I will admit, I was more excited than the average Abilenian when the city almost two years ago announced plans to “brand” itself, like New York is branded “The Big Apple” and Dallas is “Big D,” the better to draw business and tourism to the city from all points of the globe. Abilene leaders were very excited, willing to commit $107,000 through its “Abilene Branding Partnership” to pay for the brand’s development. I could see the day when my hometown would display its brand in “Conde Nast Traveler,” “Forbes,” and travel sections in The New York Times and International Herald Tribune.
As I say, I was more excited than most. I counted a dozen or so letters to the editor in response to the branding news, most against paying any money to any advertising outfit to create a tomfool brand the city didn’t need. In fact my reaction ran in the opposite direction. I decided to BECOME one of those outfits and was ready to offer the partnership (at a discount) my recommendation for the brand: “Abilene, Texas Style.” But it didn’t work out. You can read all about that in previous blogs on the issue.
A contract was let to some tomfool Tennessee company to develop the brand, and after a year or so it was revealed at a civic gathering at the historic Paramount Theater on Cypress St. downtown. The brand: “Abilene Frontiering.” It was godawful. The letters count went way up. After a few days, the hubbub died down. Since then, things have been pretty quiet. A couple of weeks ago, I started to wonder about it. I was reasonably comfortable that “Abilene Frontiering” was not going to pop up in The Times travel section, so somebody I know wouldn’t be asking me, “You’re from Abilene, aren’t you?” and starting a “frontiering” cross-examination.
But it seemed reasonable that any civic group wanting a brand bad enough to pay $107,000 for “Abilene Frontiering” would find a way to move forward. This week, a new story broke. The brand was farmed out to a local ad agency, that came back with a spare design that shows the word “Abilene” with a blue shooting star across the top. It was a definite improvement over the “Frontiering” logo that was littered with colored stars that looked for all the world like the stars we got on good spelling papers in school.
The story said this new design was intended only for directional signage within the city, to help find visitors where they were going. I was disappointed. From showing visitors the way from Europe and Asia to Abilene, the brand had shrunk to showing visitors the way from South First and Sayles to Shotwell Stadium. The mayor was beside himself. “I think this is going to change the face of the community,” he said. His being the mayor, I take this to mean the city is officially out from underneath “Frontiering,” which couldn’t help but make any community feel better about itself.
Maybe he is right, and that those of us with feeling for Abilene should be satisfied. There is no doubt in my private mind that Abilene is a city that deserves branding, and could rise to it, if it were a good one. But it may be a thing best left unencouraged, in the sense of being careful what you wish for from a project judged satisfactory when it helps people find their way from one side of the city to the other. “At least now we’ve got a logo that can be used for some time that really embodies that Abilene is a special place out there,” said one official. A city name, a blue star, gangbusters.
March 03, 2009
March 01, 2009
Paul Harvey, Bob Cluck, and the Top 50 Banquet
Bob Cluck and I lost a friend yesterday. Paul Harvey, the radio personality, died.
Mr. Harvey did not know that he was our friend, but he was, since the evening in spring of 1961 when he was the featured speaker at the Abilene High "Top 50" banquet. In fact he provided unique content to the friendship that Bob and I had begun in 1955, in seventh grade. We found great humor in insulting each other, gently. The trick then became always having something handy to insult each other about.
These weren't shouted insults, declared out loud, but almost an inside joke. Others might get our humor, but more by inference than intent. Both of us had – still have – low thresholds of mirth, but the mirth was low-key. I think our elders had a lot to do with that. My grandmother was an icon of taciturnity, and her humor was almost the soldier's humor, crafted and honed in the battles of the Great Depression, when she was a widow raising six kids. My uncle Clyde must have studied her closely. Yesterday in a blog, I asked you to look at my blog photo, and note the smile. Clyde smiled exactly like that. But not often. When he did, it was for him the equivalent of jumping up and down on the coffee table.
When Bob and I got to the point where we were going to each other's houses, I found a kindred spirit in his mom, Katherine. She was always composed, never laughed out loud, as most people laugh out loud. When she was really tickled, she would sort of chortle in place, and a look would come into her eyes as if to say forgive me for this outburst. She looked like she could have studied under Jack Benny, or Bob Hope. We formed a bond. I know she was usually glad to see me. I hardly ever walked in the Clucks' door on Grand Ave. that she hadn't just made a lemon icebox pie.
Charlie, Bob's dad, was an insurance executive and by necessity more emotive. Still, he was of a reserved turn of mind. One day, fooling around, Bob and I knocked a hole in the sheetrock of their living room wall. Well, actually, I was the one. I pushed Bob backward harder than I meant to. I thought that was it, for me, in the Cluck household, but Katherine and Charlie, inspecting the hole, found humor in it, as did Bob, heaven knows, who had something he could use on me forever.
