Thank you, Carol Sidoran, for sharing your great photos from the Outlaw Music Festival in Saratoga Springs, MD last night.
Archive for the ‘Micah Nelson’ Category
Willie Nelson & Family in Saratoga Springs, MD (9.12.21)
Monday, September 13th, 2021Willie Nelson and Family, Outlaw Music Festival in Philadelphia (9.11.21)
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photo: Charles Fox
www.inquirer.com
by: Dan DeLuca
The lineup for the Outlaw Music Festival tour at the Mann Center on Saturday was formidable.
The make-sure-you-get-there-early opener was Nashville songwriter Margo Price, finally out on the road again to spread the word about last year’s exemplary That’s How Rumors Get Started.
Price was followed first by guitarist Warren Haynes’ Southern rock band Gov’t Mule, and then by full-of-surprises country tough guy Sturgill Simpson, backed by a dazzling band of bluegrass musicians.
And, oh yeah, the last act to hit the stage: some guy named Willie Nelson.
Fans could be forgiven for tempering expectations for Nelson’s closing set. Sure, the “Red Headed Stranger” is the essential embodiment of the Outlaw brand, dating to when he and Waylon Jennings flipped the bird to Nashville and planted a nonconformist flag in Texas in the 1970s.
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But on Saturday night at the nearly sold-out Mann — where proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test was required for entry, and mask compliance was better than at last week’s Made In America festival — Nelson was allotted only an hour of stage time, 15 minutes less than both Simpson and Gov’t Mule. Touring with his Family band, he was seated with pianist sister, Bobbi, on his right and guitarist son, Micah, on his left.
Micah eased the load for his father by taking lead vocals on four songs, including the country gospel standard “Keep on the Sunnyside” and the brand new “If I Die When I’m High I’ll Be Halfway to Heaven,” which Micah said he wrote after his father suggested the title.
Opening as always with “Whiskey River,” as an American flag backdrop was revealed — replacing an Outlaw tableau featuring a tour bus trailed by clouds of smoke disappearing into a tree — Willie took a little while to warm up.
He set the mood with the Zen koan “Still Is Still Moving to Me,” then eased into wistful, melancholy standards, some of which he wrote himself, such as “Crazy” and “Night Life,” and others, such as “Always on My Mind,” that he has made so indelible you just assume he wrote them.
Like an aging athlete finding his footing, Nelson got stronger as the show went on, his vocals more robust, the gypsy-jazz leads he squeezed out of his acoustic guitar Trigger friskier. The pairing of Hoagy Carmichael’s (by way of Ray Charles) “Georgia on My Mind” and Billy Jo Shaver’s “Georgia on a Fast Train” was particularly winning.
And by the time the encores rolled around, with all the evening’s featured performers joining him for the country gospel sing-alongs on “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” and “I’ll Fly Away,” Nelson was commanding the stage from his seated position.
So much so that he decided to throw Mac Davis’ mock boastful “It’s Hard to Be Humble” as a closer on what was an evening of 5½ hours of performances. “To know me is to love me,” Nelson sang playfully. Indeed it is, and all the more so now, considering how vital and indomitable of an artist he remains at age 88.
Willie Nelson & sons
Thursday, July 22nd, 2021
photo: Janis Tillerson
Particle Kid Micah Nelson to tour with The Flaming Lips
Monday, June 21st, 2021(Los Angeles) – Particle Kid (Los Angeles-based composer/multi-media artist Micah Nelson)is excited to announce that he will join Grammy Award-winning The Flaming Lips on their U.S. tour in autumn 2021 and spring 2022.
Tickets are on sale now. Click here for more info or visit the venue links below.
The Flaming Lips, the Oklahoma City psychedelic rock band whose Space Bubble Concerts got a lot of attention during lockdown, have invited Particle Kid to be the very special guest on their highly anticipated U.S. tour this fall and next spring. Particle Kid, which is Micah Nelson and a rotation of musicians he enlists, and The Flaming Lips have already collaborated in various ways.
Nelson was a featured musician on The Flaming Lips’ 2020 album, American Head, adding guitar and vocals to the band’s life-affirming and imaginative sound.
Lips fans likely saw Particle Kid in April 2021 on Jimmy Kimmel Live, when he joined the band to perform “Will You Return/When You Come Down” from American Head. Watch the performance here.
In 2019, The Aspen Times wrote about Particle Kid’s opening set for The Flaming Lips: “He set the tone at the outset with a jarring dose of extended feedback, emerging from the haze of noise with ‘Myssus Crow’-from his 2017 album, Everything Is Bullshit-which juxtaposes jangly guitars and sweet bubblegum-pop vocals with harsh and brutal passages of distorted guitar…
There’s a playful Frank Zappa spirit in Particle Kid’s arty rock and a refreshing indifference to the pop trends of the moment. His mercurial guitar-based sound, with touches of folk and punches of distortion, is occasionally punctuated with glitchy electronic samples.”
