Archive for the ‘This Day in Willie Nelson History’ Category
Willie Nelson & Family, with Dwight Yoakam (March 3, 2017)
Thursday, March 7th, 2024Willie Nelson’s First Grammy (February 28, 1976)
Wednesday, February 28th, 2024When Willie Nelson recorded his concept album Red Headed Stranger in Garland, Texas, in 1975, he insisted on simplicity for the tracks. But according to the books Willie, by Michael Bane, that simplicity proved a bit too much for the studio musicians and his record label.
As Willie recorded the song, “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” he stopped the session, played through the tune with just guitar and vocal and asked the band to play only what was necessary. Several of the musicians, realizing that they basically had nothing to do, voluntarily got up and left the session.
Willie remembers that his record label was also not exactly receptive to the bare-bones product. “They expected more Shotgun Willie, something more tempo,” he says in the book. But the label released the album along with the sing, “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” which surprisingly started climbing the charts. It became Willie’s first No. 1 hit in October of 1975.
“Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” was also responsible for another Willie milestone. On Feb. 28, 1976, Willie picked up his first Grammy award, winning the honor for Best Country Vocal Performance, Male.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 28th, 2023 at 5:32 pm and is filed under Awards and Honors, This Day in Willie Nelson History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Edit this entry.
Willie Nelson settles with the IRS (February 2, 1993)
Friday, February 2nd, 2024www.theboot.com
On Feb. 2, 1993, Willie Nelson reached an agreement on how to settle his outstanding debt with the IRS. The deal involved both cunning negotiations and clever repayment methods, and was a long time in the making.
Nelson had originally been slapped with an eye-popping $32 million back taxes bill in 1990. The legend managed to get that amount reduced to $16.7 million, a number Rolling Stone notes included $10.2 million in interest and penalties.
Unfortunately, that bit of good news was only a reprieve. Because Nelson was unable to pay up, the government placed liens on his property and then, in November of 1990, seized his assets — including gold records, a piano and his Texas ranch. (His beloved guitar, Trigger, was saved after Nelson’s daughter smartly sent it to Hawaii before the property seizures.)
Although his studio was also locked up, Nelson had a plan on how to generate money: a new album. Enter 1991’s The IRS Tapes: Who’ll Buy My Memories, a stripped-down acoustic record.
“It’s no overproduced album with millions of dollars of studio costs,” Nelson told the New York Times that same year. “But I think it’s the best stuff I got. I’ve always wanted to put out an album with me and my guitar doing my original songs. And my fans like it because it sounds like it’s just me in my living room singing.”
In an interesting twist, Nelson sold The IRS Tapes: Who’ll Buy My Memories via a heartstrings-tugging TV commercial. Fans could purchase the 24-song effort for just $19.95 (plus $4 shipping and handling). Readers can watch that ad above.
“Willie Nelson: He’s been there for those who’ve needed him,” says a voiceover in the spot. “And he’s helped thousands of people across this land. Now, Willie needs your help — and he’s reaching out the best way he can: through his music.”
Of the $6 Nelson received from the sale of each album, half went to the IRS, and $1 went into a fund to pay for a lawsuit Nelson filed against his ex-accountants — the people who allegedly got him in this financial mess in the first place, because they put his money in shady tax shelters. (According to the New York Times, that firm, Price Waterhouse, issued a statement that read, “Mr. Nelson and his advisers made all of the decisions regarding tax shelters in which Mr. Nelson invested. Those decisions and the economic consequences that resulted from those decisions were Mr. Nelson’s responsibility and not that of Price Waterhouse.”)
“We try to work with taxpayers, not just Mr. Nelson,” IRS spokeswoman Valerie Thornton told the New York Times about the intriguing deal with Nelson. “And if we have to come up with some creative payment plan, that’s what we’re going to do, because it’s in everyone’s best interest.”
Sales of The IRS Tapes: Who’ll Buy My Memories helped chip away at the amount Nelson owed, and his debt also decreased after the IRS auctioned off his assets and property. In another fortuitous move, the Washington Post reported in 1993 that “Nelson’s friends organized and bought up much of the booty with low-ball bids, and held it for him so he’ll eventually get it back.” That included his Texas ranch, which a fan bought as a way of thanking him for Farm Aid.
