One By Willie

Introducing the latest podcast from Texas Monthly, "Viva Tejano.” Latin music is ascending in the U.S., and, in some surprising ways, much of the story behind the trend begins in Texas. On Viva Tejano, host J.B. Sauceda talks with legendary tejano artists and well-known tejano music fans about how the music has shaped their lives. It's a nostalgic journey and a close look at the influences behind many of today's biggest acts in música Mexicana. Audio subscribers to Texas Monthly can listen to episodes one week early, and get access to exclusive bonus material. Visit texasmonthly.com/audio to learn more.

This week, one of America's greatest living poets, singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams, celebrates the easy beauty of one of Willie's most cherished songs, “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground.” From there she'll get into how inspiring it was to first see Willie do his thing when she moved to Austin in 1974; how weird it was, when she moved back to Austin in the 80s, to live in a run-down apartment complex-cum-artist's colony that Willie owned on South Congress—sharing it with the old boyfriend, Clyde Woodward, she would immortalize in her song, “Lake Charles”—and what an absolute honor it was, twenty years later, to cut a duet with Willie on another of her songs, “Overtime.”

This week, Willie's first-born, daughter Lana Nelson, talks about one of the songs her dad used to sing to her at bedtime, “Red Headed Stranger,” calling his breakthrough 1975 recording of it one of the first times an album of his sounded the way he did at home. From there she'll walk us through some wonderful family history...like dodging rent-hungry landlords during the lean years, her dad's hog farm/commune outside Nashville through the RCA years, and the session with Merle Haggard that produced “Pancho and Lefty.”

This week, one of the brightest stars of the Texas Country/Red Dirt scene, singer-songwriter Wade Bowen, examines “Me and Paul,” Willie's 1971 chronicle of the road-warrior life he was sharing with his erstwhile partner in crime, drummer Paul English. It's a perfect song for Wade to get into, partly because, as he rightly points out, Willie was a progenitor of the circuit where he makes his living now, but also because of the setting for our visit: Wade zoomed in from his tour bus, which was broken down somewhere in Iowa on his way to a gig.

This week, six-time Grammy-winning producer, songwriter, and virtuoso guitarist John Leventhal—see Shawn Colvin's A Few Small Repairs; his wife, Rosanne Cash's The River and the Thread—discusses the song that first hipped him to the genius of Willie, 1975's “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” He describes it with a producer's ultimate praise, calling it a record that seems to exist outside of any era, before getting into his session work with the Hall of Fame band that backed Willie on 1993's Across the Borderline, plus the reasons he thinks of Willie as a cross between legendary Nashville guitarist Grady Martin and Pablo Picasso...and his late father-in-law, Johnny Cash, as a cross between Elvis and Abe Lincoln.

This week, one of Willie's longtime tour mates, Grammy-winning blues singer and guitarist Susan Tedeschi, talks about a deep cut off his 1998 album with Daniel Lanois, Teatro, “Somebody Pick Up My Pieces.” It's a song she and her husband, slide-guitar hero Derek Trucks, play almost nightly with their group, the Tedeschi Trucks Band, and it gets her thinking aloud on a foundational principle of Willie World: The absolute importance of making music with people you love—with meaty cameo appearances by the Allman Brothers Band, Jessica Simpson, The Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and Emmylou Harris...who Susan calls a “Jedi.”

Singer-songwriter Bruce Robison is famous for writing highly intelligent, richly detailed country songs—that happen also to be incredibly sad. (See “Angry All the Time,” by Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, and “Travelin' Soldier,” by the Chicks.) This week, he focuses on a track that first taught him how emotionally sophisticated country music can be, “Walkin,'” off Willie's 1974 masterpiece, Phases and Stages...before describing his own Willie tribute song, “What Would Willie Do,” and the weird reception Willie got in Bruce's hometown, rural Bandera, Texas, when he moved his band and family there after fleeing Nashville in 1971. (Hint: The hippies and rednecks didn't start getting along until Willie got to Austin a year later.)

This week, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright talks about a Willie hit of recent vintage, 2011's “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die.” That may seem an odd focus song for Larry, a New Yorker staff-writer known for tackling topics like Scientology and the rise of radical Islam, but he's also a native Texan who's written whole books on the Texas myth. In that vein, he's got deep, personal thoughts on how Willie's most truly subversive move was to wear his hair—in the 70s in Texas!—in long, braided pigtails; the existential quality of watching him and Trigger grow old together; and the weirdly difficult role Larry played in getting a Willie statue erected in downtown Austin.

