Joe Nick Patoski wrote this great biography about Willie Nelson in 2008, but he has been a fan of Willie Nelson and writing about his music and life, for decades.    The following article was  first published in No Depression Magazine in 2004.   Visit Joe Nick’s website to read the entire article, at www.JoeNickP.com :

Gonna Catch Tomorrow Now

No Depression
BY JOE NICK PATOSKI
September-October 2004 

LUCK, Texas, isn’t as easy to find as it used to be. Development has sprawled the entire 25 miles from downtown Austin to this idyllic little spot in the Hill Country near Lake Travis where Willie Nelson created his own universe more than two decades ago. The old corner store that was once a landmark is now a bank. The entrance gate is practically lost among the McMansions and ranchettes that have sprouted up.

This fact of life is not lost on the guy in the Willie Nelson T-shirt driving the mower over the fairway of the Briarcliff Country Club. After providing directions to a wayward tourist, he wisecracks, “Welcome to Oak Hill,” referring to the suburb fifteen miles closer to the city.

Still, there’s enough acreage surrounding Luck that once you stumble onto the dirt main street, you realize Willie Nelson’s home base is safely in a zone of its own. The cowboy town of faux buildings – including a feed store, barn, gunsmith, church, and bathhouse – hasn’t changed much since it was built for the film Red Headed Stranger in the early 1980s. Unchanged, but deteriorated to the point that Luck today looks less like an Old West movie set and more like a real 20th century small town in Texas that is drying up and blowing away. Whatever it is, it is Willie’s World. The rest of us are just visiting.

I had come for my last sit-down with Willie Hugh Nelson. I’d been writing about him since I hit Austin in 1973, a year after he did. I’ve spent the ensuing years listening, watching, and observing him as he played shows on flatbed trucks, in drive-in movie theaters (with Paul Simon sitting in, no less), in amphitheaters, in performing arts halls, and at too many July Fourth Picnics to count. Somewhere along the way, the television appearances, movie roles, and inductions to various halls of fame added up to Willie achieving some kind of sainthood, with just enough speed-crazed hustlers, soulful used-car salesmen, and honest-to-Sam-Houston characters to keep me engaged.

Like Austin, Willie too has changed along the way. He came to the game as a songwriter. Some say that particular skill fell by the wayside decades ago – that he’s sliding by on cruise control, that he hasn’t written a memorable song in years. And yet, in the midst of all his albums of cover songs, tribute songs, collaborative affairs with high-profile buddies, television specials, and films, he’s still continued to write songs – including an antiwar protest number that briefly stirred up a hornet’s nest of controversy late last year. Not to mention enough straight-ahead country tunes to justify a full-blown album that may be his best work in ages (It Will Always Be, due October 26 on Lost Highway).

But even if he hadn’t written a line in a quarter-century and decided to follow the path of Fats Domino – who once reasoned he didn’t need to write another song because he already had more than enough hits to perform in concert -Willie would justify a visit just because he’s Willie. After all, he personifies the outlaw movement that presaged altcountry. He’s the one credited for putting Austin and Texas Music on the map. He’s a pop culture icon, bandanas, pigtails, running shoes and all, the one Texan more popular than George Bush. He’s the gold standard for Texas marijuana: If it’s Willie weed, i.e. pot fit for him, it’s top-of-the-line bud. And he’s just mysterious and mystical enough to keep everyone guessing. You never know what you’ll find when you’re in Luck.

That said, we’re both old enough to be lucky just to be alive.

He’s 71. I’m 53.We’ve both done a pretty fair job taking care of ourselves. While Waylon kept roaring until a few years before his death in 2002 at age 64, Willie quit the powder and the partying back when he was about my age. These days, drinking means water more often than whiskey. His biggest vice remains his appreciation of the sweet smoke.

I thought I’d done my last interview with him five years ago, when he drove me around Luck in his pickup truck and I caught him off guard when I asked whether there were times when he got tired of being Willie. His response -”Not really, but if I do, I go and hide” – said a lot. He’s very much a public figure who enjoys his station in life. Wouldn’t you enjoy it if everyone around you acts glad to see you and showers you with compliments? But he’s also human enough to enjoy his privacy and the opportunity to chill whenever he can.

BETWEEN releasing It Will Always Be, performing relentlessly, recording prolifically, appearing in commercials and TV specials, plotting more film roles, speaking out on behalf of family farmers, Dennis Kucinich and marijuana, and writing one of the first protest songs against the war in Iraq, Willie is living ten lives at once. The most stunning example is the new album, a full-blown, state-of-the-art polished piece of work that rings with clarity and purpose like his recordings of thirty years ago.