When Mr. Harvey came to town in 1961, Bob and I were seniors at Abilene High. I was one of the top 50 graduates, gradewise, and was invited. Bob was not. He has never let me off the hook. Nor I, him. I took to telling people that I taught Bob everything he knows. Bob took to telling people that he knew Mike Grant, who was invited to the banquet and met Paul Harvey. Bob is a greeter at the First Baptist Church in Abilene and I would like to know how many people he told this morning that he knows Mike Grant, arguing, seriously, as a listener might begin to believe, why they don't have a Mike Grant Day in Abilene.
That is Paul Harvey's lifelong contribution to the friendship of just two people in the world he knew. I mourn his loss particularly for that.
Mr. Harvey did not know that he was our friend, but he was, since the evening in spring of 1961 when he was the featured speaker at the Abilene High "Top 50" banquet. In fact he provided unique content to the friendship that Bob and I had begun in 1955, in seventh grade. We found great humor in insulting each other, gently. The trick then became always having something handy to insult each other about.
These weren't shouted insults, declared out loud, but almost an inside joke. Others might get our humor, but more by inference than intent. Both of us had – still have – low thresholds of mirth, but the mirth was low-key. I think our elders had a lot to do with that. My grandmother was an icon of taciturnity, and her humor was almost the soldier's humor, crafted and honed in the battles of the Great Depression, when she was a widow raising six kids. My uncle Clyde must have studied her closely. Yesterday in a blog, I asked you to look at my blog photo, and note the smile. Clyde smiled exactly like that. But not often. When he did, it was for him the equivalent of jumping up and down on the coffee table.
When Bob and I got to the point where we were going to each other's houses, I found a kindred spirit in his mom, Katherine. She was always composed, never laughed out loud, as most people laugh out loud. When she was really tickled, she would sort of chortle in place, and a look would come into her eyes as if to say forgive me for this outburst. She looked like she could have studied under Jack Benny, or Bob Hope. We formed a bond. I know she was usually glad to see me. I hardly ever walked in the Clucks' door on Grand Ave. that she hadn't just made a lemon icebox pie.
Charlie, Bob's dad, was an insurance executive and by necessity more emotive. Still, he was of a reserved turn of mind. One day, fooling around, Bob and I knocked a hole in the sheetrock of their living room wall. Well, actually, I was the one. I pushed Bob backward harder than I meant to. I thought that was it, for me, in the Cluck household, but Katherine and Charlie, inspecting the hole, found humor in it, as did Bob, heaven knows, who had something he could use on me forever.
When Mr. Harvey came to town in 1961, Bob and I were seniors at Abilene High. I was one of the top 50 graduates, gradewise, and was invited. Bob was not. He has never let me off the hook. Nor I, him. I took to telling people that I taught Bob everything he knows. Bob took to telling people that he knew Mike Grant, who was invited to the banquet and met Paul Harvey. Bob is a greeter at the First Baptist Church in Abilene and I would like to know how many people he told this morning that he knows Mike Grant, arguing, seriously, as a listener might begin to believe, why they don't have a Mike Grant Day in Abilene.
That is Paul Harvey's lifelong contribution to the friendship of just two people in the world he knew. I mourn his loss particularly for that.
February 28, 2009
The theater of the DMV
Two things were on my mind as I drove to the DMV: my eyes and my smile. In California, your driver's license renews twice automatically for five-year terms, then you have to go into the office for renewal, so they can check your vision and take a new photo.
They made a big deal about vision on the renewal form that came in the mail. It was against the law, they said, to withhold any changes in vision since your last check. I had none of the changes (macular degeneration, etc.) listed, but I did have 15 more years on the eyes and the moment when they asked me to read the eye chart weighed heavy on my mind.
And I have trouble smiling for the camera. Look at my photo there, just to the right. Karen got me to smile that much by saying, "Imagine you just found out you won the Pulitzer Prize." So I practiced, looking in the rear-view mirror. Totally goofy. I just don't know how to do it. How does Brad Pitt flash the pearlies with such relaxed effect? How does Harrison Ford bring up that lazy grin? Does he even think about it? Tell me: looking at the photo, can you tell that I am trying to grin, or survive the pain of a colorectal exam?
If you are a San Diegan, my closest DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) was in El Cajon. You understand how lucky I was when a parking space opened up right by the doors. Inside was like stepping into a crowded terminal, supplicants clutching papers like the refugees in "Casablanca," clustered at a boarding gate to the highways of California. Maybe triple the crowd for an Oprah taping, all nondescript Does, Janes and Johns, no one standing out. There WAS one person, in flipflops, shorts, a blue wifebeater tshirt and a gut the size of the first atomic bomb.
The operation was take-a-number. I had tried last week to call for a reservation, but the first available was March 12. My number was G130. Facing the rows of seats were monitors, suspended from the ceiling, on which numbers appeared as they were announced by a mechanical woman's voice (thoughtfully softened by a bit of echo): "Now serving A084, at Window 14." And a lucky participant would scuttle forward. The G series of numbers stood at G066. Not so bad, if there hadn't also been A, B, C, D, E, F, H and J series showing on the screens.