Booker T. Jones is one of the true geniuses of American music, a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer as a keyboardist, composer, and bandleader (see “Green Onions,” “Soul Man,” “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay,” etc.), but also as a producer, which is the role he played in the creation of Willie's 1978 masterpiece, Stardust. It was a highly improbable pairing and production, and on this OBW episode, Booker explains all of it—how he met Willie, how they picked the songs, how they ended up recording in Emmylou Harris's living room—with a focus on the Hoagy Carmichael classic, “Georgia on My Mind.”

In addition to being one the few artists to earn an EGOT—i.e. win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony—Whoopi Goldberg also happens to be a big-time music nerd and monster Willie fan. On this episode she talks about his 1978 recording of “Stardust,” calling it “a love song to a love song” that, when Willie sings it, makes her feel like she's floating barefoot in the clouds with her late mom and brother. From there she'll describe growing up a musical omnivore in NYC (see Waylon and Willie...but also Anthony Newley, Glen Campbell, and the Four Tops), the origins of country music, and the night she shared a stage with Willie, Leon Russell, and Ray Charles.

This week, Nick Offerman—noted actor, humorist, author, woodworker, canoe paddler, and agrarian philosopher—talks about Willie's 1968 song, “Buddy.” It's likely an obscure title even to real-deal Willie nerds, but not to devoted fans of Nick's old show “Parks and Recreation,” who should recall it as Ron Swanson's favorite song. Nick's going to explain why “Buddy” was chosen for a key moment in what he calls the show's most important episode, and then he'll describe the magic of his first Willie concert, the vital work of Farm Aid, and why he considers Willie Nelson one of the greatest Americans who ever lived.

This week, Nashville super-producer Dave Cobb, whose work with some of the true artists in modern country music—Sturgill Simpson, Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlisle, Jason Isbell—has earned him nine Grammys, talks about “Time of the Preacher.” It's the overture/aria to Willie's classic Red Headed Stranger, an album that Dave calls a beautiful, barren landscape, and it gets him thinking about Pink Floyd, the real definition of “outlaw,” and the most important instrument an artist can take into the studio: A belief in themselves.

On October 16, 1992, just two weeks after famously ripping up a photo of the pope on SNL, Sinead O'Connor was booed off the stage at a Bob Dylan tribute at Madison Square Garden. Willie Nelson was also on the bill that night, and after watching that happen, he invited her to join him in the studio the next day. In this clip from OBW S2E2, producer Don Was gives the story behind the duet they recorded, a cover of Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush's “Don't Give Up.”

This week, Americana singer-songwriter Waylon Payne talks about Willie's 1970 cover of Joni Mitchell's iconic “Both Sides Now.” Waylon, an NPR-darling as an artist now, grew up in Willie World; his mom, Sammi Smith—of “Help Me Make It Through the Night” fame—played package shows with Willie in the ‘70s; and his dad, Jody Payne, was Willie's lead guitarist for almost forty years. Waylon walks us through all that, describing the way Willie songs were his lullabies as a kid, the incredibly difficult personal trials when he says Willie saved his life, and the time Willie paid his songwriting the highest praise possible. Note: the compliment wasn't remotely suitable for small ears.

This week, Foo Fighters lead guitarist and Shred with Shifty podcast host Chris Shiflett discusses one of the original outlaw anthems, Willie and Waylon's 1976 version of “Good Hearted Woman,” exploring the evolution of the movement and the creation myth behind the song's recording, before grabbing a guitar and demonstrating what makes Willie an absolute one-of-a-kind guitar player.

This week, 8-time Grammy-winner Ray Benson—one of Willie's best friends since moving his Western Swing band, Asleep at the Wheel, to Austin back in 1973...at Willie's urging, no less!—talks about a song Willie and the Wheel cut back in 1999, the Bob Wills classic, “Going Away Party.” Wills was, of course, a hero to both Willie and Ray, as was the song's composer, the great Cindy Walker, who Ray calls one of the single greatest influences on Willie's own songwriting. From there he'll describe fifty years of friendship and collaboration with Willie, with cameos by George Gershwin, Floyd Tillman, and Robert Duvall.

