stillisstillmoving.com

photo by Chuck France

by Timothy Finn
www.backtorockville.typepad.com

For more than 100 minutes, Nelson kept more than 1,300 fans inside the Star Pavilion at Ameristar Casino in his warm, charming thrall.

The setup was the usual: Nelson backed by his touring band, which includes his sister, Bobbie on piano, and best-friends-forever Mickey Raphael on harmonica and Paul English on brushes/snare. With minimal pomp or flash, they provided the perfect backdrop to Nelson’s inimitable voice and his gorgeous guitar play.

photo by Chuck France

His set list visited not only his own star-spangled catalog, but also the famous songs of other titans, like Kris Kristofferson (“Help Me Make It Through the Night” and “Me and Bobby McGee”), Waylon Jennings (“Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” and “Good-Hearted Woman”) and Hank Williams (“Jambalaya,” “Hey, Good Lookin’,” “Move It On Over”), a few standards (“All of Me”) plus a few traditional hymns (“Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” “I Saw the Light, “I’ll Fly Away”).

He tossed in a medley or two and ignored some of his best latter-day work (like the woefully under-appreciated “Spirit” album) for something mediocre (“Beer For My Horses”), but a large chunk of setlist comprised full versions of the greatest hits of one of our greatest songwriters: “Whiskey River,” ”Funny How Time Slips Away,” “Georgia,” “Crazy,” “You Were Always On My Mind,” “Blue Eyes Cryin’ In the Rain” and the lovely and redemptive “Healing Hands of Time.”

Just as impressive as his performance was Nelson’s rapport with his audience.  He sang “Happy Birthday” to a woman his age and all night tossed red bandanas into a crowd that also included children younger than 10 and ladies in their 20s. (He’d loop the bandana around the neck of his warhorse guitar, Trigger, tie it, wear it for a few songs, then pitch it into the front rows).

All night, fans walked up to the front of the stage to snap a photo or leave a gift. One man left a red U.S.  Marine Corps wind-breaker at the foot of the stage. A woman left a bra. About the time the show hit the 90-minute mark, Raphael looked like it might be closing time, but Willie must have been in the mood for more.

So the show continued with another song or two, including “I Gotta Get Drunk.” By the time he’d issued his final thank-you and farewell, fans had lined the front of the stage, so Nelson started shaking hands and signing stuff: shirts, scraps of paper, album covers. I waited around to see how long he’d obliged them all, but he outlasted me. I left after 10 minutes and he was still at it, signing and glad-handing like a homecoming hero. Time is slipping away from all of us, but it seems to have slowed its departure from Willie Nelson. 

To read entire article by Timothy Finn and see more great pictures:
http://backtorockville.typepad.com/back_to_rockville/2010/03/review-willie-nelson.html

Thanks to Willie Nelson fan Jeff, who went to the concert last night, and sent me these pictures.   I like Jeff’s simple review, “What an amazing evening!”

Review in paper, By Daniel Durchholz
www.stltoday.com

Willie Nelson’s set lists don’t vary very much. Though his catalog is as deep as anyone’s on the planet, he’s determined to give his fans the hits they want to hear, and there are a lot of them.

But you seldom get the sense that his performances are by rote. His backing band is as solid as bedrock, but Nelson himself is so loose and unpredictable – playing and singing ahead of and behind the beat but rarely on top of it – that each concert has its own unique qualities.

That was certainly true of his show Thursday night before a packed house at the Pageant. Nelson mostly plays large outdoor venues these days, so there’s something especially electrifying about seeing him indoors.  Even at 76 years of age,  he’s capable of turning just about any room into one of the countless Texas honkytonks he played back in the day.

At the Pageant, Nelson wasted little time speaking to the crowd. Instead, he packed 27 songs into an 80-minute show that traversed a variety of genres — country, of course, but also jazz, blues and gospel — and changed moods instantaneously. He stirred the crowd with the uptempo classics “Whiskey River,” “If You’ve Got the Money I’ve Got the Time,” and “On the Road Again” as well as tributes to Waylon Jennings and Hank Williams. But he soothed it with hushed, impassioned readings of “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” and “Always on My Mind.”

An especially jarring set of transitions occurred as Nelson moved from “Nuages,” a lush instrumental, to the plainly goofy “Superman” to the stark, disconsolate “Nobody’s Fault but Mine.” Few could manage such a trick, but Nelson is among them.

