Willie Nelson heads to The Whittemore Center, to the delight of Seacoast pop, rock and prog musicians

I think I was 14 when I finally commandeered the family stereo system from the living room. No one was using it except me, and I was sick of having to crawl behind the couch to get at the thing. It was a silver Marantz with a big heavy tuning knob and brown speakers. It sounded awesome. But my parents’ record collection wasn’t exactly what you’d call extensive. Besides Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler,” nearly all 10 or 12 of their records were “greatest hits” jobs —Janis Joplin, The Temptations Anthology, Chicago, Lionel Ritchie. There was only one record from that humble, mostly embarrassing stack that I went out and bought years later while amassing my own collection on my way to becoming a professional musician—Willie Nelson’s gorgeous collection of jazz standards-via-Texas, “Stardust.” What an album.

His fans call him, simply, “Willie.” Just like Patsy, Johnny, Hank, and Waylon. But Willie is living, breathing American culture. Somehow, that inimitable nasal croon and endearingly disjointed, jazzy guitar playing style have managed to solidify his place in the annals of country music and in more record collections than you might think. It can be surprising to find out just who likes Willie. The reach of the Red Headed Stranger is far and wide...

Newmarket’s Bob Lord is well known for the prog-rock masterpieces he creates with his band Dreadnaught, and as the all-powerful impresario of the mighty Red Fez Records (home to alt-rockers The Screen and jamsters The Amorphous Band, among others). But nothing of his heady and heavily orchestrated musical meanderings with Dreadnaught would make you think he was a Willie fan.

“Yeah, I’m a fan,” says a chuckling Bob Lord. “I remember as a kid hearing this voice—this gnarled, weird, weird voice.”

It’s clear listening to Lord speak that he uses the words “gnarled” and “weird” as terms of endearment.
“I think one of the reasons he transcends country music is that he’s a composer. I think for a pure ‘knife to the gullet thing,’ Cash is unbelievable,” Lord says. “But what Willie does is more nuanced, more complex.”

Willie is more a wolf in sheep’s clothing, Lord elaborated. “It’s like, ‘Oh, look at that sheep’s pretty wool,’ while underneath there are these sophisticated musical statements.”

Willie hit Lord’s radar for good in the early 1990’s when he saw Nelson alongside Paul Simon on Saturday Night Live. Willie was singing Simon’s “Graceland,” with Simon backing him.

“Willie lapsed into a solo on that half-destroyed guitar of his. It was like buckshot!” Lord recalls, getting all fired up while talking about it. “There was music everywhere! It was this shaky, clanging, unstable thing! Simon looked at him in horror. I was mortified, but it was awesome. That was what made me begin to understand the man. That’s Willie. Willie Nelson’s solos sound like (free jazz musician) Ornette Coleman. They are as abstract or oblique as anybody could play in any kind of music, never mind something like country. He’s informed (Dreadnaught’s) attitude every step of the way. ”

Willie was born in Abbott, Texas, in 1933. Through high school, he played all the little honky-tonks he could find and even DJ’ed at some local radio stations. Legend has it Willie quit the music business three times before having his first hits as a songwriter in the 1960s. Everybody knows Patsy Cline’s “Crazy,” right? Willie wrote it. He had several more hits in the ’60s, too, including “Hello Walls” and “The Nightlife,” made famous by Ray Price and Ray Charles, respectively. It wasn’t until the 1970s, though, that he became a crossover superstar. He allied himself with Waylon Jennings and the “Outlaw Country” movement, releasing his best-known works, “The Red Headed Stranger” in 1975 and the aforementioned “Stardust” in 1978. Since then, he’s pretty much put out an album a year for the last 30 years. A few of those records have ended up in Tim McCoy’s collection.

Anyone who has seen Lemon Fresh Kids’ imposing bassist at work on the stage knows he likes to rock. The man likes his pop, too—The Kinks, The Who, The Beatles. If you listen to McCoy’s music, it makes perfect sense. But Willie? You bet.

“My folks were huge country fans. Johnny, Tammy, Conway, but Willie was always the bad ass,” says McCoy. “Growing up, even though I was a rock guy through and through, Willie was always the bad guy—it was the outlaw thing.”

