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entertaining u newspaper: your monthly guide to entertainment
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By Jon Bosworth
For a 74-year old outlaw country-fried hippie, Willie Nelson puts on a helluva show. That's not fair, that makes it seem like I graded it on a curve. As a 74-year old outlaw and country-fried hippie, Willie Nelson regularly puts on a better live show than any artist on the road. Sure, there are rock bands with more theatrics or a livelier tempo. Yes, there are country bands with more fanfare and taller cowboy hats. Hell, there are even blues guitarists that can bend and slur a twangier guitar, but Willie will still always be the best.
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He has this rare ability to write songs that are both timeless and immediately relevant. Every tune is dripping with heartfelt sincerity, and yet he has cranked them out consistently for more than forty years and across more than 100 albums. (I can’t even figure out how he had time to record any of these albums given his rigorous touring schedule.) And those only include the songs that he recorded himself, not the songs he wrote for other artists prior to getting on stage with his beat up old acoustic.
And no one plays like Willie. He makes every song sound exactly like that timeless moment when you first heard it piping hot out of a country jukebox. It’s not that a seasoned guitar pro would compare him to Stevie Ray Vaughn (whose short flame Willie’s hometown of Austin seems to celebrate more than his) or that he shreds like Hendrix, but when Willie plinks and slides across the neck of that old guitar, you have never heard another person play like that. It has all of the definition of an acoustic, without sounding too pretty and quaint. It has all of the power and punch of an electric guitar, without getting lost in the volume. I can see why he has stuck with that guitar for so long. The road-weary thing still bleeds when he squeezes it through those songs of love lost.
I’ve seen Willie play in Jacksonville five times, but this was the first I can remember that he brought an opening act. When I was up the street at Burrito Gallery getting into my own Whiskey River, getting ready for Willie’s show (I was glad for the extra hour), it never dawned on me to wonder who this mysterious 40 Points band was.
We walked over to the Florida Theatre, which is an even greener mode of transportation than the Willie’s biodiesel bus, the Honeysuckle Rose IV. Between the Honeysuckle and the other tour busses for their caravan, there was a wall of vehicles blocking the street and barricading the people from the theatre. Or so it seemed.
Eventually we made it in and Willie kicked the set right off with ‘Whiskey River.’ The amazing thing about Willie’s canon is that every song he plays is a classic you’ve known for your whole life (especially if you grew up in the south), and most of them he wrote. Even the ones you think he didn’t (‘Momma’s Don’t Let Your Baby’s Grow up to Be Cowboys’ and ‘Crazy’). Willie rocked his standards for the first half of his set to a mostly seated audience (the Florida Theatre bouncers were in unusually rare form for a crowd of fairly docile over-30s) but as the set progressed, Willie had people standing, dancing in aisles, and doing the traditional hat trades. Willie must have thrown a new bandana to the audience every other song in the second half of his set.
Although I missed 40 Points’ set, most of the band came up to join Willie for at least one song. Lukas and Micah Nelson, two of Willie’s sons, are the guitarist and drummer for 40 Points. Although it was hard to determine Micah’s abilities after Willie’s legendary drummer Paul English, Lukas stood right out front and traded licks with his old man through most of the set. Although Lukas could certainly hold his own, his would be a hard road without Daddy’s help.
So just as we thought the show must be winding to an end. (What 70+ could possibly play more than the two hours he had already played?) Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeski joined them on stage and the suddenly it was Jacksonville’s own little Farm Aid up there for another hour. The four guitarists traded solos and Susan showed all the boys that she can hold her own on the blues.
Saying that it was a great show does a Willie Nelson set no justice. All I can say is, whether you like country or not, regardless of if you prefer rock to blues or folk to rock or whatever, no one leaves a Willie show disappointed. When he comes back, and we all hope he lives long enough to come back many times, make it a point to see this living legend.
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