www.stillisstillmoving.com

story and photo:  Geoffrey Hines

www.pastemagazine.com

For this series, we’ll be following Paste’s own Curmudgeon, Geoffrey Himes, as he sets out on a massive road trip across the South, exploring musical landmarks, traditions and history along the way. Tenth stop: Spicewood, Texas.

Willie Nelson  turns 84 next month. Having wrestled with pneumonia and emphysema in recent years, mortality seems to be on his mind. But in typical fashion, Nelson refuses to dodge the topic; instead he faces it down with two of the funniest songs he’s written in recent years.

He sang them both at the fifth annual Luck Reunion, a music festival held on Nelson’s ranch in Spicewood, Texas, 45 minutes northwest of Austin, near the Pedernales River. The event is always scheduled during South by Southwest to take advantage of all the talent that’s in Central Texas that week, and the ranch’s pastoral surroundings provide a welcome respite from SXSW and the mobs on Sixth Street.

Nelson bought the ranch with the money from his first few platinum albums, and when he decided to turn one of those records, 1975’s Red Headed Stranger, into the 1986 movie of the same name, he built the sets for an Old West town right there on his spread. Nelson left the buildings—a chapel, a town hall, a saloon/hotel and a barn—standing and called it Luck, Texas, a fictional 1880 town seemingly preserved in a time capsule.

The newer song Nelson played that day is called “I Woke Up Still Not Dead Again Today,” a jaunty response to “the internet” that “said I had passed away.” His profile shining in the overhead lights, he delivered the lines not with anger nor with a laugh, but in the same deadpan that he brings to every song: “Up and down the road / making music as I go / they say this pace would kill a normal man / I’ve never been accused of being normal anyway / and I woke up still not dead again today.”

If the pace should ever kill him, though, Nelson has already made his funeral arrangements, and he announced them in the form of another song. “Roll me up and smoke me when I die,” he sang, with his two sons, Lukas and Micah, close enough to memorize the instructions. “Call my friends and tell ‘em / ‘There’s a party, come on by.’ / Roll me up and smoke me when I die.”

These were two of the last four songs of a long day at the ranch; they bracketed a medley of two other end-of-life hymns: the more traditional “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” and “I’ll Fly Away.” As funny as the two original songs were, they also a brave declaration that the singer would not live his life any less fully than he ever had just because illnesses and advancing age were stalking him. He seemed to be heeding the poet Dylan Thomas’s advice: “Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Nelson’s phrasing is still superb and his willingness to climb out on a limb during a jazzy acoustic-guitar solo is still a wonder to behold.

And his continuing interest in new music was reflected in the smart programming for the four-stage festival. Rather than relying too heavily on his old peers, Nelson and his cohorts booked some of the brightest young talents in Americana: Valerie June, Margo Price, Parker Millsap, Conor Oberst and Aaron Lee Tasjan.

Read entire article here.

www.TexasMonthly.com
by:  Christian Wallace

To get to Willie Nelson’s ranch from Austin, you head west on Texas Highway 71, slowly leaving the glass-paneled skyscrapers and SXSW traffic behind for the limestone hills that give this part of the state its name. Just past Sweetwater, a “master planned community” of look-alike McMansions and sparkling pools, you veer north on a county road toward the Colorado River. Bluebonnets blanket the ground here in solid bands, and paint horses graze in grass pastures. Though it’s only thirty miles from the granite dome of the Capitol, by the time you hook a right on the dirt path that leads to Willie’s home, Austin seems like a distant memory.

The Luck Reunion is a one-day music festival held every year on the ranch as a companion to—or, perhaps, a reprieve from—SXSW. Although this year marked the sixth anniversary of the event, Thursday was my first visit to Willie’s legendary property. When I arrived in the early afternoon with my fiancée, Lauren, a security guard in the parking area pointed out a green tin roof one hill to the south. “That over yonder’s Willie’s place,” he informed us. Only then did I fully understand that I was standing in Willie’s backyard. I had the feeling that a long pilgrimage had just come to an end, one I hadn’t even realized I was undertaking.

