On The Road Again

Willie Nelson is still going strong. The revered musician, whose picture should show up in the dictionary if you looked up “living legend,” played a sold-out concert at the Seminole Casino Hotel in Immokalee on February 7. Willie celebrated his 90th birthday last April, but he put on a great show, playing for well over an hour, and the crowd of dedicated fans left happy and satisfied.

They likely also left realizing this may be the last chance they will have to see Nelson perform. He famously said he has no plans to retire – “retire from what?” was his standard line, “I’m havin’ fun” – and he made it into a hit song, “On the Road Again,” singing “the life I love is making music with my friends, I can’t wait to get on the road again.”

Well, there they were, barnstorming through the Sunshine State – Immokalee was the tour’s opener – before moving on across the country to stops including The Greek Theater in California, Seattle, Las Vegas, and back to Texas. The six-piece band is billed as Willie Nelson and Family, and the name is apt. Willie was joined by two additional acoustic guitarists, one of whom is his son Micah Nelson, who sang lead vocals for a couple of songs. His (amazing) harmonica player, Mickey Raphael, is practically family, having played with Nelson for over 50 years, and took much of the lead work that might have been doled out to keyboard, violins or pedal steel. 

But in addition to carrying the brunt of the lead vocals, Willie played his own lead guitar licks on Trigger, his famous beater nylon-stringed guitar, which has to be the most valuable POS guitar ever, with an enormous hole worn through the soundboard by decades of strumming. Nelson has transitioned to sitting down to perform, but at 90, can you blame him? A bass player and minimalist drummer filled out the band. Nashville-based singer/actress Karley Scott Collins, a Lake City, Florida native, performed as the opening act.

Willie Nelson has so many hits, there’s no way he could have played them all, along with the covers he features and delivered in his singular style. Audience favorites included the opener “Whiskey River,” “Mama Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys,” “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” “A Good Hearted Woman,” his duet with Waylon Jennings, and “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground.” He saluted the recently deceased Toby Keith with “Beer for My Horses,” the duet the two made into a hit.

Willie’s delivery of some songs, such as “Georgia on My Mind,” written by Hoagy Carmichael and immortalized by Ray Charles, was reminiscent of the way Rex Harrison talked through his numbers in “My Fair Lady.” Willie’s vocals were laid back and a little (more) scratchy, but they always have been laid back and a little scratchy, giving his renditions an intimacy that is a major component of his signature style. 

Some of the biggest cheers came on Willie’s original, ahem, number “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die,” which seemed a little incongruous given that the crowd, while spanning all age groups, looked more like the Elks Club or the shoppers at Rural King than a bunch of even aging hippie freaks. In fact, the “roll me up and smoke me” motif was probably the most popular of the many Willie Nelson-branded T-shirts the audience was sporting. One group came all in matching versions of the shirt, and one guy even had Willie’s trademark long gray pigtails, although unlike Willie’s locks, his came off with the cap.

Willie Nelson is a true Renaissance man with an amazing life, including much more than just making music. He is a marijuana entrepreneur, proprietor of “Willie’s Reserve” cannabis – he was wearing a Willie’s Reserve sweatshirt, available at the merch tents behind the crowd, set up outside in what would otherwise be a parking lot. Nelson founded a bio-diesel manufacturer selling truck fuel called “Bio-Willie,” made from vegetable oil, opened restaurants and served as spokesman for the Texas Roadhouse chain, formed a film production company, acted in dozens of movies and television shows, has written several books, and has his own channel, “Willie’s Roadhouse,” on Sirius XM Radio.

He has been a tireless activist, a co-founder with Neil Young and John Mellencamp of the Farm Aid concert series, advocating for farmworkers’ rights. On stage at the casino in Immokalee, he gave a shout out to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. He is a co-chair of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), promotes animal welfare and has spoken out for better treatment for horses. He has been married four times (to women) but is a supporter of LGBT rights – he has a song “Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other” – and spoke out against the Trump administration’s immigrant family separation program. 

His long career has been marked by meteoric highs and abysmal lows. He wrote “Crazy” for Patsy Cline by 1960, then gave up on a music career before coming back for one more try. He has been a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors and the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, played the White House, dueted with Rosalyn Carter, and, so the story goes, smoked weed on the White House roof. He also got a bill for $32 million from the IRS, which seized most of his assets after his manager neglected to pay income taxes for several years, filing sequential extensions, and Willie was arrested several times for possession of controlled substances. 

Nelson started on the football, basketball, and baseball teams in high school and decades later earned a black belt in Korean martial arts. But he received a medical discharge from the Air Force due to back problems, had a lung collapse while swimming in the surf outside his Maui home, and underwent stem cell therapy for repeated bouts of pneumonia and emphysema. 

Having played in a working band starting at age nine, Willie has put over 70 solo studio albums, epitomizes the ‘outlaw country’ genre, and formed the country supergroup the Highwaymen with fellow artists Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson. He has a street named after him in downtown Austin, Texas, and a statue outside the Austin City Limits theater, a concert series he inaugurated. He has dueted with everyone from Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn and Ray Charles to Neil Young and Snoop Dogg. 

Nelson has earned 12 Grammy Awards, in addition to Grammy Lifetime Achievement and Legend Awards. He has been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (just last year), the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and even the National Agricultural Hall of Fame. With an honorary degree from Berklee School of Music, he is Dr. Nelson to you. According to Celebrity Net Worth, Willie’s fortune is about $25 million, and he has graced the covers of Rolling Stone and AARP The Magazine. 

For the finale in Immokalee, Nelson brought Collins back onstage to sing “Will the Circle be Unbroken,” tossed his hat and some bandanas into the crowd, and then finished with “It’s Hard to be Humble,” in what must be seen as a joke.

Willie Nelson could certainly retire, but as he says, “Retire from what?” As long as he’s having fun making music, we’ll have fun listening to him. Willie’s back on the road again.