Finally, after years of this wrangling, Nelson and the government reached a payment agreement in 1993. He would pay $2.4 million, spread out over three years, and then tack on a final lump sum payment of $3 million. The Chicago Tribune reports that Nelson coughed up this last payment in 1995. The total Nelson eventually paid? A cool $9 million.
It would be understandable if this turmoil caused Nelson issues. But as he told Rolling Stone in 1995, he wasn’t affected that much by his financial headaches.
“By the time everybody else heard about it, I was already on to other things,” he said. “Mentally, it was a breeze. They didn’t bother me, they didn’t come out and confiscate anything other than that first day, and they didn’t show up at every gig and demand money. I appreciated that. And we teamed up and put out a record.”
Disc 1
- “Who’ll Buy My Memories?”
- “Jimmy’s Road”
- “It Should Be Easier Now”
- “Will You Remember Mine”
- “I Still Can’t Believe You’re Gone”
- “Yesterday’s Wine”
- “It’s Not Supposed to Be That Way”
- “Country Willie”
- “Sound in Your Mind”
- “Permanently Lonely”
- “So Much to Do”
- “Lonely Little Mansion”
Disc 2
- “Summer of Roses/December Day”
- “Pretend I Never Happened”
- “Slow Down Old World”
- ‘Opportunity to Cry”
- “I’m Falling in Love Again”
- “If You Could Only See”
- “I’d Rather You Didn’t Love Me”
- “What Can You Do to Me Now”
- “Buddy”
- “Remember the Good Times”
- “Wake Me When It’s Over”
- “Home Motel”
This day in Willie Nelson history: “Willie and Family Live” #1 (January 18, 1979)
Thursday, January 18th, 2024On January 18, 1979, “Willie and Family Live” was at #1 on the country music album chart. The double album was recorded live at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe, Nevada in April 1978. EmmyLou Harris and Johnny Paycheck are featured on the album.
Side one
“Whiskey River” – 3:40
“Stay All Night (Stay a Little Longer)” – 3:24
“Funny How Time Slips Away” – 2:45
“Crazy” – 1:47
“Night Life” – 3:55
“If You’ve Got the Money (I’ve Got the Time)” – 1:44
“Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” – 3:33
“I Can Get Off on You” – 2:06
Side two
“If You Could Touch Her at All” – 3:00
“Good Hearted Woman” – 2:57
“Red Headed Stranger Medley” 14:25
Incl:
“Time of the Preacher” – 2:13
“I Couldn’t Believe It Was True” – 1:03
“Medley: Blue Rock Montana/Red Headed Stranger” – 2:40
“Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” – 2:29
“Red Headed Stranger” – 4:31
4. “Under the Double Eagle” – 2:43
Side three
“Till I Gain Control Again” – 5:59
“Bloody Mary Morning” – 3:33
“I’m a Memory” – 1:52
“Mr. Record Man” – 2:01
“Hello Walls” – 1:29
“One Day at a Time” – 2:05
“Will the Circle Be Unbroken” – 2:18
“Amazing Grace” – 5:12
Side four
“Take This Job and Shove It” – 2:52
“Uncloudy Day” – 3:40
“The Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line” – 1:29
“A Song for You” – 2:43
“Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms” – 1:56
“Georgia on My Mind” – 4:09
“I Gotta Get Drunk” – 1:22
“Whiskey River” – 2:42
“The Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line” – 2:12
Willie Nelson & Family at the Fillmore (Jan 16,17,18,19 2009)
Thursday, January 18th, 2024This day in Willie Nelson History, “The Great Divide” (January 15, 2002)
Monday, January 15th, 2024On January 15, 2002, Lost Highway Records released Willie Nelson’s album, “The Great Divide.”
Track List:
Maria (Shut Up And Kiss Me)
Last Stand In Open Country
Won’t Catch Me Cryin’
Be There For You
The Great Divide
Just Dropped In (To see what condition my condition was in)
This Face
Don’t Fade Away
Time After Time
Recollection Phoenix
You Remain
Nelson & Family to perform at Johnny Cash Music Fest (Friday, October 5, 2012)
Thursday, October 5th, 2023“John Carter Cash at Arkansas State University this morning to announce the line up for this year’s Johnny Cash Musicfest. This year’s lineup will include Rosanne Cash, Willie Nelson, Dierks Bentley and The Civil Wars. The concert will be held Friday, October 5th at ASU’s Convocation Center. Tickets go on sale tomorrow. All proceeds benefit the Johnny Cash Boyhood Home Restoration Project. Don’t miss it!
