Willie Nelson (62 page)
The crew were the graybeards of roadies, with less turnover than even the Grateful Dead’s. “We’re all Texans and we grew up together,” Kenny Koepke said during setup before one Fillmore show. “When I joined, my sister [Connie] warned me this was something that wasn’t going to last long, and that was twenty-nine years ago.”
Willie bounded onto the stage with his arms raised high like a boxing champion, wearing a black T-shirt advertising Poodie’s Hilltop Bar, loose black jeans, dark tennis shoes, and a black felt cowboy hat over his long braids. He draped his familiar red-white-and-blue macramé guitar strap around his neck and strummed Trigger, his battered, beat-up, priceless Martin guitar. He looked older and grayer because he
was
older and grayer, his wild eyebrows and large ears accentuating his almost seventy-four years. He flashed a quick smile that seemed sincere while his piercing brown eyes scanned the crowd, trying to make eye contact. Cell phones with cameras raised high above heads in the audience captured the grand entry.
Without a cue, he strummed the chords to “Whiskey River” with his right hand, his left hand pressing strings onto the fret board. The lyrics rolled out of his mouth slurred in a talking blues. The race was on. The next two hours were spent thumbing through his own version of the Great American Songbook, introducing himself with the familiar “Well, hello, there,” the first lines to “Funny How Time Slips Away,” one of his first songwriting successes in 1961, and segueing into “Crazy” and “Night Life,” his vocals warming up and gaining strength as he spoke both wisdom and poetry in lines like “life is just another scene / in this old world of broken dreams.”
“Little sister” Bobbie cut loose on the instrumental breakdown “Down Yonder,” her attack of the notes establishing the band’s honky-tonk bona fides before the spotlight shifted to Jody, who croaked out Merle Haggard’s “Working Man’s Blues” in honor of his former employer and blue-collar folks everywhere, followed by Willie singing three Kris Kristofferson songs in a row—“Help Me Make It Through the Night,” “Me and Bobby McGee,” and a new one, “Moment of Forever.”
Over the course of the first few minutes, Willie the Showman, Willie the Songwriter, Willie the Bandleader, and Willie the Stylist all made appearances. The band was hardly warmed up. The music went stone country on Lefty Frizzell’s “If You’ve Got the Money (I’ve Got the Time)” as Willie tossed his hat into the crowd and started twisting up a headband out of a Willie bandanna, using his guitar neck as an extra hand before putting it on. The band got to swinging on “All of Me,” did a dramatic build with some serious rock and roll three-chord guitar riffing on the new Willie composition, “Gotta Get Over You,” and shifted into a sweet groove for “Red Headed Stranger,” “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” “Blue Skies,” and “Stardust”—all singles from Willie’s biggest hit-making period—before stomping their way through three Hank Williams songs in a row.
Elvis-worthy screams greeted the romantic ballad “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before,” made famous by his duet with Julio Iglesias. He sang Hoagy Carmichael’s ballad “Georgia,” popularized by Ray Charles, Steve Goodman’s “City of New Orleans,” made famous by Arlo Guthrie, and Townes Van Zandt’s “Pancho and Lefty” with so much familiarity that all the songs sounded like he’d written them. There were plenty of reasons for the perception. Willie’s version of “Georgia” alternated with Brother Ray’s on the sound system at the Stone Mountain Park historic site near Atlanta at sunset every day. Arlo may have had the hit single of Goodman’s tune, but the lines “Good morning, America, how are ya? Don’t you know me? I’m your native son/ I’m a train they call the City of New Orleans, I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done,” with the crowd singing along and adding whoops, were autobiographical as far as Willie was concerned. And without Willie covering his song, Townes would have likely died unrecognized and unappreciated.
“Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” and “On the Road Again” got the sing-along treatment from the audience too, but it was the gospel numbers—“Will the Circle Be Unbroken?,” “I’ll Fly Away,” and “I Saw the Light”—that roused them so much that the room felt like it was levitating. Agnostics may have outnumbered Christians in the crowd, but the man onstage holding his index finger high in the air for emphasis, preaching salvation through music, had them testifying, shouting, and raising beer cups and cellular telephones.
