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by: John Spong
In early 2023, bluegrass phenom Billy Strings paid Willie Nelson a visit at the latter’s Pedernales Studio. The two were going to cut a duet of a song Strings had just written, “California Sober,” about a topic they’d discussed a few times on Willie’s bus: the virtues of weed over whiskey. After a quick false start, things took off. Willie nailed the vocals on his verse. He invited Strings, an absolute savant on guitar, to pick for a little bit on Trigger. They then retired to a poker game, during which Billy promptly lost his ass—to be saved from further ignominy only through the grace of Willie’s wife, Annie D’Angelo. And their recording of “California Sober,” released two days before Willie turned ninety, turned out to be an absolute barn burner, earning a Grammy nomination for Best American Roots Performance. Says Strings now, “That was one of the best days of my life.”
Strings describes all of that on this week’s One by Willie, but first, he directs his focus to one of the all-time-great Willie-and-Trigger workouts, “Stay a Little Longer.” The song is an old Bob Wills standard that Willie grew up on and later updated, made his own, and, on the version Billy and I listen to, off the 1978 double LP Willie and Family Live, plays at a careening, 90-mile-per-hour pace that Strings says blazes like bluegrass—before explaining how he hears in the song a hallmark of all Willie’s picking: integrity in every note.
One by Willie is produced by John Spong and PRX in partnership with Texas Monthly. The PRX production team is Jocelyn Gonzales, Patrick Grant, Pedro Rafael Rosado, and project manager Edwin Ochoa. The Texas Monthly team is engineer Brian Standefer, producer Patrick Michels, and executive producer Megan Creydt, with graphic design by Emily Kimbro and Victoria Millner. And Dominic Welhouse provides invaluable research and editing help.