Throughout the concert, his genius-level guitar playing was what tied everything together. Playing Trigger, his beat-to-death gut-string guitar, Nelson time and again painted himself into a corner musically and then magically escaped, playing solos that were by turns lyrical, jagged-edged, avant garde and frenzied.

In terms of music, personality, legend, aura or what have you, there’s really no one like him.

Shooting with Annie, a relatively new St. Louis band made up of veteran players, opened the show with a pleasing set of straightforward country rock. Boasting three lead vocalists and a versatile instrumental approach, it’s a talented group worth keeping an eye on.

Willie Nelson set list

“Whiskey River”
“Still Is Still Moving to Me”
“Beer for My Horses”
“Shoeshine Man”
“Funny How Time Slips Away/Crazy/Night Life”
“Down Yonder”
“If You’ve Got the Money I’ve Got the Time”
“Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain”
“Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys”
“Good Hearted Woman”
“Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground”
“On the Road Again”
“Always on My Mind”
“Georgia”
“Nuages”
“Superman”
“Nobody’s Fault but Mine (new album)”
“Jambalaya”
“Healing Hands of Time”
“Bloody Mary Morning”
“Rainy Day Blues”
“Me and Paul”
“Will the Circle Be Unbroken/I’ll Fly Away”
“I Saw the Light”
“I Gotta Get Drunk”
“You Asked Me To”
“Georgia on a Fast Train”

read the entire article:
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/entertainment/reviews.nsf/concert/story/D6D5AE6404A4556B862576E400609A48?OpenDocument

Peace Center for the Performing Arts
Wednesday, October 18, 2000

Willie Nelson:  “Milk Cow Blues”

“…  There isn’t a note Willie plays, not a note he sings, that isn’t rich with the blues.”   – Jerry Wexler

In his long and eclectic career, Willie Nelson has recorded country music, standards, gospel, and much more.  Now with the release of Milk Cow Blues, his third album for Island Records and his first blues release, Willie Nelson leaves his mark on yet another chuck of the American musical landscape.

Milk Cow Blues combines the talents of Nelson, an array of special guests, and the cream of the Austin, Texas blues community.  Guest stars on the album include B.B. King, Dr. John, young singer guitarist Susan Tedeschi, Keb’ Mo’, Francine Reed (who usually duets with Nelson’s fellow Texas Lyle Lovett), and blues prodigies Jonny Lang and Kenny Wayne Shepherd.  Additionally, Willie surrounds himself with a who’s-who of Austin blues players, many of whom are charter members of the house band at Antone’s nightclub, the city’s world famous “home of the blues.” 

These players– including guitarists Jimmie Vaughan and Derek O’Brien, keyboardist Riley Osbourn, drummer George Rains, bassist Jon Blondell — have played with everyone from the Three Kings (you know, B.B., Albert and Freddie) to Muddy Waters, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Albert Collins, and an entire galaxy of Chicago and Louisiana blues stars who have come through Antone’s doors.

So when Nelson decided to host a blues session, he didn’t have to look far for some players.   “These guys are the best there are, and it just so happened they were right here in Austin,” said Nelson with affection.  “So they were here and I was here, and I had never done a blues album…”.  The rest, as they say, is history.

As for Willie himself, he is no stranger to the blues.  Growing up in the farming country of Central Texas, Nelson found himself working along side migrant and tenant farmers.  “I was raised and worked in the cotton fields around Abbott with a lot of African-Americans and a lot of Mexican-Americans, and we listened to their music all the time.  I guess that’s why I was influenced a lot by those around me — there was a lot of singing that went on in the cotton fields,” said Nelson during a break at this year’s Fourth of July Picnic.

When, at a tender age, he began playing in honky-tonks, where the jukeboxes were ruled by the Western Swing, jazz and jump blues of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys.  “I’ve always sung Milk Cow Blues”, Nelson continued.  “It was one of the first songs I played when I started working in beer joints.  From that, I really got into the blues, and learned a lot of other blues songs.  Then, later on, I would visit other beer joints around Texas — one time I used to deliver laundry and linens, so I made it to a lot of beer joints, and I heard a lot of great music on those juke boxes.  I got really addicted, and then I started trying to find out where all this good music could be found on the radio.”