“Me and Paul” was a literal telling, with Paul watching Willie’s back like he’d done for more than forty years, moving the brushes over the snare and beaming every time the words made the audience cheer, especially the references to something illegal going on. The line “Nashville was the roughest” had become “Branson was the roughest” because it was. “Still Is Still Moving,” his signature piece of the 1990s, was followed by two newer originals, “I Ain’t Superman” and “You Don’t Think I’m Funny Anymore.” He was pure drama on his ballad “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” and pure rowdy on his own “I Gotta Get Drunk.” The audience spontaneously sang along and swayed without any prompting whatsoever to “Always on My Mind” and stayed with him on “Good Hearted Woman” as the spirit of Waylon filled the room.
He did “Georgia on a Fast Train” as a shout-out to Billy Joe Shaver and played some nasty guitar riffs as he grooved through Bob Wills’s “Milk Cow Blues.” Willie’s guitar was getting respect like it never had before for good reason. He wasn’t playing second to anyone anymore.
“There used to be Jackie King over there, and before that, Grady Martin over there,” Willie explained. “When it got to ‘Stardust,’ did I want to hear me play or did I want to hear Grady play? I’m enjoying playing, I’m enjoying getting to do Django stuff. Jody instinctively does it right, [invoking Merle] Travis, Chet [Atkins], bluegrass, or whatever that is in there, with an authentic sound. I’ve got a good rhythm section behind me and a good band and I can go for it,” he said.
The musicianship ranged from sloppy (the musicians looking at one another to find the beat) to precise (Billy English donning headphones to ring a bell on cue) to hillbilly (Bobbie’s piano) to urbane (Mickey’s lonely notes on his Hohner) to jazzy (Willie and Bobbie’s interplay on Django Reinhardt’s “Nuages”)—all clearly feeding off an audience that was giving back.
Budrock worked the lighting board upstairs like an extra instrument, making the lights sync with the music, calling up cues on a computer, chattering into his headset to hip the spotlight operators to what was coming up next, sliding knobs, and orchestrating the low-key visuals, gently leading the audience to focus on vocals and instrumental solos.
An hour and forty-five minutes into the set, Willie swung around and popped the question, “Anybody have any requests?” The band was clearly tuckered out, but Willie was feeling his oats, working the house. Jody leaned in to suggest “Why Do I Have to Choose,” a Willie original the band hadn’t performed in at least four years. They remembered it well enough to pull it off.
After positing a rhetorical “Y’all got time for a couple more?” Willie eventually returned to a verse of “Whiskey River” and the band’s instrumental outro.
On cue, David Anderson and L.G. materialized by the side of the stage to walk Willie off as soon as he finished blowing kisses, shaking hands, tossing out guitar picks, signing books, and basking in the adoration. They escorted him past the side of the stage, where folk singer Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, the daughter of late guitarist Sandy Bull, and several other FOWs were standing, down the alley, and onto the bus parked in front of the Fillmore. He signed fifteen posters advertising the concert that were laid out on a sofa of Honeysuckle Rose as Bobbie tossed onto another sofa a dozen roses that had been given to her. Five minutes later, the bus pulled away from the curb in a chilly rain, headed to the next town, while Lana Nelson started cooking eggs, hash browns, and toast for her father and aunt.
Outside on the crew bus, Jody Payne waxed philosophical, telling a visitor, “Music is the only thing that’s never changed. G has always been G. It never runs away, never runs off with your old lady, never gets drunk. Music is just music. I can’t imagine not hearing music. We’re sitting here talking in northern California, but in the background, there’s a doorbell, wind chimes—it’s music.”
Poodie and Bee toe-to-toe in the aisle argued good-naturedly about a piece of equipment. “They wanted four hundred dollars. I wouldn’t spend that on two whores!” Poodie groused. “Poodie, I believe you spent more than that on one whore,” corrected Bee.
S
OONER
or later, no matter where they’d been or where they were going, the road led back to Abbott. “It keeps calling me back,” Willie said. “You go back to where you feel good. It’s not really a big surprise to me that I can’t wait to get back there again and hang out or ride my bike or run or take off on some of those little roads.”
On the first Sunday morning of July in the year of our Lord 2006, just north of West and not too far from Bug Tussle, Honeysuckle Rose IV and four other buses found their way to the Abbott Methodist Church and surrounded the modest 107-year-old white clapboard church with its humble shake-shingled steeple like wagons around the campfire. The United Methodist congregation of the church that Bobbie Lee and Willie Hugh Nelson had grown up in had dwindled to the point where they had merged with the larger United Methodist congregation in Hillsboro. The small church building was put up for sale, with a likely fate of being torn down or moved to become a wedding chapel on the highway or a steakhouse in Dallas. Donald Reed, Willie’s classmate from the class of ’50, called him with a heads-up. The asking price for the prettiest building in all of Abbott was $72,000.