We entered the little “town” of Luck where the music was already underway. Originally constructed for the 1986 film, Red Headed Stranger, the miniature village still feels like stepping onto the set of a western movie. Luck was buzzing with a diverse crowd of Willie devotees: tattooed hipsters in short brim Stetsons, crop-topped girls in long flowing skirts, retirees rocking faux pigtails. Mixed among the sea of denim and bolo ties were tweed blazers and dickie bows. Several women were dressed—for reasons unknown to me—as train conductors, complete with pinstripe cap.

I made my way to the Revival Tent to watch Paul Cauthen sing with the Texas Gentlemen, a revolving cast of Dallas-based musicians who were serving as the house band. Cauthen’s brand of outlaw-inspired, gospel-tinged country, anchored by his powerful baritone, was a good start to the day. I stuck around to hear Ray Benson, who had celebrated his sixty-sixth birthday a couple nights before at a big bash in Austin. Nelson had shown up as the special guest, and Benson praised his longtime running buddy. He ended with a blistering version of “Boogie Back to Texas” that nearly caught the canvas tent on fire.

“We are so blessed in this state,” Ryan Ake, one of the Gents, said as Benson exited the stage and Ray Wylie Hubbard came on to take his place. The Gentlemen moved effortlessly from Benson’s western swing to Hubbard’s lowdown talkin’ blues. During “Snake Farm” Hubbard was accompanied by his son Lucas, as well as three-fourths of the Trishas.

En route to procure a cup of complimentary booze, I met Wes Wammer, who had driven the Gibson Guitars charter bus down from Nashville. The bus driver told me he spent ten years on the road with Sabbath, and affectionately spoke of Ozzy and bassist Geezer Butler. Wammer also mentioned he’d known Waylon Jennings, and that he was himself a songwriter. I asked him which of Willie’s albums had been the most meaningful to him. “Red Headed Stranger changed country music,” he said. “I still play it. If I have a moment to myself, I’ll put it on the turntable. It’s relaxing, and yet it’s also energizing. That album had a huge influence on artists, especially songwriters.”

On the main World Headquarters stage, Valerie June sparkled in a red sequined dress as she worked through several tracks from her recently released second album, The Order of Time. June seemed more comfortable performing the new material than she had a few weeks earlier when she headlined at the Paramount Theatre in Austin. “I get the blues,” she said in her thick Tennessean twang between songs. “They visit me often. I had ’em last night. But the blues ain’t meant to be sad.” She flashed a grin and with a lilting vibrato launched into the first lines of “Astral Plane.” The ethereal lullaby was fitting for this gathering. The crowd swayed rhythmically, while further from the stage families sprawled on blankets in the grass. A couple of curly-haired kids read Shel Silverstein while their parents closed their eyes and listened.

In the VIP area, the scene was equally mellow, though slightly more surreal, as artists and special guests chatted under disco balls hanging from the branches of tall live oaks. Musician Charley Crockett strutted by in a tan suit, his hat cocked to one side and looking like Jett Rink after his well came in. One of the festival’s main acts, Aaron Lee Tasjan, played an acoustic porch session also sporting a glittering black and white ensemble he bedazzled himself.

Not dressed in formalwear, for once, was Bob Schieffer. The veteran CBS News contributor had ditched his anchorman outfit for Wranglers, cowboy boots, and a belt with his last name tattooed on the leather. He looked almost rugged with white whiskers smattered across his typically clean-shaven cheeks and tufts of hair peeking out from his TCU ball cap. “I’m not sure Willie’s not at the peak of his powers right now,” Schieffer told me. “He’s writing great songs. He’s touring. He’s selling a lot of records. He’s selling tickets. I think his sway is probably as great as it’s ever been.” When I asked Schieffer if he had a favorite Willie song, he cited two of Nelson’s earliest songwriting hits (“Hello Walls” and “Night Life”), then proceeded to quote a couplet verbatim from a song off God’s Problem Child, which doesn’t come out until April.