That lifetime of appreciation figures heavily in the selection of songs that Nelson personally selected for Milk Cow Blues.  In addition to the title tack, the album also includes distinctive Wille-esque renditions of B.B. classic “Kansas City,” “Ain’t Nobody’s Business” (recorded by Billie Holiday and numerous otehrs), Bob Wills’ ‘Sittin’ on Top of the World,,” Lary Davis’ signatuers ongs “Texas Flood,” (which also became a trademark tune for Stevie Ray Vaughan), Charles Brown’s mournful “Black Night,” and others.   Nelson also dips into his own catalog for blues-tinted version of his own “Funny How Time Slips Away,” “Crazy,” “Rainy Day Blues,” “Wake Me When It’s Over,” and “Night Life.”

Country fans familiar with the classic C&W renditions of the Willie standards might be initially taken aback (though soon won over).  But longtime Willie Nelson fans have come to expect the unexpected from one of the iconoclasic musicians in a state filled with musical rule-benders.

Born in 1933 in the tiny Central Texas farming community of Abbott, Willie Nelson grew up in a world permeated with music:  The gospel songs of the grandparents who raised him; the blues and Mexican corridas that eased the labor of the cotton fields; the country and Western Swing hits filling the airwaves from Nashville and Fort Worth… and the inner music that percolated up ceaselessly inside of him.  Melodies are easy, he says of his songwriter; if he needs one, he just plucks one out of the air.  The air, he says, is full of music.

Since waxing his first single in 1957, he has given birth to concept albums (his first, Yesterday’s Wine, as recorded in 1970), gospel albums, jazz albums, movie soundtracks, myriad duet projects (at this point, Willie has recorded with everyone this side of Regis Philbin), Christmas albums, live albums, and an album of standards (1978’s Stardust) which has become a standard in itself.

His around-the-beat blues-flavored vocals set the Nashville musical establishment on its ear.  His spare-sounding breakthrough album, 1973’s Red-Headed Stranger, went so against the Music City grain of the day that his record company president first thought Nelson had presented him with a demo.  His early-seventies merger of the traditional country and long-haired hippie audiences was called suicidal at the time, and has since come to be regarded as visionary. 

Outside the recording studio, Nelson established himself as a champion for the family farmer with his annual Farm Aid concerts.  His Fourth of July Picnics have for the past quarter-century served as a rite of musical passage in Texas.  His films include The Electric Horseman (with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda), Songwriter (with Kris Kristofferson), Wag the Dog (with Robert DeNiro and Dustin Hoffman), and many others.

Today, Nelson divides his time between the road and his beloved Pedernales recording studio golf course in the Hill country outside of Austin, Texas.  often asked when he plans to retire, the 67-year-old Nelson invariable replies with a smile.  “All I do is play music and golf — which one do you want me to give up?”

http://bungalowbillscw.blogspot.com
by Bungalow Bill

It was a piece of Americana with a Texas attitude still strong event two months before his 77th birthday. It was legendary. It was part spiritual. It was the realization of over 50 years in the music business and all the contributions of one man. It was Willie Nelson.

As I sat in the balcony watching Willie from the farthest of distances last night, I couldn’t help but connect him to Bob Dylan and Dylan to Willie. Their music has taken from so many genres and reinvented what they did, which was evident in both crowds. Willie chose a country folk sound and Dylan turned folk to rock and eventually borrowed a page from Willie’s country sound.

It’s hard to not see, in the twilight of both men’s lives, they refuse to hang up–the constant road warriors. They both work harder than the entitlement generation of today, and they both deserve to be on a beach enjoying their accomplishments. That’s not them. They both have their legendary catalogs to share. I match both, because they are travelling gypsies with an eternal music show, at least that’s what the fans hope even though deep down in side, we know this could be the last chance to see either.

Like Dylan, who I saw four years ago, Willie’s singing has become more spoken than sung, but boy can he play the guitar. Willie was the country guitar god last night. Battling carpal tunnel, he was the boss of his simple acoustic guitar.

Nearly each song was met with a standing ovation from his biggest fans sitting in the first 10 rows. At 76, the women still throw bras at Willie, and he acknowledges every piece of lingerie holding it up as if he’s the luckiest guy in the world and then puts them in a collection on a piece of equipment as the band plays on.

His older sister Bobbie plays the grand piano along with him, also an incredible sound. This is just one of those bands that enjoy playing together and you hear it. He played an endless collection of songs that define American culture last night, from Whiskey River to Crazy to Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain to Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys to On the Road

Again, and in the final minutes Willie led the choir of fans with May the Circle Be Unbroken and I Saw the Light. While the Shrine Mosque still remains the worst place I have seen a concert at, I have seen two legends of American music there.

