Location:
United States
Description:
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.
Language:
English
Website:
https://www.texasmonthly.com
Episodes
Paul Begala on "Heartland"
2/5/2025
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.
Duration:00:36:32
Billy Strings on "Stay a Little Longer"
1/29/2025
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.
Duration:00:33:52
Miranda Lambert on “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys”
1/22/2025
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.
Duration:00:37:46
Introducing One by Willie Season 6
1/15/2025
Music writer John Spong talks each week to one notable Willie fan about one Willie song they love, then runs down the kinds of rabbit holes that open up when the subject is Willie Nelson. Starting January 22, ten new episodes featuring Miranda Lambert, John Mellencamp, Billy Strings, Black Puma Adrian Quesada, New Yorker music critic Amanda Petrusich, and so on…each giving a uniquely personal take on the life and art of a genuine American folk hero.
Duration:00:03:10
Introducing Viva Tejano - Trailer
11/6/2024
Introducing the latest podcast from Texas Monthly, "Viva Tejano.” Latin music is ascending in the U.S., and, in some surprising ways, much of the story behind the trend begins in Texas. On Viva Tejano, host J.B. Sauceda talks with legendary tejano artists and well-known tejano music fans about how the music has shaped their lives. It’s a nostalgic journey and a close look at the influences behind many of today’s biggest acts in música Mexicana. Audio subscribers to Texas Monthly can listen to episodes one week early, and get access to exclusive bonus material. Visit texasmonthly.com/audio to learn more.
Duration:00:03:58
Lucinda Williams on “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground”
4/3/2024
This week, one of America’s greatest living poets, singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams, celebrates the easy beauty of one of Willie’s most cherished songs, “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground.” From there she’ll get into how inspiring it was to first see Willie do his thing when she moved to Austin in 1974; how weird it was, when she moved back to Austin in the 80s, to live in a run-down apartment complex-cum-artist’s colony that Willie owned on South Congress—sharing it with the old boyfriend, Clyde Woodward, she would immortalize in her song, “Lake Charles”—and what an absolute honor it was, twenty years later, to cut a duet with Willie on another of her songs, “Overtime.”
Duration:00:33:24
Lana Nelson on “Red Headed Stranger”
3/27/2024
This week, Willie’s first-born, daughter Lana Nelson, talks about one of the songs her dad used to sing to her at bedtime, “Red Headed Stranger,” calling his breakthrough 1975 recording of it one of the first times an album of his sounded the way he did at home. From there she’ll walk us through some wonderful family history...like dodging rent-hungry landlords during the lean years, her dad’s hog farm/commune outside Nashville through the RCA years, and the session with Merle Haggard that produced “Pancho and Lefty.”
Duration:00:41:14
Wade Bowen on “Me and Paul”
3/20/2024
This week, one of the brightest stars of the Texas Country/Red Dirt scene, singer-songwriter Wade Bowen, examines “Me and Paul,” Willie’s 1971 chronicle of the road-warrior life he was sharing with his erstwhile partner in crime, drummer Paul English. It’s a perfect song for Wade to get into, partly because, as he rightly points out, Willie was a progenitor of the circuit where he makes his living now, but also because of the setting for our visit: Wade zoomed in from his tour bus, which was broken down somewhere in Iowa on his way to a gig.
Duration:00:36:31
John Leventhal on “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain”
3/13/2024
This week, six-time Grammy-winning producer, songwriter, and virtuoso guitarist John Leventhal—see Shawn Colvin’s A Few Small Repairs; his wife, Rosanne Cash’s The River and the Thread—discusses the song that first hipped him to the genius of Willie, 1975’s “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” He describes it with a producer’s ultimate praise, calling it a record that seems to exist outside of any era, before getting into his session work with the Hall of Fame band that backed Willie on 1993’s Across the Borderline, plus the reasons he thinks of Willie as a cross between legendary Nashville guitarist Grady Martin and Pablo Picasso...and his late father-in-law, Johnny Cash, as a cross between Elvis and Abe Lincoln.
Duration:00:39:50
Susan Tedeschi on “Somebody Pick Up My Pieces”
3/6/2024
This week, one of Willie’s longtime tour mates, Grammy-winning blues singer and guitarist Susan Tedeschi, talks about a deep cut off his 1998 album with Daniel Lanois, Teatro, “Somebody Pick Up My Pieces.” It’s a song she and her husband, slide-guitar hero Derek Trucks, play almost nightly with their group, the Tedeschi Trucks Band, and it gets her thinking aloud on a foundational principle of Willie World: The absolute importance of making music with people you love—with meaty cameo appearances by the Allman Brothers Band, Jessica Simpson, The Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and Emmylou Harris...who Susan calls a “Jedi.”
Duration:00:35:30
Bruce Robison on “Walkin’”
2/28/2024
Singer-songwriter Bruce Robison is famous for writing highly intelligent, richly detailed country songs—that happen also to be incredibly sad. (See “Angry All the Time,” by Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, and “Travelin’ Soldier,” by the Chicks.) This week, he focuses on a track that first taught him how emotionally sophisticated country music can be, “Walkin,’” off Willie’s 1974 masterpiece, Phases and Stages...before describing his own Willie tribute song, “What Would Willie Do,” and the weird reception Willie got in Bruce’s hometown, rural Bandera, Texas, when he moved his band and family there after fleeing Nashville in 1971. (Hint: The hippies and rednecks didn’t start getting along until Willie got to Austin a year later.)