I walked into the saloon that’s the official Luck World Headquarters, but the room was empty and silent save for the hushed audio from CNN on the big screen at the end of the bar.

Willie wasn’t there. But Willie was everywhere.

Every square inch of space on the walls was covered with 40 years’ worth of Willie memorabilia. There were photos of sister Bobbie, Johnny Bush, and Ray Price. Two Roy Rogers kiddie guitars were propped behind the bar. The Old Whiskey River Kentucky Straight neon sign shared space in one corner with bleached cow skulls. Movie posters advertised Red Headed Stranger, Texas Guns and Barbarosa. A photo of Willie on a golf course flanked by Darrell K. Royal, the storied University of Texas football coach, Mack Brown, the current UT coach, and hometown golf star Ben Crenshaw vividly illustrated his exalted role as one of Texas’ living treasures. He is clearly not averse to the idea of being Willie.

Someone once wondered aloud how weird it must be, sitting in the middle of your own personal universe, surrounded by photos, posters, neon, and trinkets all about you. But when “you” is Willie, it doesn’t seem so strange. The building with the creaky wooden floors – recently outfitted with air conditioning – is more like his playhouse. There’s a pool table up front, a chess table over to the side, a Bose radio behind the bar, a CMT director’s chair on the floor. There’s a small room in back where Willie can conduct a guitar pull or record a picking session on a whim. There’s always old friends such as Ben Dorsey, Bill McDavid, David Zettner or Freddy Powers nearby to hang with, or to pick with.

Outside the saloon, I found Rusty and Ed, who were doing busy work around the premises. Ed said Willie was probably on the bus, where he really likes to hang when he wants to lay low. But Willie wasn’t there, either. A crew of four was busily renovating the interior (as if the tricked-out rolling mini-mansion needed an upgrade). “Willie was expecting you,” one renovator said. “But not for another four hours. You might check at the recording studio.”

Rusty led the way to the Pedernales Recording Studio in a battered RV. We hadn’t gotten down the hill and outside the main gate toward Willie’s golf course before Freddy Fletcher, the studio owner who is Bobbie Nelson’s son and Willie Nelson’s nephew, pulled alongside, rolled down the window of a black Mercedes, and said, “Hidy.”

A muddy Chevy pickup pulled behind the Mercedes. It was Freddy’s uncle, grinning from ear to ear. He was dressed for summer in a black straw western hat with a dangling lanyard and a black tank top shirt hanging loosely over his running shorts and running shoes.

We caravanned back to the bus long enough for Willie to determine maybe that wasn’t the best place to sit and visit. So we headed back to Luck.

“How’s it been going?” I asked as we walked into the saloon.

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Read the entire article at Joe Nick Pataski’s Blog site.

A Tale Out of Luck: A Novel

by Willie Nelson, Mike Blakely

A former Texas Ranger and veteran of the Texas War for Independence, Captain Hank Tomlinson has retired to live in Luck, the town he founded in the new state of Texas. Now the owner of the Broken Arrow Ranch, he’s determined that his new Kentucky. Thoroughbred mare win the annual race, beating out his rival, Jack Brennan. But when the horse goes missing in the night, his son, Jay Blue, and cowhand Skeeter set out to bring her home. The boys soon find that to get-their horse back, they’ll need the help of the mysterious Jubal Hayes, a mustanger with an unusual appearance and a dark attitude.

Meanwhile, the brutal murder of a stranger leads to a bloody battle and incurs the wrath of Comanche warriors bent on revenge. As the Texas wild becomes more and more deadly. Hank must track down the boys before they get caught in the crossfire. But he may find the gravest danger comes from his own past.

They Came To Nashville
by Marshell Chapman

www.thenashvillesound.blogspot.com

A musician, songwriter, and author with nearly a dozen albums and a bestselling memoir under her belt, Marshall Chapman has lived and breathed Music City for over forty years. Her friendships with those who helped make Nashville one of the major forces in American music culture is unsurpassed. And in her brand new book hitting shelves on September 20th, They Came to Nashville, Chapman records the personal stories of musicians shaping the modern history of music in Nashville, from the mouths of the musicians themselves.

The trials, tribulations, and evolution of Music City are on display, as she sits down with influential figures like Kris Kristofferson, Emmylou Harris, and Miranda Lambert, and a dozen other top names, to record what brought each of them to Nashville and what inspired them to persevere. The book culminates in a hilarious and heroic attempt to find enough free time with Willie Nelson to get a proper interview. Instead, she’s brought along on his raucous 2008 tour and winds up onstage in Beaumont, Texas singing “Good-Hearted Woman” with Willie.

read the entire review here

The View from Nashville
by Ralph Emery

After Faron Young’s 1960′s hit, ‘Riverboat,” he went into a career slump.  None of his next three singles even made it out of the 20′s on the country charts.  By 1961, Faron badly needed a hit.

