Each week, music writer John Spong talks to one notable Willie Nelson fan about one Willie song that they love, leading to highly personal looks at the life, ar...
Before he received wide acclaim as Bob Dylan’s lead guitarist in the early 2000s, Charlie Sexton was a fixture of the Austin music scene going back almost as far as Willie himself, having first performed publicly in 1978, as a self-taught, nine-year-old, guitar prodigy invited onstage at the famous Continental Club. This week, Charlie the producer/bandleader/singer-songwriter nerds all the way out on one of Willie’s extra-obscure, early-60’s Pamper Demos, “I Let My Mind Wander,” a recording he considers a perfect example of real-deal, steel-driven, jukebox country music. But then, because we were recording our conversation in one of Willie’s old haunts, Arlyn Studios, he gets into his own experiences as a precocious preteen dragging his guitar through Willie World, before giving a little insight into how much his old boss, Bob Dylan, loves Willie Nelson.
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47:42
John Mellencamp on "Funny How Time Slips Away"
John Mellencamp, one of Willie’s fellow Rock and Roll Hall of Fame members and a Farm Aid co-founder, has been a fan since first hearing “Funny How Time Slips Away” as a pre-teen in Seymour, Indiana. That song was one of Willie’s first contributions to the American Songbook, a reliable hit for other artists for nearly 15 years before Willie finally became a star, and it gets Mellencamp musing on parallels between early Willie and Bob Dylan—and how he later followed Willie’s lead in his own bitter battles with record industry overlords. From there we get into the unlikely origin of Farm Aid, the ongoing fight for the American farmer, and why Mellencamp thinks Willie deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
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36:16
Paul Begala on "Heartland"
CNN political analyst Paul Begala, a former White House chief strategist for Bill Clinton and lifelong Willie nerd, talks about “Heartland, a song Willie co-wrote and recorded with Bob Dylan for his 1993 masterpiece, Across the Borderline. “Heartland” was inspired by the American farm crisis of the mid-eighties, a tragedy Begala saw first-hand as a young speechwriter working his first presidential campaign in 1987, and one that he still has a hard time discussing. But it’s in those memories—and a gracious turn Willie did for his mom—that Begala settled on what he considers the singer’s true gift, empathy. With cameo appearances by Nelson Mandela, Elie Weisel, and Parliament-Funkadelic.
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36:32
Billy Strings on "Stay a Little Longer"
One of the most mind-blowing guitarists on earth, Billy Strings, talks about an all-time great Willie and Trigger workout, “Stay a Little Longer,” off the 1978 double-album Willie and Family Live. The song’s an old Bob Wills standard that Willie updated, made his own, and plays here at a careening, 90-mph pace that Billy says blazes like bluegrass—before adding that he hears in it a hallmark of Willie’s picking: integrity in every note. From there he describes a magical day cutting “California Sober” at Pedernales with Willie, the high price of playing poker with him afterward, and what it was like to carry Jody Payne’s old Martin guitar onstage at Willie’s 90th birthday shows.
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33:52
Miranda Lambert on “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys”
The reigning queen of country music, Miranda Lambert, talks about one of the all-time great Outlaw anthems, Willie and Waylon’s Grammy-winning, #1 hit from 1978, “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow up to Be Cowboys.” It’s a song Miranda can’t remember ever not knowing, one she suspects she first heard her dad played on the front porch, before she could even walk. The memory of those family get-togethers gets her thinking about the vital role pickin’ parties have played not just in her own life, but in country music history, the first song that ever made her cry, and the debt that every country artist owes to her hero, Willie Nelson.
Each week, music writer John Spong talks to one notable Willie Nelson fan about one Willie song that they love, leading to highly personal looks at the life, art, and legend of a genuine American folk hero. Listen here.
USA