At 80, Schieffer was on the senior end of the festival attendees, though he pointed out that he was still three years younger than Willie. “There was a guy here last night who was 93 years old, and he’s a Willie groupie,” Schieffer said. “People of all ages are here today, and they all like Willie’s music.”

Another media stalwart lounging in this area was Jim Ferguson, the man who brought us the immortal slogan, “Beef. It’s what’s for dinner.” He regaled folks with tales of life in seventies Lubbock, like when Terry Allen premiered Lubbock (On Everything) at the original Stubb’s barbecue shack, or that time the Clash went with Joe Ely to pay their respects to Buddy Holly. (Joe Strummer, the band’s late frontman, supposedly laid on Holly’s grave that night and begged the rock legend, “Enter my soul!”)

Ferguson was posted up next to media newcomer Weed and Whiskey TV. All day bands filed in and out of the fledgling channel’s Airstream trailer to give interviews or play a couple of songs for what will be released as four-minute, twenty-second videos. Besides the music-themed programming, other categories on Weed and Whiskey will include “Club Cannabis Comedy,”“History Written in Stoned,” and “Higher than Space” (the business card I was given features two aliens blowing lava lamp-green smoke).  The channel will make its debut on, you guessed it, April 20.

Jerry Joyner, Weed and Whiskey TV’s founder, refers to Nelson as “the Dalai Lama of Texas” and credits his first Luck Reunion as the motivation behind his foray into the entertainment industry. “I’ve been smoking cannabis for forty years,” Joyner said. “For thirty-eight of those years, I didn’t want anybody to know. Now I’m open about it. Willie was an inspiration in the sense that he said, ‘Look, I do a hundred fifty shows a year, and I enjoy this plant.’ He’s been instrumental in helping people understand that cannabis isn’t just for stoners. That it can be an alternative to things that aren’t as good for us. That’s what Willie means to me.”

Back on the main stage, country royalty Margo Price proved she’s more than one of Nashville’s finest lyricists. Her raucous set was a highlight of the day, electrified by ample doses of honky-tonk piano and steel guitar that had the blissed-out crowd boogying—or at least enthusiastically swaying—to the beat.

Shovels & Rope picked up where Price left off with their perfectly in-sync country rock and roll. The sky had been overcast most of the day, but by six when the husband and wife duo closed with the barnburner “Birmingham,” the heavy gray had cleared. The last few wisps of clouds glowed pink and gold as the sun sank behind the hills.

Exploring Luck further, I found that the festival offered more than the standard merch tables. Outside the post office a woman stitched Willie’s Reserve (Nelson’s pot company) patches on jackets and satchels. I overheard one guy waiting to have the Texas-shaped patch sewn onto his bag say, “I don’t smoke, but I love Willie and I love Texas.” In the tannery, Odin Clack of Odin’s Leather Goods tooled designs into scraps of tanned hide, while festival-goers imprinted their initials into give-away leather luggage tags. Vendors inside a round corral made from rough-hewn cedar posts hawked vinyl records and vintage threads.

No matter where I went, music was omnipresent. A line snaked out the door of the wood-paneled chapel where artists such as Lillie Mae and Langhorne Slim played to a few dozen fans. Festival attendees strummed mandolins, guitars, or ukuleles borrowed from the Pick N Play wall. When I ducked into the opry house/saloon, a denim-clad singer not listed on the official schedule was performing cowboy songs such as “The Old Chisholm Trail” in front of an American flag.

As someone who grew up fantasizing about the Willie Picnics of yore, I had the sense that this might be the closest I’d come to experiencing those fabled gathering of cosmic cowboys. It was certainly closer to what I had imagined than the dusty Fourth of July Picnic I attended a few years back at Billy Bob’s, where the vibe felt manufactured and David Allan Coe performed a set so bad that it sounded like he was playing from the deep end of a pool. Not so at Luck. Artists and fans alike seemed to genuinely enjoy themselves. A mother and her daughter played on a swing set together. When I passed by a half hour later, a young lady in a paisley halter top was rocking back and forth on the swing, a joint casually burning between her lips.

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