Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die: Musings From the Road (9 page)

DAVID ANDERSON

It was New Year’s Eve 1973, after my senior high school party; I was high on mushrooms and riding up and down on the Dallas Hyatt Regency elevator for fun. It was there I experienced my first encounter with the man I would spend the rest of my adult life with. A man who would change—had already changed—my life forever.

Shortly after midnight, the elevator door opened and through the hallucinogenic glaze of my eyes stood before me one of the largest superstars in history, and next to him was Willie Nelson. I offered Leon Russell and Willie a ride, asked them what floor they wanted, and delivered them safe and sound with great relief. My journalism and sociology teachers had recently introduced me to Willie’s music while trying to explain why Leon Russell had just cut his first country record,
Hank Wilson’s Back
.

That next year, our paths would cross yet again. It was during a very new growth period for Texas music and music festivals in general. Tom Lett, owner of the Best Parking Lot at Dallas’s Love Field, had the pioneering idea of bringing festivals to the heart of Dallas during the pre-amphitheater era. I was an eighteen-year-old kid right out of film school and enjoyed music, though I was far from an expert. But when the chance came along for me to advise Tom on the artists who should perform, I jumped at the chance.

Willie was my first choice, and Willie’s daughter Lana was my first call. She worked in her dad’s office, booking and helping Paul English, Willie’s drummer. She’s now my big sister and best friend.

Tickets were $7 each and included all the beer and soda you could consume. They sold out instantly. We built the stage on top of the parking lot entrance, and that night two topless girls climbed onto two other cowboys’ shoulders to see Willie up close and personal. Willie enjoyed the view until the blonde fell and grabbed on to Willie’s strap. It was an eighteen-foot fall and no titties were worth the drop.

Fate continued to guide me as I opted out of a consulting fee and salary, and I asked Tom to rent me a suite at the Ramada Inn next door with a banquet room for the artists to come to and relax and party instead. Much better, I thought, than a hundred-dollar bill. Willie, Paul, and the rest of the band came up for food and to smoke a quick joint, and of course to get paid, before hitting the road. We did, they did, and it was done.

Later on, while Paul was producing the 1975 picnic in Liberty Hill, he stayed in Dallas to promote and buy ads, although it turned out to be a retreat from exhaustion more than anything. We met each night after my job at Bill Stokes’s studio and talked about the picnic, exchanging ideas on how to make it work easier than in the past.

It was their fourth year and most motor-home rental agencies had seen the wrath of a picnic taken out on their equipment, and they had all refused to rent to them, a conundrum Paul placed on my shoulders. With the arrogance of naïveté, I jumped at the chance. I didn’t even know what a dressing room was, much less where to rent one.

The next Sunday I was driving by a construction site and fifty blueprint office trailers were scattered around a field. I called the number on the billboard and ordered them all delivered to Austin for $50 each. Before I knew it, I was in Austin at another picnic, only this time not as a spectator, but as a worker helping “the Devil” himself.

It rained that year, as it seems to at most picnics, and the roof began filling with water and had nowhere to go, so Paul pulled out his forty-five and unloaded his pistol into it to drain the weight of the water. Like the rest of the audience I cheered on in happy disbelief. I’d never seen a gun before.

I guess he was enthused over my eagerness, because Paul hired me as his assistant. Willie’s enthusiasm, however, was short-lived. I was getting on his nerves, trying to treat him like the star I thought he was.

Soon Willie called me into his office. Paul was there too, and in true Willie fashion, rather than hurt my feelings, he said he couldn’t afford to pay me. I knew that wasn’t the case, as I had worked the last nine months for only $100.

He did say, however, that I could continue to promote shows for him, so I did just that. Wichita Falls was my first true dive into the world of concert promotion, and with Willie as the headliner it was an easy sell. The show sold out with massive profits for the time, $12,500; I had about $6,500 in cash sales, with the other $6,000 at the box office.

Fate decided to take me on a drive out west to deliver the money. Paul and Willie were at a show promoted by a longtime scoundrel, Geno McCoslin. Geno had not paid them, yet again, and to their surprise and my good fortune, I showed up with a brown paper bag with $6,500 cash. Willie told Paul, “Hire him back.”

It’s been the best and worst times of my life. I couldn’t imagine a better person with whom to have experienced almost four decades of the most fascinating life anyone could ever imagine. He taught me all about love and how to love others. Just as Joe Jamail wrote on Trigger years ago, he’s “a gentle man.” I will always love him.

Micah and Lukas

MICAH NELSON

For those who still believe Santa Claus isn’t real, clearly they have never met my father. The invaluable things I have learned from him over the years simply through observation are more than I can describe in any language. It is a blessing to have been raised by someone so wise and humble. He is an elder of the human tribe and young beyond his years. I love him more every day, because every day it seems we grow closer.

It isn’t easy to describe exactly what it’s like to be “Willie’s kid.” One might reasonably assume that it comes with a great pressure to live up to a certain expectation or to be caught in a heavy shadow. Being an artist/musician inherently comes with many pressures and struggles. However, I have never felt as though I am standing in his shadow—it is instead as if he has blazed a trail of lights for me with which to cast my own shadows. There has never been any pressure from him to be anything but a decent person, and he has supported me in every creative endeavor I’ve ever embarked upon, regardless of how different it may be. Seriously, even if I played in some screamo/breakcore/noise/glitch pop/polka band (fill in the blank), he would still want to come sit in with the band or have me come open for him or something, just so we could hang out and play music together. That is how much he cares about family above all else. When he came to see my band Insects vs. Robots a couple years ago, our bassist broke a string halfway through the set, and while he was changing it, my dad jumped onstage and kicked off “On the Road Again.” Maybe half the band knew the song, but it kept the show moving and was a great and hilarious moment. I’ll never forget that.

I started playing harmonica in his band next to Mickey when I was three years old and later moved on to playing drums/percussion with Paul and Billy, while Lukas played guitar, and these days I’ve been singing in the band as well. I literally grew up with music. When I was about seven years old, Dad asked me to make the album artwork for his album
Milk Cow Blues.
I ended up giving the “boy cows” udders (because I was seven years old), but he didn’t care. In fact, he thought it was great. For us, it was just a fun project to do together.

When he asked me to do illustrations for this book, it was just another great excuse to create together. Still, I feel incredibly honored to be the one to illustrate moments and characters in my dad’s life. It has certainly been a special one. Needless to say, we laughed a lot rummaging through all his life stories. Getting to re-create them visually has made us closer than ever. When I originally asked what he had in mind visually for the book he said, “Just do what you do, whatever you’re feeling. We’ll go from there.” My dad has never tried to hinder my creative potential or change who I am, and for that I thank him so much. He’s had his fair share of experience being himself in the face of creative suppression and trusting his intuition regardless of what was expected or accepted. Seems to have worked out pretty well so far.

Lukas, Micah, and Willie