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Willie Nelson, Paula Nelson, Lukas Nelson at Farm Aid 2007 in NYC

www.TexasMusic.com
by Lynne Margolis

AS HARD as it is for the offspring of famous performers to try following in their talented parents’ footsteps, some of them find it even harder not to.

Take Paula Nelson, one of Willie Nelson’s two daughters from his third wife, Connie Koepke. She did try to escape. Really, she did. After a few years of kicking around Austin with various players, she became a masseuse and fled for Evergreen, Colo.

“You just need to get away sometimes and just look at things from a different perspective and reevaluate,” Paula explains. She admits now that she was also trying to escape the particular kind of pressure that’s unique to creative types, regardless of who their parents are.

“If I write a good song and people really like it, then I’m afraid of, ‘Oh, God, what if I can’t write another one like that? What if this is it, I’m tapped out?’ … So I just decided all right then, I’m going to take an even bigger gamble and take some time off. I realized I wanted to be doing it for all the right reasons, and to write songs and play music, I wanted to be having a good time. If you’re not having a good time doing anything, it’s kind of pointless to do it.”

While in Colorado, she got married, and divorced, then decided it was way too cold there and headed home at the end of 2005, full of inspiration for new songs and ready to get to work on turning them into an album. She released the bluesy/Southern rock-tinged Lucky 13 at the end of February. It would have been done sooner, but new songs kept coming and she wasn’t about to halt the flow. “When I got back I had all kinds of experiences to write about,” she explains, “so I think it’s a good thing to take some time off from time to time and just look at your stuff.”

Not only was she able to reunite with old bandmates/pals Matt Hubbard (her co-producer), guitarist Landis Armstrong, drummer Kevin Remme and bassist Chris Johnson, she also pulled guitarist George DeVore into the Paula Nelson Band fold.

Paula performed at Farm Aid 2007 in New York with her father, and she and several other family members joined him in song when he accepted the first Bridging Divides Award from the University of Texas Project on Conflict Resolution in October. The moment was particularly significant because they sang “A Peaceful Solution,” which he co-wrote with his other daughter by Koepke, Amy Lee Nelson.

Amy Lee’s a performing songwriter, too. She’s half of the folk duo Folk Uke (get it?) with Cathy Guthrie, daughter of Arlo “Son of Woody” Guthrie. Folk Uke’s self-titled debut, released in 2005, featured the two women sweetly harmonizing on quirky originals like “Knock Me Up,” “Shit Makes the Flowers Grow” and “Motherfucker Got Fucked Up.” That last tune was in contention for 2007 Song of the Year on the Red Peters Comedy Music Hour, heard on Sirius Satellite Radio’s Howard 101 channel (one of two Howard Stern frequencies on the network).

Proud father Willie makes an appearance on both Paula’s Lucky 13 and Amy’s Folk Uke album. The two sisters also sang on their father’s 2001 album The Rainbow Connection, with Amy singing her own composition, “Wise Old Me.” The same album also featured Willie’s two oldest daughters, Lana and Susie, both from his first marriage, to Martha Matthews. Neither Lana nor Susie performs for a living, though; Susie writes children’s books, while Lana has her hands full working as her road-warrior father’s “right-hand lady,” according to Paula.

And then there’s Willie’s two youngest children, by his latest wife, Annie D’Angelo: sons Lukas Autry and Jacob Micah. The Nelson brothers, have their own psychedelic blues rock band, 40 pts., which digitally released its debut album via Pedernales Records in August. (Lukas sings and plays lead guitar and Micah plays drums.) Though based in Hawaii, where the boys were raised, 40 pts. has already played in front of thousands of Willie fans as the old man’s opening band.

So much for forsaking the family business or straying far from home. When your Dad runs an outfit called the Family Band, it just can’t be done.

Link: http://www.txmusic.com/articles/2008/04/the-family-business