The annual Johnny Cash Music Fest is set for Friday, October 5th at Arkansas State University’s Convocation Center in Jonesboro. For more information and updates on the festival, visit. The Johnny Cash Music Festival is presented annually by the Arkansas State University, with participation by the Cash family, to benefit the Johnny Cash Boyhood Home Project in Dyess, Arkansas. This project involves establishing a museum to honor the Johnny Cash legacy as well as restoring or re-creating his boyhood home. For more information on the Dyess Restoration Project, click here.
The Festival
This history-making event came about through a serendipitous conversation with Arkansas State University alumnus Bill Carter, a television producer in Nashville, during the Homecoming festivities at ASU. When Bill learned that his alma mater was attempting to acquire and restore the Johnny Cash Boyhood Home in Dyess, he immediately agreed to produce a benefit concert, provided that it met with the approval of the Cash family.
The Cash family not only endorsed Bill’s idea, but Rosanne Cash and John Carter Cash offered to help plan the festival and co-host the concert. The artists in the inaugural line-up donated their time, and numerous sponsors contributed to travel expenses and production costs, meaning 100 percent of the ticket sales went to the Johnny Cash Boyhood Home Project.
Willie Nelson & Family in Atlantic City (August 16, 2015)
Wednesday, August 16th, 2023www.philly.com
by Dan DeLuca
Willie Nelson is an extraordinary octogenarian. The 82 year old Red Headed Stranger – still ponytailed, though now mostly gray – played outdoors at the Borgata Festival Park in Atlantic City on Sunday, and he was frisky and inventive all night long.
The tour stop with openers Old Crow Medicine Show was billed as a “Willie Nelson & Family” concert, but with Nelson’s sons Lukas and Micah off backing up Neil Young this summer, the only family member on stage throughout the briskly paced, 90 minute set was his piano playing older sister Bobbie.
The other band members, though – starting with drummer Paul English and harmonica player Mickey Raphael, who have both been aboard since 1973 – are so simpatico with their boss that they might as well be blood relatives. And they follow their amiable Abbot, Texas-born national treasure leader – with a beat-up gut string Martin classical guitar, nicknamed Trigger, hung around his neck with a red white and blue strap – wherever he takes them.
On this breezy evening at the spiffy Festival Park, where the crowd mellowed out on a field of Astro-Turf and marveled at the high quality bathrooms (air conditioned trailers, not port-o-potties), the masterfully understated, nasal-voiced singer led the way on a gypsy jazz tour of the country, blues and roots music that is commonly known as Americana but might just as accurately be called Willie Nelson Music.
Kicking off with his version of Johnny Bush’s “Whiskey River,” Nelson dove right in to the stream of Zen wisdom that coarses through his ragged but right body of work, calling out for “Still Is Still Moving To Me.” “I can be moving or I can be still,” the (still) always on the road singer sang. “But still is still moving to me.” The set that followed was full of forward momentum as it delivered self-penned signature songs (“Nite Life,” “Crazy,” “Always On My Mind”) that were tinged with melancholy as Nelson, as his wont, let his scratchy voice linger as he sang behind the beat, pulling out hard earned life lessons (“Love’s the greatest healer to be found”; “Little things I should have said and done, I just never took the time”) as he moved steadily along.
There were covers of favored songwriters, with Ray Charles’ “Georgia On My Mind” slyly packaged with Billy Joe Shaver’s “Georgia On A Fast Train,” and nods to Tom T. Hall and Hank Williams. The only guitarist in the confidently ambling band, Nelson played brittle, expressive leads, saying as much, as always, with the notes he didn’t play as with those he did.
Two thirds of the way through, he got around to Django & Jimmy, his new album with old pal Merle Haggard, named after their heroes Reinhardt and Rodgers, with the jokey but well crafted “It’s All Going to Pot.” The song was a cheery crowd pleaser fro the intergenerational audience, but its puns about the passage of time and the recreational weed that Nelson’s name is synonymous with gave way to songs that each, in their own way, were about death.