This week, singer-songwriter and virtuoso fiddle player Amanda Shires talks about the title song to her new album of duets with Willie's sister, pianist Bobbie Nelson, “Loving You.” It's the only song Sister Bobbie ever wrote, a solo piano instrumental with a melody that Amanda says is all about love, faith, and family. She also talks about how Bobbie was one of her heroes long before they became friends and made this record, a role model as a trailblazing female in a male-dominated industry, as a musician more generally, as a mom...and just as a person.

This week, we ring in Father's Day with Willie's youngest son, singer-songwriter and visual artist Micah Nelson, who talks about “Still Is Still Moving to Me.” It was the closing track on his dad's landmark 1993 album Across the Borderline, a high-octane, guitar-heavy anthem that kicked off the Living Legend phase of Willie's career. Micah describes how much fun it is to play every night as part of the Family Band, before describing the drive to create he inherited from his dad, one of his dad's favorite Roger Miller stories, and the magic of discovering old Willie records that others have forgotten.

Dr. Brené Brown is a researcher, storyteller, and best-selling author known for her work on vulnerability, shame, and empathy—though many of her fans just call her “an inspiration.” On this week's OBW, she talks about Willie's 1976 cover of “Amazing Grace” and the way her life was completely transformed the first time she heard it...before we move into the song's history; her lifelong love of Willie; the concepts of faith, grace, and acceptance, more generally; and the most powerful performance of “Amazing Grace” she's ever heard.

This week, one of the greatest, most innovative record producers in history, Daniel Lanois—think U2's The Joshua Tree, Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind, Peter Gabriel's So—talks about the landmark album he made with Willie, 1998's Teatro. He'll start with a deep cut, “I've Loved You All Over the World,” but then, being Lanois, he'll start to float...to Cuban dance clubs, Texas honkytonks, and Mexican movie houses...to art that exists only in shadows...and to the way U2 tries to summon Willie when they write songs.

This week, legendary singer-songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard—one of Willie's oldest running buddies and a founding father of Americana music—talks about the signature song that opens every Willie show, “Whiskey River.” It might as well be the national anthem of Texas, but for Ray it prompts some highly personal, absolutely hilarious memories of times he's heard Willie play it, before sending him deep into that time he was kidnapped by Willie's road crew, the reasons drummer Paul English was NOT a fan of the Eagles...and Willie's smile.

This week, we ring in Willie's monumental 90th birthday with his son, acclaimed singer-songwriter Lukas Nelson, who discusses “I Never Cared for You.” It's a favorite deep-cut of true Willie lovers, a song he's recorded repeatedly through the years; the original, 1964 single was the record that first made Leon Russell a Willie fan. But Lukas focuses on the 1998 version off Teatro because he was nine years old and in the studio when it was recorded, a memory that prompts thoughts on Emmylou Harris's harmonies, cave paintings, and covering Pearl Jam with his dad.

This week, we wrap up the special Live from Luck! mini-season of OBW with California-based singer-songwriter Natalie Mering—known to fans by her stage name, Weyes Blood—who will discuss another standard off of Stardust, Kurt Weill's 1938 composition, “September Song.” It's a classic that Natalie discovered the same way Willie did, through a Frank Sinatra record, and it prompts crystal clear memories of the night she first heard Willie's version and the way her appreciation of the song changed there and then. From there we get into the unlikely backstory of how Willie recorded it, with digressions on Lindsey Buckingham, Elvis, and Greek yogurt.

This week, in the third installment of OBW's special, Live from Luck! mini-season, Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Steve Gunn discusses the penultimate track on Red Headed Stranger, “Hands on the Wheel.” It's the song with which Willie wraps up the RHS narrative, when his roaming, vengeful preacher finally finds love and a home. And Steve, who first made his name as a virtuoso guitarist, focuses on the way Willie used subtle guitar-picking to bring the story to a ruminative, peaceful end...before getting into where he hears Django Reinhardt's influence on Willie's playing and why Trigger sounds like no other guitar in the world.