He found it in “Hello Walls.”

Willie Nelson told me about how he wrote the song.  “Hank Cochran was almost a writer on ‘Hello Walls,’ ” he said.  “Hank and I were trying to write in a little one-room house out in back of Pamper Music.  It didn’t have a phone and it only had one window.  I’d just told him I wanted to write a song called ‘Hello Walls’ when someone came out and told Hank he had a phone call up at the office.  I told him I’d start on the song while he was taking the call.  He was gone about ten minutes, and when he came back I’d already finished it.  It’s your basic ten-minute song.”

Willie had been pitching the song at Tootsie’s and according to Porter Wagoner, everyone was making fun of it.  “Other songwriters were going around saying, ‘Hello glass.  Hello table.  Hello commode.;”  But Faron recognized it as a hit, and Willie, who was broke at the time, offered to sell it to him for fifty dollars.

“I won’t buy it,” Faron said.  “But Ill record it and loan you the fifty bucks.”

He ended up loaning Willie five hundred dollars, and then went a step further in helping both his and Willie’s fortunes by recording another Nelson composition, “Congratulations,” during the same session.

The studio musicians who worked on the “Hello Walls” session were as unimpressed with the song as the Tootsie’s crowd.  “They’d sit there and tuning up and say, ‘Hello guitar.”  The musicians thought ‘Congratulations’ was the big hit, but I knew Hello Walls’ was the one,” said Faron.

I knew it, too.  Faron and I were on the road together in 1961, and he approached me backstage and said, “Ralph, let me play you a little song that’s about to come out.  I think it’s going to be a hit.”  Boy was it ever.  Faron was banking  on a song that had become the butt of jokes, and it became the biggest seller, staying as #1 in Billboard’s country charts for nine weeks in 1961 and hitting #12 in the trade publication’s pop charts.  Faron was back with a vengeance, and he had Willie Nelson to thank.

“I walked into Tootsie’s one day and Willie waved a check for twenty thousand dollars in my face, and kissed me,” Faron laughed.

“Our motto in Abbott was, and still is, “A winner never quits, and a quitter never wins.”  This was written above our black panther logo in the school gym.  I saw it every day.  It must have stuck.  I believe that you can’t lose if you don’t give up.  Even if you die, you’ll die fighting.  I remember one of the Rankin boys saying one day in a basketball game between Abbott and Byrum — someone offended him in some way — he jumped out in the middle of the gym and said, “My mama didn’t raise nothin’ but fighting kids!”  I thought, “What a nice family.”

The Abbott motto has carried me around the world several times, and helped me through a lot of interesting situations.  Like when I first came to Houston.  I hit town with my wife, Martha, and daughters, Lana, age four, and Susie, two.  I was looking for a place to stay and I needed rent money, so I began to search for a place to play.  I found a little place in Pasadena and got a job at the Esquire Ballroom, all the way across Houston, about an hour drive on the Hempstead Highway.

It was a Monday afternoon, about three o’clock.  Larry Butler and his band were rehearsing in the Esquire.  I walked in, sat at a table, and waited until Larry took a break.  I introduced myself and asked Larry if he wanted to buy any songs — ten dollars apiece.  I sang them, “I Gotta Get Drunk” and “Family Bible.”  He said, “Those songs are worth more than ten dollars, but I’ll loan you the money to pay your rent, and I’ll give you a job in my band.”  Thanks, Larry Butler.

One night, Larry was left in charge of the club while the owner Raymond Prosky, went somewhere.  Everything was fine until some drunk started giving the waitress trouble.  Larry came off the bandstand to straighten things out.  Naturally I had to help.  When the dust cleared, Larry had his teeth knocked out and I had two broken ribs.  Thanks, Larry, we’re even.  Just joking.  I owe you a lot more than that.”

Willie Nelson has changed the lives of thousands of people, including my own.  More important, Willie Nelson also changed his life — and I do mean for the better.  After beating his hard head against the music business in Nashville during the fifties and sixties, Willie was on hard times.  He’d long ago sold some of his best songs — like “Night Life” and “Family Bible” — for a few tens in folding money.  His house in Nashiville had burned down, and he was sick and tired of trying to be something that he was not.

Making the wisest decision of his life, Willie decided that he cared more about his family, friends, and simply making music than he did about trying to be a star.  Moving home to Texas he wrapped himself in a concern of indifference to oher people’s opionions, and eventually unfolded his new wings and soared.

Willie puts it a little more simply.

“When I started counting my blessings,” he says, “my whole life turned around.”