Born into a highly creative and prolific family, Micah Nelson is comfortable on the world stage, having toured and/or collaborated with everyone from Neil Young and Tinariwen to John Doe and Willie Nelson (Micah’s father, who also coined the Particle Kid moniker).
Micah began creating animation and videos as a child, attended art school and currently has a production entity called Spitball Pictures, which produces music videos for his own projects, as well as those by Edie Brickell & New Bohemians (“Tripwire” and “My Power”), folk-punk musician Sunny War (“Age of a Man”), Tinariwen (“Wartilla, Dan Caret Dub”), and ukulele and guitar duo Folk Uke (“Small One”).
Micah is currently working with Neil Young on an animated short film adaptation of Young’s 1982 dystopian sci-fi concept album, TRANS. He is also a member of his brother’s band, Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real, a member of Neil Young’s band, touring and recording with Young and being part of his full-length film Paradox.
Particle Kid has headlined shows around the world and opened for The Flaming Lips, Tinariwen, Meat Puppets, Margo Price, and Sheryl Crow, and played at festivals such as Luck Reunion, UTOPiAfest and the Outlaw Music Festival. In an article titled “The Trippy Troubadour,” Rolling Stone called Micah Nelson a “musical polymath who, according to Willie, ‘plays everything,’ combining an indie DIY aesthetic with a questing hippie spirit and a relentless work ethic.”
Micah told Rolling Stonethat playing music with Neil Young has been like “getting a master’s degree in Jedi training.” Nelson calls Particle Kid his “experimental future-folk solo project,” and has released five albums of original music since 2012 and is preparing new material for an upcoming release, some of which will likely be part of his opening set list.
In addition to performing an opening set at these shows, it’s likely that Particle Kid will join The Flaming Lips onstage during this tour.
THE FLAMING LIPS + PARTICLE KID on Tour 2021/2022:
2021:
Sun Nov 07 The Fillmore Philadelphia, PA
Mon Nov 08 Brooklyn Steel Brooklyn, NY
Tue Nov 09 Brooklyn Steel Brooklyn, NY
Thu Nov 11 Stage A&E Pittsburgh, PA
Fri Nov 12 Crouse Hinds Theater Syracuse, NY
Sat Nov 13 Palace Theater Albany, NY
Mon Nov 15 House of Blues Boston, MA
Tue Nov 16 The Anthem Washington, DCThu Nov 18 MTELUS Montreal, QC
Sat Nov 20 Royal Oak Music Theater Royal Oak, MI
2022:
Mon Apr 25 Mission Ballroom Denver, CO
Thu Apr 28 Knitting Factory Boise, ID
Fri Apr 29 Crystal Ballroom Portland, OR
Sat Apr 30 Knitting Factory Spokane, WAMon May 02 Commodore Ballroom Vancouver, BC
Tue May 03 Commodore Ballroom Vancouver, BC
Wed May 04 Showbox SoDo Seattle, WA
Fri May 06 Warfield Theatre San Francisco, CA
Sat May 07 Warfield Theatre San Francisco, CA
Mon May 09 The Wiltern Los Angeles, CA
Click here for additional ticket information.
Paula Nelson hosts Happy Father’s Day with Willie’s kids on Sirius/XM Radio today
Sunday, June 20th, 2021Sunday, April 25th, 2021
Happy birthday, Micah Nelson
photos: Janis Tillerson
Janis Tillerson took this photo, in Luck, Texas
Micah and his big brother, at Red Rocks.
Texas Music
November 2014
Micah Nelson: When It Comes to Willie Nelson’s Youngest Son, expect the unexpected
by Steve Uhler
Micah Nelson has been screwing with everyone’s expectations since before he was even born.
His dad originally wanted to name him Jake — a “cowboy name” — but the still-gestating prodigy had other ideas. “Apparently, when my mother was pregnant with me, she had a dream in which I came to her and said, “Hey, listen. I’m gonna be showing up soon, so I want to let you know ahead of time. My name is Micah. You can call me whatever you want, but that’s my name. Micah. OK, great — see you soon.” Then she woke up and turned to my dad and said, ‘Hey, uh… so his name is Micah, apparently.”
“That wasn’t enough convincing, however. “They settled on Jacob, Jake for short,” he continues. “But then I showed up and said my name is Micah. Only doctors and cops and people at the DMV call me Jacob.”
Anyone expecting Willie Nelson’s youngest son to reflect the spitting image of his iconic father is likely to be simultaneously disappointed and amazed. Flying in the face of preconceptions — ore -re-anything — is a lifelong motif for the 24-year-old musician. his music is as similar to his dad’s as John Cage is to Johnny Cash. Same canvas, wildly different colors. “Micah has never followed the herd in anything he odes,” says his older brother, Lukas. “To follow any formula would limit him, which he knows. He’s as unique as he is creative.”