This week, in the second installment of OBW's special, Live from Luck! mini-season, hardcore honky-tonker Charley Crockett talks about Willie's little-known 1961 recording of “Face of a Fighter.” It's another old Pamper demo, a barroom weeper Willie never did get around to cutting for a proper album, but one that, in Charley's opinion, is so strong that if just about any other country artist had come up with it, it'd be the best song they ever wrote. From there he'll get into the Willie songs he listened to as a homeless busker playing subway platforms in New York City, and the night a Willie song almost—not quite, but almost—kept him from going to jail.

This week, the podcast kicks off a special, Live from Luck! mini-season of OBW, four interviews conducted this March at Willie's central Texas ranch with artists performing later that day at his annual Luck Reunion. Up first is three-time Grammy nominee Allison Russell, who discusses Willie's landmark 1978 recording of Hoagy Carmichael's “Stardust.” It's one of the most covered titles in the Great American Songbook, and Allison explains why she thinks Willie's version is definitive... before explaining how his vocals make her think of Billie Holiday and why she played the Stardust album nonstop for her newborn daughter.

This week, Willie's longtime producer and songwriting partner Buddy Cannon talks about one of the most iconic Willie songs of recent vintage, 2017's “Something You Get Through.” The song was a cornerstone of Willie's so-called Mortality Trilogy—a series of albums that found him in Aging Wise Man mode and passing along some hard-learned life lessons. Buddy will describe the poignant moment on Willie's bus that provided the song's inspiration and the unique, distinctly 21st Century method they use to write and record together...and then get into his own evolution from hardcore Willie fan in the sixties to invaluable collaborator and friend through the 2000's.

This week, four-time Oscar nominee Ethan Hawke—who in addition to being an acclaimed actor, writer, and director happens also to be a hardcore Willie nerd—discusses “Too Sick to Pray,” a meditative hymn from Willie's beautiful, pin-drop quiet 1996 album, Spirit. Ethan says the song and album were touchstones for him when he first became a father in the late 90s, before going on to describe the way Willie's music connected him with his own dad as a kid, peppering his memories with digressions on Bob Dylan, Henri Matisse, Johnny Cash, Dead Poets Society...and earlobes. Oh and he also explains why he thinks a Willie Nelson biopic has to be set in the here and now.

This week, singer-songwriter Norah Jones—a nine-time Grammy-winner and go-to Willie duet partner—talks about “Permanently Lonely.” It's one of those songs Willie has recorded repeatedly, but she focuses on his early-sixties demo, sitting at her piano to illustrate the jazzy intricacies of the song's melody, and marveling at what she calls the beautifully harsh poetry in its lyrics. She'll also describe the way she leaned on Willie's music when she left Texas for New York City, the first time she ever sang with him, and the truly wonderful way she came to appear on our podcast. And a hint on that last thought: Like most great Willie stories, it's all about family.

This week, legendary Muscle Shoals bass player David Hood talks about recording Willie's classic 1974 album Phases and Stages with his fellow Swampers, focusing on his favorite track on the record, “(How Will I Know) I'm Falling in Love Again.” Phases was, of course, named Willie's finest album ever by Texas Monthly, and it prompts memories from Hood on the fabled R&B producer who brought the project to Muscle Shoals, Jerry Wexler; the mere two days they took to cut it; and the weird moment when Willie first walked into the studio.

This week, Americana singer-songwriter Nathaniel Rateliff talks about the cut that closes Willie's 1973 album Shotgun Willie, “A Song for You.” It was arguably Willie's first iconic cover song, written by one of his closest friends and most important collaborators, Tulsa legend Leon Russell, and it prompts Nathaniel to think aloud about the biker funeral where he first heard it; the crazy, early-70s days when Leon and Willie first hooked up...and the great lesson Nathaniel learned from Willie on creating a space—and a life—that brings friends together to make music.

This week, Willie's longtime harmonica player, Mickey Raphael, talks about a song Willie cut not long before leaving Nashville for good in 1972, the aptly titled “The Words Don't Fit the Picture.” Mickey was just a sideman on the Dallas folkie scene when he first heard it, and it's the song that made him want to play with Willie. He talks about that experience, plus what his fifty-plus years with Willie have been like, from joining the band to shows they played until dawn, mysterious stowaways who spent days on the bus, he and Willie's onstage telepathy...and how their half-century of friendship changed his life.

