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"Most of the stuff I've read about me has been true."
Sheez, I'm old: Willie is 71 today
Can't believe it was 11 years ago, "Willie Nelson: The Big Six-Oh" tribute concert on PBS, Willie and Bob Dylan trading the verses of Pancho and Lefty. (Steve Earle famously said: "Townes Van Zandt was the greatest songwriter in the world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that!" He may be right.)
I saw Willie in Austin a couple weeks before the end of major combat operations, and I saw him again on the Fourth of July, and both times I thought "My God, the man's a national treasure." Especially in this world -- when are we going to stop asking ourselves when it's going to start disintegrating, and start telling ourselves, Holy Shit, it's disintegrating -- Willie's still rolling, a living touchstone to Hank, Woody, Steinbeck & Twain (official lawfirm of Bumperactive.com), and a lodestone to the way things will be again, if it all works out.
People forget what Willie meant to Austin, TX, and America, in the 1960s. Hell, it's not like I was there... although learn to listen, and there's the oral history of cabbies on blurry nights home. Willie was the cowboy who grew his hair long. With the Kennedy's, and King, and Wallace, popping off like fireflies, Selma and all those coffins coming home, Willie reminded us that we're in it together, so we'd better get through it together.
There's a song a guy named Bruce Robison wrote, "What Would Willie Do?. You can download it for free -- it's just this side of a "novelty song," but some of the lyrics are spot on, "Like a Miracle, all the rednecks and the Hippies / from New York City down to Mississippi / stood together and raised a brew...." And then there's this verse:
And talk to old Rooster as they drive on down the line
There's millions down that road
And with a word he's gonna lighten their load
He loves all the people, no matter their races
Hell he even made a hit country song with Julio Iglesias
And that ain't easy to do.
Happy Birthday Willie. God Bless. Give him a present by donating to the Texas Music Project, which raises money for music education in public schools.
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