Nelson brought Old Crow on stage for two spirited hymns that confront the afterlife with doubt and belief in “Will The Circle Be Unbroken?” and “I’ll Fly Away.” And he also he another cheeky marijuana song – sung in the set and then reprised as an encore with his openers – that suggest that best use for his remains when he passes away: “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die.”
Nashville string band Old Crow’s members switched up their instruments – guitars, banjo, mandolins, harmonicas, fiddles – throughout an hour plus set full of breakneck speed fiddle tunes and two stepping honky tonkers. Leader Ketch Secors is relentlessly energetic showman, and he fronts a spirited unit whose fleetly-flecked idea of a good time is expressed in the song “8 Dogs, 8 Banjos” from 2014’s Remedy, which celebrated various pleasures including “hot coffee, sweet tea” and “corn whiskey, dirt weed.”
Willie Nelson and Family @ Airway Heights, WA (July 31, 2011)
Monday, July 31st, 2023Photos by Matt Auclair
http://checkitoutmusic.com
Opening his set with “Whisky River” Willie Nelson kept the music train rolling for us on the last night of July 2011. The sun was shining down on us with the perfect breeze as the crowd sat in their seats and respectfully loved every song Willie Nelson performed for us tonight. It was a relaxing night of music, that often I caught myself swaying my hips too. The only thing that was missing was a dance floor.
I couldn’t believe that Willie Nelson still plays “Trigger!” For those of you unfamiliar with Trigger, it is Willie Nelson’s Martin N-20 Guitar; which is so old it has a hole in it! If you can ever get close enough Trigger is even inked with over 100 signatures. Such a cool piece of Willie Nelson.
Willie Nelson causally stood on stage singing and playing his guitar the entire night. He had a stripped down band on stage with him that featured a harmonica player, bass player, occasional piano player, and a gentlemen on a smaller drum setup. Sometimes the audience was so excited, after or even sometimes before songs would start , they would stand up and scream “We love you Willie” or wave at him. He is quite the legend to have come to Spokane. At the age of 78 Willie’s still kickin’ right along!
Willie Nelson performed a song for Waylon and one for Hank, along with “Crazy,” “Whiskey River,” “On The Road Again,” “Still Is Still Moving to Me,” “Always On My Mind,” “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” “Georgia On My Mind – Hoagy Carmichael,” “Hey Good Lookin’,” “Move It On Over,” “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” “Beer For My Horses” and many more. Every song sounded fantastic!
On our way out the door a guy was telling us how pissed he was that he got kicked out from the show for his “good reefer.” We told him we were sorry, but honestly he probably could of just sat by his car and heard the last few songs… it is an outdoor venue. Besides, it’s a Willie Nelson concert no one should get kicked out for that.
Photos courtesy of Matt Auclair.
Willie Nelson and BB King, Chastain Park, Georgia (July 27, 2008)
Thursday, July 27th, 2023Willie Nelson & Family at the Greek Theater (July 18, 2015)
Tuesday, July 18th, 2023“Shotgun Willie” released 50 years ago today
Sunday, June 11th, 2023Willie Nelson & Family at the Hard Rock Café, NYC (June 6, 2013)
Tuesday, June 6th, 2023Thanks to Willienelson.com for these great photos from the Willie Nelson & Family Family Show at the Hard Rock Café, in New York City, on June 6, 2013. The concert was a benefit for Sustainable Biodiesel Alliance and the Animal Welfare Institute.
Willie Nelson at the Ryman Auditorium (May 15, 2003)
Monday, May 15th, 2023Willie Nelson Book signing at Barnes & Noble in NYC (May 7, 2015) (“It’s a Long Story: My Life”)
Sunday, May 7th, 2023Willie Nelson’s new biography will be released this week, and he will be travelling and appearing on television to talk about it.
Next Thursday, May 7th, he will be signing books at the Barnes & Noble on East 17th Street in New York City.
Thursday May 07, 2015 12:00 PM
Union Square
33 East 17th Street
New York
NY 10003
212-253-0810