– Turk Pipkin
   Introduction, “The Tao of Willie”
  by Willie Nelson, with Turk Pipkin

“Willie and I were the top songwriters around Austin for most of the mid-1970s, which came with a lot of perks.  We became friends with great men like University of Texas football coach Darell Royal and Houston lawyer Joe Jamail, who I believe is the greatest lawyer in the world.  They would fly me down to Houston for a night and I would sit in a living room with my guitar and play my songs for senators and astronauts.  It was a crazy time.

Farm Aid, St. Louis, MO., 2010 (Photo by Rachel Fowler)

Willie and I ran around acting like fools together many nights.  I remember one night we were coming home in my truck as the sun was coming up and Willie, as usual, was wearing a bandana.  For some reason he was carrying an enormous opal with him, and he tied the bandana so that the opal was smack in the middle of his forehead.  While we were sitting at a traffic light, a carload of kids pulled up next to us and started laughing at the two crazy cowboys in the pickup.  Willie turned to them with a straight face and said, ‘Someday you’ll be old and crazy too.’  That was classic Willie.”

Honky Tonk Hero
by Billy Joe Shaver 

 

Kinky Friedman’s  books are now read the world over.  From Bill Clinton to Billy Bob Thornton to Nelson Mandela, everybody loves a Kinky Friedman mystery. As the ever-humble author likes to say, “I write novels for Americans to read on their aircraft.”  Billy Bob is currently working with him on a new book, as is Willie Nelson.

http://magazine.angrycountry.com
by

AUSTIN, Texas — Former Texas gubernatorial candidate, political commentator and self-proclaimed “author, columnist, musician and beautician” Kinky Friedman will perform on the West Coast this summer for the first time in nearly 20 years. Dates for the “Go West Young Kinky Tour of 2010” start on July 26th in Vancouver and continue into August (a full list of venues follows). Two members of Kinky’s seminal band the Texas Jewboys, Little Jewford and Washington Ratso, will join him on the tour. No prisoners will be taken. Only the strong shall survive.

The Kinkster, often referred to as the “Mark Twain of Texas,” will also be hawking his wares, in this case his most recent (limited edition) books, Heroes of a Texas Childhood and What Would Kinky Do?, both of which will be available for purchase and signing at the shows. As Kinky has often said, he’ll “sign anything but bad legislation.” This includes any of his dozens of top-selling books or columns, or even his Kinky Friedman Cigars, which, rumor has it, will also be available at the venues. Bring it, and he will sign it.

Kinky Friedman rose to stardom in the ’70s, with the aforementioned Texas Jewboys as his sick and twisted sidekicks. An equal opportunity offender, Kinky, with his outrageous lyrics and crazed stage persona, may have offended some, but drew people like Don Imus, Robin Williams, Bob Dylan and John Belushi into his spiritual fan club. He toured with Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue and appeared on the inaugural season of Saturday Night Live. His infamous appearance on Austin City Limits, the only performance ever filmed by ACL and never broadcast because of content, has finally been released on DVD, to the delight of fans everywhere.

In the mid ’80s, Kinky rescued a woman being robbed at a midtown Manhattan ATM, and, based on this experience, created the character Kinky Friedman the Detective, who solved murders in what would become a series of wildly popular mystery novels. In the years since, the real Kinky has branched out into children’s books, memoirs, historical reflections and editorials, all to great success, and all powered by his razor sharp wit.

Kinky’s commentaries have appeared in such diverse media as The New York Times, Texas Monthly and Playboy, and since adding politics to his résumé, he has been a regular on cable networks, even stopping by occasionally to spar with Bill O’Reilly.

And now, for the first time in almost a generation, folks on the West Coast will get to hear Kinky perform (live!) tunes like “Ride ’Em Jewboy,” “Sold American” and “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore.” And many friends will be there too: Mojo Nixon will join Kinky in San Diego, and Van Dyke Parks has already signed up for L.A. There’s no telling who else will pop in. Will there be a Wavy Gravy sighting in San Francisco?

The Go West Young Kinky Tour of 2010:

Mon., July 26 VANCOUVER, BC Biltmore Cabaret
Tues., July 27 SEATTLE, WA Triple Door
Wed., July 28 PORTLAND, OR Roseland Theater
Fri., July 30 SAN FRANCISCO, CA Great American Music Hall
Sat., July 31 LOS ANGELES, CA McCabe’s (2 shows)
Sun., Aug. 1 SAN DIEGO, CA Belly Up, with Mojo Nixon
Tues., Aug. 3 BAKERSFIELD, CA Fishlips
Wed., Aug. 4 SANTA CRUZ, CA Moe’s Alley
Thurs., Aug. 5 SEBASTOPOL, CA North Bay Live at Studio E

http://magazine.angrycountry.com/article.php?story=2010042620060117