Acoustic Guitar
December 2013
by Adam Levy
Pick up the December 2013 issue of Acoustic Guitar, and read the rest of this great article by Adam Levy. It focuses on Willie Nelson’s song writing, and guitar playing, and they put a lot in to the pictures, stories, music they share. I’d love to type the whole article out here, and I probably will eventually, but that wouldn’t be fair, I know. This is one you will want for your collection. Here’s a sample:
Along with Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, and a handful of other iconoclasts, Willie Nelson has become more or less synonymous with outlaw country. The country subgenre took root in the late ’60s and early ’70s, as these artists sought to distinguish themselves from the squeaky-clean Nashville sound prevalent at the time. They often sang of hard living, hard drinking, and hard loving, and they favored relatively raw productions, without the gitzy orchestrations heard on mainstream records by their contemporaries.
Yet, despite Nelson’s outlaw affiliation and his unconventional look — usually sporting a ragged beard and long hair braided into pigtails — he has always taken songwriting as seriously as anyone in the business. He’s a master craftsman with many great songs to his credit including, “Crazy,” “Funny How Time Slips Away,” “Hello Walls,” and “Three Days.” Remarkably, all of these now classic songs were on Nelson-s first recorded… And Then I Wrote, released in 19662. Only the album’s opening track, “Touch Me,” hit the Billboard charts for Nelson as an artist, but the songs were hits for other country stars: Faron Young with “Hello Walls,” Billy Walker with “Funny How TIme Slips Away,” and, of course, patsy Cline with Crazy.”
That was just the beginning of the remarkable songwriting journey of Nelson, who turned 80 this year. To help put Nelson’s legacy in perspective, I interviewed a handful of esteemed musicians who count themselves amoung the icons’s biggest fans — guitarist Bill Frisell,; sing-ersongwriters Doug Wamble, Mile Zuniga, and Rhett Miller; and producer Joe Henry (a singer-songwriter himself). s Frisell told us, it’s hard to zero in on a favorite Nelson tune. :Oh, wow,” he says. “How doyou choose? So many extraordinarys ongs, it’s crazy.”
Pick up your copy of Acoustic Guitar and enjoy the rest of the article.