Talking Old Trees, Squeezed Juice & Willie Nelson: Thoughts on Willie’s London Gig from June 11th, 2010
If you chop down an old tree at it’s base and have a good look at the stump, you should see many rings on it. The more rings a tree has, the older, the stronger and sturdy the tree is/was. Some trees live for hundreds of years; the strongest living for centuries. These trees weather storms. These trees comfort those who sit in it’s shade. These trees are landmarks or touchstones that communities rally ’round. These tree’s roots run deep…very deep.
Willie Nelson…is one of these trees.
Them old trees and Willie Nelson…they are a lot alike. Willie must have many rings on his innards. Not that we want to go chopping Willie in two pieces, but you can imagine that all the miles he’s logged and roads he’s traveled have left impressive marks. Willie’s latest road he’s a travelin’ came through London the other night.
Grown men don’t cry…unless they go to a Willie Nelson concert. I saw Willie Nelson at the Hammersmith a few nights ago and for the first dozen songs he and his Family Band played, I fought back tears. I see a lot of shows, but I was not prepared for the impact Willie would have on me.
I know the man’s work and I understand his deep contribution to music…not just country music. What I didn’t know, or expect, was effect that the combined weight of the two has when you see and hear him in the live setting. If you read this blog and know me, you’ll know that when music matters most to me, I tend to dig deeper than surface level. So…take this post with a grain of salt because, I’m about to go half-way to China.
Way, way back when (late 1,800′s/early1900′s)…a musician played his songs in one spot; the piano was the instrument of the day. When the musician got the urge to roam, carrying a piano from town to town was not an option; hence, the emergence of the guitar. The guitar was portable…easy to carry and carry a tune with. (One of my fave authors, Peter Gurlanick, calls this urge, “the lure of going around“. I just got the chicken-skin…)
Have guitar, will travel.
Songwriters don’t write for themselves, they write to share. To share, you must take your songs to the people. The image is indelible: he is walking down an old dirt road, guitar slung across his back. He strides into town and finds a busy, hectic street corner. He takes of his hat and lays it at his feet and he begins to play. He plays his songs for the people. He looks for their reaction; he feeds off of it. People clap, drop a few coins in appreciation and they move along. So does the musician. He moves along…this is the life of the traveling singer-song writer. Few, if any, have done it better than Willie Nelson.
Last Friday, Willie played out this image for a sold-out London crowd. Seventy-six years old and he is still walking that road and playing his songs…and, oh MAN, does he have songs.
That is what really hit me. Willie has not just written songs, he’s written SONGS. Many of his songs run the gambit of genre, experience and time(lessness). Maybe Willie’s songs are his “tree rings”? Maybe his songs are what makes him so accountable and lasting? Either way, his songs are what blew me away the other night.
Thirty-one songs in ninety minutes. Eeeeeh, doogeee! That is insane. I guess the old quality / quantity argument rears it’s head here. Fair enough. Yes, he did blaze through most of them. Yes, I would have liked a few of them stretched out a bit more in places. What I can’t argue with was the chance to hear all of these classics. The mind’s eye…or in this case, ear…does not have perfect recall. I (we) tend to remember snippets of what we see and hear, wrap that up in the emotions we felt and then call that our “memory”. So whether I heard three or thirty-one songs, I wasn’t going to remember every bit and nuance of what I heard.
The 31 song set Willie played was like one big ninety-minute medley; which is just how I remember it. Chunks of this medley I remember better than others. The three song mini-medley of “Crazy>Time>Nightlife” had me shielding my face which was revealing that I was getting seriously choked up. These are three tall and towering songs in music. They have been and will be covered by many artists. Willie wrote them. When I heard Willie play them, it knocked me back.
There was Willie, 76 years old and still playing these songs for the people. We have all heard them by many an artists…but this was Willie singing them. He may have played shorten versions of them, but he didn’t mail them in. In my view, he consolidated them down their pulp. He squeezed their juice and we still got a full glass. To hear these three played back-to-back-to-back was a treat.
What else was a treat was Willie’s fine form. He was the only performer with a guitar and the only performer to give voice all night. No back-up singers to handle notes he can’t reach and no second guitar player standing in the shadows playing fills and leads that Willie’s fingers can’t pick. Nope…Willie pulled his own weight. At seventy-six, you can’t expect a performer to give it like he did when he was twenty-six. Did Willie? I don’t know, but what I do know is that he showed us that he is still the fucking boss.
His guitar picking is so damn clean. It is a big stew of equal parts BB King, Django Reinhardt, Chuck Berry (think, stops & starts) and Bob Wills. It is what he doesn’t play that makes what he does play, resonate. You would also expect his vocals to be strained from age, wear and tear and his longstanding membership in the 4:20 club. At times they may have been, but most all of the night his voice was strong and clear and hit bone in all the right places.
All up, at the end of the show…I was a happy Willie fan. I was even happier as a music fan. I have been asking myself, “who has taken it farther and cut deeper, wider swath than Willie…in American music or music in general?”. I’m not sure of the answer. Can you tell me someone else who has? There are many examples of moments in time where history freezes high-water marks (Hank Williams, Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, etc.), but who has walked this road as long, and as well, as Willie has?
As soon as I walked out of the theatre and reflected on what I just experienced, I thought of those trees and their rings. Those trees are symbols of survival, examples of the extreme and powerful portrayals of persistence. Just like Willie.
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Here is the set list from the show. Yeah…31 songs in a blaze of glory: one big Willie medley. My highlights are in bold.
- Whiskey River
- Still Is Still Moving To Me
- Beer For My Horses
- Shoeshine Man
- Funny How Time Slips Away
- Crazy
- Nightlife
- Me And Paul
- If You’ve Got The Money I’ve Got The Time
- Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain
- Mama Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys
- Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground (this one had the water-works starting, too)
- On The Road Again
- Always On My Mind
- Man With The Blues
- Nobody’s Fault But Mine
- Milk Cow Blues
- Good Hearted Woman
- Georgia On My Mind
- Jambalaya on the Bayou (this Hank WIlliams three song medley was treat)
- Hey, Good Lookin’
- Move It On Over
- Instrumental
- Sad Songs And Waltzes (is anyone writing songs like this one anymore?!)
- Healing Hands Of Time
- Pretend I Never Happened
- Pick Up The Tempo
- City Of New Orleans
- To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before
- I’ll Fly Away
- The Party’s Over (Fitting, right? Good thing Willie’s party ain’t over yet)
Also noted:
Willie’s sister Bobbi plays a MEAN piano. Shit, she pounded those horse teeth like it was forty years ago. Great to see/hear Paul English play drums and percussion, too. His younger brother did the heavy lifting, but it ain’t a Willie show with out (he and) Paul. Mickey Raphael’s harp playing was expert. He never got to too loud or played too much…all the solos and fills were spot on.
The only hokey part of the night was when Willie pulled of his black Stetson and donned some pre-tied red bandannas. he had a half a dozen of these suckers ready to wear and toss into the crowd.
I attached some less than stellar pics from my iphone. Here is a link to another attendees snaps. He took some real-deal shots.