Both shows proved to be an example of a dying art form, where music is from the heart and personal experience–not computerized beats. Even in the country realm, Willie had his fans lifting their glasses minus Toby Keith with Whiskey For My Men, Beer For My Horses, but other than being Willie’s arena anthem for the night, it didn’t hold up to what was coming.

http://bungalowbillscw.blogspot.com/2010/02/willie-nelson-concert-review-shrine.html

photo by Carol Sidoran, of NY

www.Kansas.com
by Randy Lewis

Willie Nelson’s famous face is tanned and weathered. White whiskers increasingly dominate his two-day stubble, and streaks of gray color the waist-length braid trailing down his back.

The country music legend is sitting on a bench seat inside a tour bus parked behind the bullpen at Diamond Stadium in Lake Elsinore, Calif., waiting to take the stage. He displays a youthful vitality that many younger men would envy.

“I’m real lucky,” this 76-year-old road warrior says, leaning forward and flashing an easy grin. “My health is as good as it’s ever been. My lungs are in good shape — and there are lots of people all over the world wondering how that could be, like Michael Phelps.”

Nelson lets out an infectious laugh at the not-so-subtle reference to his celebrated affinity for pot and the Olympic swimming champion’s troubles after photos of him inhaling from a marijuana pipe surfaced. “So, I’m in good health and I appreciate it.”

When Nelson laughs, there’s a gleam in his eye that’s ageless; it’s there, too, when he talks about reconnecting with the kind of songs he first heard as a boy growing up in Texas during the 1930s and ’40s. It was a time and place where the rural music of the South — then labeled “hillbilly music” — commingled with the pop and big-band sounds most of the rest of the nation was enjoying, most prominently in the western swing sound pioneered by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys.

“It all fits together,” says Nelson, who will perform a sold-out concert Tuesday at the Cotillion. “Western swing is just jazz. The musicians Bob had, the musicians Asleep at the Wheel has … these are jazz musicians who can play anything; it just so happens they settled in on western swing.”

Having recently passed the three-quarters-of-a-century mark, Nelson decided the time was right to return to that fertile trove of songs in “American Classic,” his album released last fall. The title describes the Great American Songbook of pop standards he’s drawing upon and the man himself, who is rivaled only by Merle Haggard for the title of country music’s greatest living songwriter.

The field of pop-classic vocal albums has gotten crowded in recent years, with singers as wide-ranging as Michael Buble, Cyndi Lauper and Queen Latifah taking swings at songs largely written before they were born. It takes chutzpah, to say nothing of serious vocal chops, to tackle songs famously recorded by Tony Bennett (“Because of You”), Ray Charles (“Come Rain or Come Shine”) and Frank Sinatra (“Fly Me to the Moon”), as Nelson does on “American Classic.”

“Of course, I’m a huge Sinatra fan,” Nelson says. “There are other guys who’ve made great versions of that song: Vic Damone, some of those guys…. It’s probably been recorded 1,000 times, but you always remember Sinatra.”

Nelson says his heart always has belonged as much to jazz as to country.

“Django (Reinhardt) is my favorite guitar player,” he says. “That stuff is the real deal.”

Nelson himself is nothing if not laid back about revisiting songs that have been recorded by many of the greatest singers of the last century. He’s been down this road before.

He concedes that he was ribbed for having had the temerity to cover Ray Charles with “Georgia on My Mind.” That was back in 1978, when Nelson helped put the standards ball in motion with his “Stardust” album. It wasn’t the first by a performer outside the Sinatra-Bennett adult-pop world to explore that canon, but it quickly became one of the most popular and influential. It has since sold more than 5 million copies.

“For me, it was a no-brainer,” he says. “I thought, heck, these are great songs, we’ve got a great band, a great producer and arranger with Booker [T. Jones]. This has got to be a winner. But it wasn’t that easy to sell the record companies on it. Back then we had to battle to get it out there.”

When it’s suggested that it often seems that he can sing anything, Nelson laughs again. “That’s the problem sometimes,” he says. “Sometimes you may have to rewrite on the spot — I think that’s where jazz got started, because a guy forgot the melody.”

http://www.kansas.com/entertainment/all/story/1191794.html