Even as a toddler, Nelson was messing with people’s heads. “I started playing harmonica in my dad’s band when I was about three,” he recalls. “I thought I was just getting harmonica lessons. I was oblivious to the thousands of people watching. My Aunt Robyn asked me if I was nervous in front of all those people? I said, “If I don’t see them, they can’t see me.’ Eventually I got pretty decent at the harmonica, and my dad would throw me the nod to take a solo or two.”
Like his iconoclastic father, Nelson does things his own way — and he does a lot of things. In addition to being a full-time musician, both with his band, Insects vs Robots, and as a solo artist, he’s an accomplished painter, photographer, filmmaker and animator. Imagine H.R. Giger channeling John Audobon at a seance with David Lynch, and you’ll get some idea of Nelson’s vision.
As a musician, he eschews the formulaic and polished in favor of the ragged, unformed and spontaneous. As such a conduit as a creator, Nelson conjures “found sounds” into complex musical works of astonishing depth, imagery and surprising humor. An intuitive sonic forager, he finds inspiration in serendipitous places: the rhythm drip of a leaky faucet, the arthritic, groan of an old rocking chair, the distant howl of hungry coyotes in the night. “When I was in high school, every morning on Maui I’d wake up to the most psychedelic bird calls right outside my window,” he recalls. “the weirdest riffs. A human couldn’t write those melodies. I had a growing suspicion that all birds were just musical robots flying around with little tape decks built into them with old warped tapes that would loop the strangest, tweekiest sounds.”
So do inanimate objects, “I know a guy named Lewellyn with an old creaky rusty cat,” he continues. “Every time he opens his door it sings the strangest creaky melodies. I”ve ripped his car’s riffs off countless times. Sometimes I see music as this mysterious forest to be explored. Or like archeaology. You never know what treasures and artifacts you might find, but you can’t know unless you start digging.”
Nelson meticulously builds layers of tracks, weaving a tapestry of songs that are often otherworldly. Anyone expecting echoes of his dad’s distinctive voice and mainstream op sensibilities will find Nelson’s oeuvre disorienting. It’s a beguiling mash-up of traditional folk, psychedelia and world beat, peppered with guileless vocals, dissonant chordings and shifting time signatures. It’s musical Chaos Theory.
“A lot of popular music is so safe, so predictable, like it was processed in a factory,” he explains. “You can literally go in and buy it at Target next to the Tupperware. Not that there’s anything wrong with that .. except that a lot of it tends to sound like Tupperware. Some folks want ot make a pop hit that sells deodorant and plays every five minutes at Walgreens and gets them a Super Bowl halftime show. I tend to get bored with that intention. It spooks my horse.” Perhaps the closest he’s ever come to a traditional love song is “Mosquito,” his bizarre ode to the pesky insect.
Willie Nelson And Sons Perform Frank Sinatra’s “A Cottage For Sale”
Monday, March 15th, 2021www.liveforlivemusic.com
by; Michael Broerman
Last month, Willie Nelson released his 71st album, That’s Life, a covers compilation comprised entirely of songs made famous by Frank Sinatra. On Friday, the 87-year-old country star shared a live performance video of the Sinatra hidden gem “A Cottage For Sale”, performed alongside his sons Lukas and Micah.
While it might be easy to react to a Willie Nelson cover of a Frank Sinatra song with skepticism, their distinct styles blend together surprisingly well. As Nelson noted with the announcement of That’s Life, “I learned a lot about phrasing listening to Frank. He didn’t worry about behind the beat or in front of the beat, or whatever — he could sing it either way, and that’s the feel you have to have.”
Fittingly, this performance of “A Cottage For Sale”—first written in 1929 and released 30 years later on Ol’ Blues Eyes’ No One Cares album—finds that very same “behind the beat” styling at work. In addition to the depressing reality of the song’s lyrics describing a once love-filled cottage now derived of any emotional warmth, the swing-and-waltzes backing of Lukas’ Promise of the Real bandmates make the Sinatra rarity sound like it could be a Nelson original. The Red Headed Stranger himself appeared to be happy with the take as well, as he can be heard saying “that was a good one” at the end of the video.
Willie Nelson, “Living in the Promised Land”
Sunday, January 31st, 2021Merry Christmas Eve
Thursday, December 24th, 2020
Willie, Micah, Lukas Nelson
Friday, November 20th, 2020
Willie Nelson and the Boys (Nov. 15, 2020)
Sunday, November 15th, 2020? Streaming TODAY!! Big mahalo to this mycelial network of artists who contributed their sounds and support for local…
Posted by Particle Kid on Sunday, November 15, 2020