“Seeing Willie is like going to the country fair,” says McCoy, who’s been to three Willie Nelson and Family shows. “When he comes out, he’s all smiles, throwing (his trademark) bandanas out to the crowd—there’s a comfort thing with him. I think he’s opened up with “Whiskey River” every time I’ve seen him.”

Like with Bob Lord, it’s Nelson’s off-center playing that seems to endear his music to McCoy.

“It’s perfectly excellent in all of its imperfections,” he says of the music. “Music, to me, has always been about imperfections. I love it when people leave imperfections in recordings—it’s so right, feel-wise. Some of his guitar leads are like falling down the stairs—you’re like, ‘Oh! Where’s he going?’ and then ‘Oh! He’s back.’ That was one of the things I always liked about The Replacements. Their music is so raw and so real, and the feel is always excellent. (Willie’s) stuff is so beautiful to listen to because it’s real. Rock has that common thread.”

Spencer Albee is also a Willie fan. These days Albee fronts the pop rock band As Fast As, but for years he played in the organ and horn explosion from Portland, Maine, known as Rustic Overtones. 

“I remember when I was a kid, he was on the radio—‘Sunny Side of the Street,’ ‘Always on Ny Mind.’ My neighbor listened to country music, as did my aunt and uncle,” Albee said. “Willie would come on (the radio) and make me happy.”

It was on one of those long tours with Rustic Overtones that Albee really had a chance to delve  into Nelson’s albums at length.

“Everybody has an uncle like Willie. He’s terminally cool,” said Albee. “He’s this bearded guy who’s always high and always had one hand on his guitar—and he’s an underrated guitar player, too, and such a soulful vocalist. The words just kind of  fall from his mouth.”

In my own years playing and touring in my now-defunct band Say ZuZu, I had the pleasure of meeting Willie a few times. ZuZu even hung out on his band’s bus some. It didn’t take long to find out that his band, “The Family,” was aptly named (he’s played with all of the same guys for 30-plus years and his sister is his pianist), or that Willie is the nicest, hardest working man in country music.

“I like his slightly-behind-the-beat vocal delivery,” said James Nolan, my brother and longtime Say ZuZu bassist. It’s that Willie sound again. James cites the same SNL performance with Paul Simon that Bob Lord mentioned as cementing his interest in Nelson. “I had just started listening to more traditional country music,” says James. “That just pushed me over the edge.”

My/ZuZu’s sort-of-personal connection to Willie and Family started with a chance meeting between my brother James and some of Willie’s band members out in front of Portsmouth’s Cafe Brioche (now Breaking New Grounds) in the mid-1990s.

“What band are you in?” asked James upon finding out the stranger he was talking to with the leather jacket and Southern accent was a musician.

“I’m in Willie Nelson’s band,” said Mickey Raphael, Willie’s longtime harmonica player.
“Oh,” said James, as nonchalantly as he could. “I’m in a band, too.”

That chance encounter led to our going to Nashville to record with Bradley Hartman, the fellow who was responsible for a few of Willie’s recordings, including “Stardust.” Willie’s band members, crew and friends were as friendly as they appeared to be the first time we met. Bee Spears, Willie’s bassist, even had ZuZu over for gumbo at his house one time when we were on tour.

“One of the coolest things about Willie is that he genuinely seems to care about his fans. Genuinely,” James says. “Bee said it always took him three hours to get from the stage to the bus because he talks to everyone. One time Cliff (Murphy, ZuZu guitarist) and I were by Willie’s bus when he was signing autographs. His manager had to push Willie on the bus because they had to leave for another gig or they wouldn’t make it in time.  We could hear him because we were so close, but Willie was saying ‘Did I miss anyone?’ under his breath. I thought that was really impressive. He was trying to make a connection with the people who make a connection with his music.”

The ol’ Marantz kicked the bucket only a few years back. That’s OK though, it had a good life. I made sure some good records tickled its circuitry before it met its fate in a landfill somewhere. Willie outlasted it. God knows he helped send it to its grave, for as many times as it played his stuff.
I think I’ll go dig “Stardust” out of the CD rack.

Willie Nelson & Family
play The Whittemore Center in Durham this Friday, Nov. 11,
at 8 p.m., $40-$28.