This week, Vince Gill—a 21-time Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, guitarist, and honkytonk historian—talks about “Healing Hands of Time.” It's a song Willie's cut several times, but Vince focuses on the version from 1976's The Sound in Your Mind, before getting into the power of an irresistible first line in a lyric, the seminal role in country music history played by Willie and his old friend Ray Price, and why writing a song that helps people through a hard time—like “Healing Hands” and Vince's own “Go Rest High on that Mountain”—matters so much more than having a #1 hit.

This week, we ring in Willie's 89th birthday with his daughter Paula Nelson, who talks about “Devil in a Sleepin' Bag,” off of his 1973 album Shotgun Willie. It's a song Willie wrote about his longtime drummer and best friend, Paul English—who happens to be Paula's namesake—and it gets her thinking about Paul's dual role as Willie's well-armed money-collector, a gunfight her dad was in, and hanging with Michael Jackson at the “We Are the World” recording session—before closing with some sweet memories of her dad's older sister, pianist Bobbie Nelson.

Singer-songwriter-superstar Kacey Musgraves goes deep into Willie's back catalog to discuss “Are You Sure.” It was one of the first demos he cut when he moved to Nashville—though it's probably best-known by the duet Kacey and Willie recorded for her Grammy-nominated 2015 album Pageant Material—and it prompts her to talk about what she calls “real-ass country songs,” the lucky joint Willie gave her, and singing “Rainbow Connection” with himat the 2019 CMA awards. Oh and she also does the best Owen Wilson impression you will hear all year. Be sure to visit our One By Willie playlist at Apple Music!

Season 3 launches on April 20th with Kacey Musgraves, Vince Gill, Nathaniel Rateliff, Jimmy Webb, and many others.

The original Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders squad burst onto the field back in 1972—the same year Title IX passed, the same year Deep Throat came out, and a year before Roe v. Wade. Sarah Hepola digs into the untold stories behind the global pop culture phenomenon, from the stripper who allegedly inspired the squad's creation, to a scandalous Playboy cover shoot that was partly a battle over fair wages, to the ongoing debate about sexuality and women's bodies in a post-#MeToo world. The result is a vibrant mix of history, cultural criticism, and storytelling, featuring interviews with New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino, award-winning novelist Ben Fountain, Oscar-nominated director Dana Adam Shapiro, local television sports legend Dale Hansen, folk-writing hero Joe Nick Patoski, and a whole bunch of cheerleaders whose names you don't know yet—but should.

There's something different about Texas. But how do you define it without resorting to cliches about cowboys and oilmen? At Texas Monthly, we think the answer is through stories — stories like the ones we've been telling for almost 50 years. On State of Mind, you'll hear those stories from our talented writers and from a wide array of other Texans. Each of them is a window into the experience of life here. Join us each week for a new story about life in the Lone Star State, from the Texas Monthly team behind “Boomtown,” “One by Willie,” and “Tom Brown's Body.”

This week, we celebrate Willie’s 88th birthday with singer-songwriter Sheryl Crow, who discusses what may be the single best-known song that Willie ever wrote, “Crazy.” She’ll walk us through what it means to compose a pop standard, explaining the differences she hears in Patsy Cline’s original, 1961 version and the one that Willie still does nightly, but she’ll also describe what it does to her heart when she hears her 10-year-old son singing “Crazy” in the kitchen. And then she’ll get into her long friendship with Willie…and that time he tried to pass a backstage joint to her dad.

Even though singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell had already been a diehard Willie fan for 10 years when Phases and Stages came out in 1974, he says he was positively gobsmacked by the album’s lead single, “Bloody Mary Morning.” On this episode he dives deep into all that, then goes on to describe his first recording session with Willie a few years later...including the red Camaro he saw doing donuts outside the studio when he got there. And you will not guess who was driving.

Singer-songwriter Robert Earl Keen first heard “Mr. Record Man” as a pre-teen Houston kid who’d just raided his older brother’s record collection. It’s another deep cut off Willie’s 1962 debut album, and it makes Keen think of a dance floor mishap at his first Willie show, the time his car caught fire in the parking lot at Willie’s 4th of July Picnic, and that uncanny Everyman quality that is such a big part of Willie’s appeal. Songs from this and other episodes from One By Willie are featured on our Apple Music playlist: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/one-by-willie-a-texas-monthly-podcast/pl.u-b3b8VdgFKWje4Wv