Today’s newsletter is about the American hero, legend, and recent birthday boy, Willie Nelson. At the end of this month, he is set to release his 75th album, an enormous achievement in itself. He secured his ‘all-timer’ status as a songwriter at a relatively young age, but he continued evolving, becoming one of the best interpreters of other people’s songs as well, and he has kept up a near relentless pace of recording and touring into his 90s. He could have rightfully retired decades ago, his legacy secured, but he’s kept going. He still can’t wait to get on the road again.
Even I can’t claim to have heard all 75 of his albums, but these are my favorites: Yesterday’s Wine (1971), Phases and Stage (1974), Who Will Buy My Memories? The IRS Tapes (1991) and Spirit (1996). These are albums I always go back to. His voice is always comforting and familiar. Hearing a new song by him always feels like one you’ve heard a hundred times before.
One thing that is nice about Willie, is that while he has recorded a lot of albums, he also sold a lot of them. This means that his records are easy to find in the used bins of any record store. I’ve collected a bunch of them that way. Some of them for a dollar or two. Because of this some are fairly beat up. When there’s a scratch on the record sometimes, it can sometimes repeat the same line of the lyrics over and over. In a little time loop with Willie. I can get lost in songs that way. On December, from Yesterday’s Wine:
“I remember a spring
such a tender thing
tender theen
tender theen”
You have to bump the record player, and make the little needle jump a bit. Then the world starts spinning again.
Willie was raised by his grandparents, and given his first guitar by his grandfather. He played music with his sister Bobbie for decades, and performs with his children now. Music and family have always been linked for him, and that’s true for me, as well, as a listener.
My maternal Grandfather, like Willie Nelson, was born in a small town in Texas. He also got out and moved around the country, before settling in California. He was in the Navy during WWII, then worked as an ironworker. He loved country music, especially Willie Nelson. He played guitar, at least at home by himself.
Unfortunately, what I know about him is all second hand information. He died of lung cancer when I was one year old. Sometimes I can feel that as an absence, thinking about what I missed out. I wish he made it 91, like Willie. I wish I had his guitar, I wish I got to listen to music with him.
My relationship to Willie Nelson’s music began at the same time my relationship to seeing live music. I was six years old, and he was my first concert.1 Way back in 1992, my family went to Missouri to visit my Grandma on my Dad’s side of this family. This was also my first time on an airplane. While we there, we drove to Branson Missouri, or as Homer Simpson referred to it, “Las Vegas if it were run by Ned Flanders.” Willie Nelson had a residency there that year, something he had agreed to do it in part to pay off his debts to the IRS, and he was so miserable not being on the road that he pitched a tent inside his hotel room and pretended he was camping.2
My memory is a little blurry, but I remember that the concert was in the afternoon, and it was hot. The kind of sweltering, soup-y heat I wasn’t used to as a California. The theater was cool and dark, you could feel air conditioning on your face as you open the door (very much like in Las Vegas). The lobby of theater reminded me of a movie theater, but there were more seats than the movie theater, and they kept descending downwards, towards the stage which was sunken in the middle of the theater.
What I knew about concerts until that point had came from television. I envisioned rock stars and pyrotechnics, a football stadium full of cheering fans. Even the country music of this era was all about spectacle - Garth Brooks flying around like Peter Pan. This concert, though, was completely different. Just five musicians playing music. No elaborate stage set up, no smashing guitars. The band was loose, between songs they’d talk to each other and the audience. They didn’t seem to be following a setlist. It was less of a “performance”, and more of letting the audience in to a rehearsal. Letting the audience into their intimate little world of playing songs together. That part stayed with me, and has been my ideal type of performance as a concert-goer ever since.
What I remember most from the concert, though, is my mom’s tears. This was when I first witnessed the emotional impact music can have. I remember that I loved music even before that, but I hadn’t made that connection yet - how music can conjure memories.
My grandfather died 5 years before that concert. My grandmother had preceded him in passing, and he lived alone the last years of his life, but he still had his record collection. He still had Always on My Mind, Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain, and he had Angel Flying too Close to the Ground. I’m sure Willie played at least one of these that afternoon in Branson, and for my mom, the memories came flooding back.
Recent studies of trauma and grief have found that it can be passed down through generations, through a process called epigenetics, meaning the DNA itself it’s not altered but the way certain genes are expressed.3 Like a scratch on a record.
At the end of the concert, we walked out of theater and back into the Missouri sun. My mom said she was okay. She wiped her eyes and said she was going to be okay. Just like that, the record started spinning, and we were on the road again.
I can’t confirm this to be technically 100% true, but it’s at least the first time I remember seeing live music.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/may/16/willie-nelson-ive-bought-a-lot-of-pot-and-now-im-selling-some-back
As scientist, I must say this a drastic oversimplification, but thank you for the indulgence.