Duration:00:38:55
Lawrence Wright on “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die”
2/21/2024
This week, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright talks about a Willie hit of recent vintage, 2011’s “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die.” That may seem an odd focus song for Larry, a New Yorker staff-writer known for tackling topics like Scientology and the rise of radical Islam, but he’s also a native Texan who’s written whole books on the Texas myth. In that vein, he’s got deep, personal thoughts on how Willie’s most truly subversive move was to wear his hair—in the 70s in Texas!—in long, braided pigtails; the existential quality of watching him and Trigger grow old together; and the weirdly difficult role Larry played in getting a Willie statue erected in downtown Austin.
Duration:00:33:28
Booker T Jones on "Georgia on My Mind"
2/14/2024
Booker T. Jones is one of the true geniuses of American music, a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer as a keyboardist, composer, and bandleader (see “Green Onions,” “Soul Man,” “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay,” etc.), but also as a producer, which is the role he played in the creation of Willie’s 1978 masterpiece, Stardust. It was a highly improbable pairing and production, and on this OBW episode, Booker explains all of it—how he met Willie, how they picked the songs, how they ended up recording in Emmylou Harris’s living room—with a focus on the Hoagy Carmichael classic, “Georgia on My Mind.”
Duration:00:35:28
Whoopi Goldberg on "Stardust"
2/7/2024
In addition to being one the few artists to earn an EGOT—i.e. win an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony—Whoopi Goldberg also happens to be a big-time music nerd and monster Willie fan. On this episode she talks about his 1978 recording of “Stardust,” calling it “a love song to a love song” that, when Willie sings it, makes her feel like she’s floating barefoot in the clouds with her late mom and brother. From there she’ll describe growing up a musical omnivore in NYC (see Waylon and Willie...but also Anthony Newley, Glen Campbell, and the Four Tops), the origins of country music, and the night she shared a stage with Willie, Leon Russell, and Ray Charles.
Duration:00:35:08
Nick Offerman on "Buddy"
1/31/2024
This week, Nick Offerman—noted actor, humorist, author, woodworker, canoe paddler, and agrarian philosopher—talks about Willie’s 1968 song, “Buddy.” It’s likely an obscure title even to real-deal Willie nerds, but not to devoted fans of Nick’s old show “Parks and Recreation,” who should recall it as Ron Swanson’s favorite song. Nick’s going to explain why “Buddy” was chosen for a key moment in what he calls the show’s most important episode, and then he’ll describe the magic of his first Willie concert, the vital work of Farm Aid, and why he considers Willie Nelson one of the greatest Americans who ever lived.
Duration:00:39:45
Dave Cobb on "Time of the Preacher"
8/25/2023
This week, Nashville super-producer Dave Cobb, whose work with some of the true artists in
modern country music—Sturgill Simpson, Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlisle, Jason Isbell—has earned him nine Grammys, talks about “Time of the Preacher.” It’s the overture/aria to Willie’s classic Red Headed Stranger, an album that Dave calls a beautiful, barren landscape, and it gets him thinking about Pink Floyd, the real definition of “outlaw,” and the most important instrument an artist can take into the studio: A belief in themselves.
Duration:00:31:16
Don’t Give Up: When Sinead O'Connor Sang With Willie
8/1/2023
On October 16, 1992, just two weeks after famously ripping up a photo of the pope on SNL, Sinead O’Connor was booed off the stage at a Bob Dylan tribute at Madison Square Garden. Willie Nelson was also on the bill that night, and after watching that happen, he invited her to join him in the studio the next day. In this clip from OBW S2E2, producer Don Was gives the story behind the duet they recorded, a cover of Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush’s “Don’t Give Up.”
Duration:00:05:12
Waylon Payne on "Both Sides Now"
7/21/2023
This week, Americana singer-songwriter Waylon Payne talks about Willie’s 1970 cover of Joni Mitchell’s iconic “Both Sides Now.” Waylon, an NPR-darling as an artist now, grew up in Willie World; his mom, Sammi Smith—of “Help Me Make It Through the Night” fame—played package shows with Willie in the ‘70s; and his dad, Jody Payne, was Willie’s lead guitarist for almost forty years. Waylon walks us through all that, describing the way Willie songs were his lullabies as a kid, the incredibly difficult personal trials when he says Willie saved his life, and the time Willie paid his songwriting the highest praise possible. Note: the compliment wasn’t remotely suitable for small ears.
Duration:00:30:47
Chris Shiflett on “Good Hearted Woman”
7/14/2023
This week, Foo Fighters lead guitarist and Shred with Shifty podcast host Chris Shiflett discusses one of the original outlaw anthems, Willie and Waylon’s 1976 version of “Good Hearted Woman,” exploring the evolution of the movement and the creation myth behind the song’s recording, before grabbing a guitar and demonstrating what makes Willie an absolute one-of-a-kind guitar player.
Duration:00:36:07
Ray Benson on "Going Away Party"
6/30/2023
This week, 8-time Grammy-winner Ray Benson—one of Willie’s best friends since moving his Western Swing band, Asleep at the Wheel, to Austin back in 1973...at Willie’s urging, no less!—talks about a song Willie and the Wheel cut back in 1999, the Bob Wills classic, “Going Away Party.” Wills was, of course, a hero to both Willie and Ray, as was the song’s composer, the great Cindy Walker, who Ray calls one of the single greatest influences on Willie’s own songwriting. From there he’ll describe fifty years of friendship and collaboration with Willie, with cameos by George Gershwin, Floyd Tillman, and Robert Duvall.
Duration:00:32:43