mills Mall. An adjacent hotel, the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center, is the largest non-gambling hotel in North America and is the site of dozens of conventions annually.

Still, the Opry continues, with hundreds of thousands of fans traveling from around the world to Nashville to see the music and comedy on the Opry in person.

Bobbie Nelson

Monday, November 28th, 2016


www.willienelson.com

By Todd Money
www.goupstate.com

Getting a job working for your sibling isn’t always the easiest or most advisable career move.

Bobbie Nelson, the sister of musical legend Willie Nelson, made the most of it.

Never a stranger to music herself, Bobbie had played the Texas honky-tonks with younger brother Willie when they were in their teens, in a band with Bobbie’s husband and Ira Nelson, their guitar-playing father. But when her husband died in a car accident, she was left to raise three sons on her own. That brought her to business school in Fort Worth, Texas, where she aimed to learn secretarial skills.

It was music, though, that led to her first job out of college, with the Hammond Organ Co., where she was hired for her office skills – and her ability to demonstrate the company’s organs. Before long, she was working as a piano entertainer in restaurants, eventually making her living as a pianist in Austin, Texas, and Nashville, Tenn.

It was in the early 1970s when brother Willie, who had just signed a recording deal with Atlantic Records, asked Bobbie to join his band. Her playing mixed well with the rest of the band’s free-wheeling style on hits such as “Whiskey River” and “If You’ve Got the Money I’ve Got the Time,” and more than 35 years and countless albums and concerts later, brother and sister are still playing together.

Recently, the lesser-known Bobbie has garnered a little spotlight of her own. In 2007, at the age of 76, she released “Audiobiography,” a debut album that shows off her understated and romantic playing style on some of her favorite tunes.

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www.bobbienelsonmusic.com

Track List:

  1. Back To Earth (With Willie Nelson)
  2. Boogie Woogie
  3. Crazy
  4. Death Ray Boogie
  5. Stardust
  6. The House Of Blue Lights
  7. Deep Purple
  8. 12th Street Rag
  9. Sabor A Mi
  10. Down Yonder
  11. Laura
  12. Until Tomorrow (With Willie Nelson)

Bobbie Nelson, sister of legendary singer-songwriter Willie Nelson, talks about her career, her brother and life on the road.  Recently, Bobbie talked about where they’ve been.

Question: How’s it going on the tour?

Bobbie Nelson:  This is a great tour. We’ve just done Farm Aid up in Massachusetts, and I’m in New Jersey tonight, and we do Connecticut tomorrow night, and then we do (New York’s) Radio City Music Hall the next night, so we’ll be out a couple more weeks. Everything’s going very well. I’m very grateful.

Q:  You guys still share a tour bus, from what I understand, and you’ve been playing for 35 years or so. How do you kill time on the bus?

BN:  Willie is very busy, and he has all of his office there on the bus – his computers and phones and everything – so he actually does his office thing right there on the bus, and then we have our instruments. He’s got his guitar, and I have an electric keyboard … I can pull this little keyboard out, and we can practice and play music.

Q:  Musically speaking, it seems like Willie’s always had a thing for these really super-complex chords and neat chord changes and stuff. How much of that is your doing?

BN:  You know, we listened to the radio as we were growing up and listened to all kinds of music. That was, of course, during the big-band era, as well as all the border stations and all the country music that we listened to. He actually likes all the different kinds of music, the Latin rhythms and all the different, beautiful chords. He loves a lot of the jazz things.

Q: You can tell, just in the songs he’s covered over the years, how diverse his interests are.

BN:  Yes! I love chords, too, and as you study piano, you get into all of that. … And the music we grew up with in the church – those hymns have a lot of beautiful harmony.

Q:  Are you surprised that so many of these songs over the years have become classics? Do you think Willie knows a song is a classic when he comes up with it?

BN:  No, I don’t think so. … When he writes, he just writes, and I don’t think he’s really ever thought, “I’m gonna write a song that’s gonna be a classic or a hit.” He’s just composing. He’s just letting go of some of his feelings and his thoughts that he’s got.

Q: You came out with an album last year. How did you pick the songs that went on that?

BN:  Willie had scheduled studio time, because he had written a couple of new songs. So we were off the road during our holiday season … We were waiting for (guitar player) Jody (Payne) to get back, to get to Austin. So Willie just said, “Sister Bobbie, why don’t you just go up there and warm up that old piano?”

“So I went in the studio and just started playing this beautiful piano. I just was playing some of these songs I used to play when I played by myself, and also some of the boogies and things that we played when we were kids. And they recorded it. I didn’t know they were recording me. ”

(Justice Records owner) Randall Jamail, we were having lunch one day, and we were talking about it, and I said, “I’ve had people ask me why I don’t write my autobiography. And I always feel that I can do it better with music, because my life and Willie’s life have just been music.” And he said, “Well, that’s what we’ll call your album – ‘Audiobiography.’ ”

Q: Do you have any plans to put out any more music?

BN:  They’re asking me if I will record some more … maybe if we’re off during the holiday season again this year, maybe I’ll have a little time to put into that.

Q:  Obviously, growing up with Willie, you’ve got a lot of interesting stories. Is there anything that people would be surprised to find out about Willie?

BN:  I don’t know, we’ve both done a lot of interviews … Willie has always been a wonderful person. He was a fun-loving kid, and he’s a fun-loving man. We have a lot of fun, and we both have the same feelings about wanting to make Earth a better place and making a better place for our children, and just to help humanity in general.

Q:  If there’s one thing that’s been the secret to you guys’ success over the years, what would it be?

BN:  Our grandmother took us to church every Sunday, and we were at prayer meeting every Wednesday night, and choir practice once or twice a week, and Bible school. The teachings that we were taught when we were growing up – our grandmother being one of these teachers … She had a love for music, as did my grandfather – so our lives have been about music. Learning music and performing it, and always trying to improve ourselves with our talents. I think that’s what has meant more to us than anything else, is the love we feel for others and the love we feel for music and performing it.