“See if they’ll take twenty-five hundred more than they’re asking,” Willie instructed Donald.
An old-fashioned Sunday-morning gospel singing celebrated the church’s rebirth. The chapel, which could seat a little more than one hundred worshippers, was packed. All two hundred folding chairs under tent awnings on the lawn outside the church were filled, its occupants cooling themselves with commemorative fans while watching two giant flat-screens showing what was going on inside. On the lawn by the tents, a Sunday community supper of fresh food along with free bottles of Willie Nelson Spring Water was being readied by members of the Texas Organic Farmers & Gardeners Association and the Austin Spice Company.
Inside, on the platform by the pulpit, was Sister Bobbie, with her long mane of honey blonde hair, seated behind the seven-foot Steinway B she played on the road, home again with her brother by her side, dressed in his Sunday best, with a dark suit jacket over a black oxford shirt, his hair pulled back in a ponytail down to the small of his back—as long as his sister’s—playing the prelude to “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” she on piano, he on guitar.
“What a glorious day,” preached Pastor Denise Rogers to open the service. “Let us pray.” With the congregation bowing their heads she read from chapter 43, verse 19 of the Book of Isaiah, focusing on the line “I am about to do a new thing, now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”
“That is why we’re here today,” the pastor said. “God is doing a new thing here today in Abbott, Texas. These words were written for a group that had been in exile, a larger number who had dwindled down to a few, a remnant that had faith in God.”
When it was Willie’s turn, he brought it all back home and witnessed like he rarely did when he was the star of the Willie Nelson Show. “Sister Bobbie and I have been going to this church ever since we were born,” he said to the gathering. “I don’t know what persuasion y’all were when you entered this door, but now you’re all members of the Abbott Methodist Church and will be, forever and ever. We’re starting a Department of Peace here in Abbott; we’ve got departments of war everywhere, so go forth and spread the peace.”
Holding a lyric sheet, he sang “Precious Memories” as Bobbie played piano and Leon Russell, tucked away in a corner, ever enigmatic with white hair, gray-and-black jacket, black Hawaiian shirt, and dark sunglasses, played chords on a small Yamaha. Willie didn’t need a lyric sheet to forcefully sing the next song with the opening line, “There’s a family Bible on the table, its pages worn and hard to read...”
Willie introduced a preacher friend from up near Dallas, Dave Rich, who told a story about Willie writing “It’s Not for Me to Understand” back in the mid-1960s. Upon hearing the demo Rich had recorded of the song, Willie jumped from behind a desk and started beating the floor, saying to Pete Drake, “I don’t care if I never get another song recorded, I’m satisfied now.” The song of acceptance and redemption became part of the
Yesterday’s Wine
song cycle.
He sang “What Happened to Peace on Earth?” solo, then was joined by Paul and Billy and Mickey and Bee for some up-tempo gospel with “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” and “I’ll Fly Away.”
Daughter Susie Nelson read the closing statement from the Abbott United Methodist Church congregation, affirming “the end of an era is the beginning of another” and that a church is not “a place or building, but the people of God.”
“That’s where we all are today. Thank you for coming out and visiting with us today,” Willie said, leading into “Amazing Grace,” accompanied by piano, harmonica, and the whir of locusts in full summer song and the low rumble of five buses idling, punctuated by an occasional warning whistle from a Katy freight train passing through.
The service was captured by television cameras and microphones for the RFD cable television channel, local stations in Dallas–Fort Worth and Waco, and for KHBR 1560, “Radio for Your Hometown,” the station where Willie Nelson first performed on the radio.
Outside town along Trlica Road, an expansive blue Texas sky laced with puffy clouds lorded over a landscape in full summer glory, with thickets of trees along property lines, clustered around houses, and in groves lining creek and river bottoms, wearing their richest greens. What little corn, wheat, and sorghum remained in the fields had dried up and withered, but tiny white cotton bolls were beginning to emerge on the cotton plants. Giant sunflowers dappled stretches of the rolling countryside with splotches of bright yellow.