I stood awhile, then sat down. I was nervous about my number. I felt to make sure it was in my jacket pocket, then with my other hand caught the slip in a pinch of fabric as I withdrew the feeling hand. When "G130" was called, I didn't want to be scuttling forward as my passport to freedom was fluttering to the floor back at my seat. There were several children, and they all seemed to be a year, or a year and a half, old. They studied each other like miniature social scientists. They were well-behaved and did not cry. I wondered if it was because the crowd and its expectant tension gave them some reason to believe that SpongeBob Squarepants was about to suddenly appear.
An hour had not quite passed, and the woman's voice announced "G98." I felt a thrill rush through my body. My G130 was assuming value. The reward, for each of us, was to be called. When I was called, would I be ready? I practiced my smile. Then just on impulse, I practiced a half-smile, first on the left side, then the right. And there it was! On the left side, it felt like a smile. On the right side, it felt like a grimace. It was the right side all along, that had been the trouble! I practiced again and again, just the left side. It felt good. Leave it to the DMV, to bring out a lifelong truth about a person.
At "G115" I was so jumpy that I stood up. Back at G079, I had reckoned my window would be No. 11. I found a standing place close to it. I packaged my checkbook, renewal form, and old license in one jacket pocket and located my number again in the opposite pocket. To my left, seated at the end of a row, was an older woman in dark glasses clutching her number: G154. She seemed abnormally calm.
G128. G129. My God, they were about to raise the curtain and I would have to speak my lines. "Now serving G130, at Window 9." It was ME. I scuttled forward into the custody of a nice man whose tag identified him as Robert. If his name had been Rick, I think I would have laughed out loud. "How are you?" he said. I said, "I'm so excited I hope I don't fall over." He smiled – a nice, easy smile – and said, "Well, let's have it," and I handed over the G130. "When I got here," I said, "it was G066."
"Just sign the form," Robert smiled, and I did, and wrote him a check for $28. "Now look at the chart." It was above and behind him. The letters stood out. I read them easily. "Go get your picture taken, and you're outta here." I reached over the counter and shook his hand. "Thanks for waiting," I said. "Thank YOU for waiting," he said. There was one in front of me in the photo line. It took less than a minute. I flashed the old half-smile and it was over. Into the sunny day I sauntered, good for another 200,000 miles. They will mail the new license to me. I can't wait to see the picture.
They made a big deal about vision on the renewal form that came in the mail. It was against the law, they said, to withhold any changes in vision since your last check. I had none of the changes (macular degeneration, etc.) listed, but I did have 15 more years on the eyes and the moment when they asked me to read the eye chart weighed heavy on my mind.
And I have trouble smiling for the camera. Look at my photo there, just to the right. Karen got me to smile that much by saying, "Imagine you just found out you won the Pulitzer Prize." So I practiced, looking in the rear-view mirror. Totally goofy. I just don't know how to do it. How does Brad Pitt flash the pearlies with such relaxed effect? How does Harrison Ford bring up that lazy grin? Does he even think about it? Tell me: looking at the photo, can you tell that I am trying to grin, or survive the pain of a colorectal exam?
If you are a San Diegan, my closest DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) was in El Cajon. You understand how lucky I was when a parking space opened up right by the doors. Inside was like stepping into a crowded terminal, supplicants clutching papers like the refugees in "Casablanca," clustered at a boarding gate to the highways of California. Maybe triple the crowd for an Oprah taping, all nondescript Does, Janes and Johns, no one standing out. There WAS one person, in flipflops, shorts, a blue wifebeater tshirt and a gut the size of the first atomic bomb.
The operation was take-a-number. I had tried last week to call for a reservation, but the first available was March 12. My number was G130. Facing the rows of seats were monitors, suspended from the ceiling, on which numbers appeared as they were announced by a mechanical woman's voice (thoughtfully softened by a bit of echo): "Now serving A084, at Window 14." And a lucky participant would scuttle forward. The G series of numbers stood at G066. Not so bad, if there hadn't also been A, B, C, D, E, F, H and J series showing on the screens.
I stood awhile, then sat down. I was nervous about my number. I felt to make sure it was in my jacket pocket, then with my other hand caught the slip in a pinch of fabric as I withdrew the feeling hand. When "G130" was called, I didn't want to be scuttling forward as my passport to freedom was fluttering to the floor back at my seat. There were several children, and they all seemed to be a year, or a year and a half, old. They studied each other like miniature social scientists. They were well-behaved and did not cry. I wondered if it was because the crowd and its expectant tension gave them some reason to believe that SpongeBob Squarepants was about to suddenly appear.
An hour had not quite passed, and the woman's voice announced "G98." I felt a thrill rush through my body. My G130 was assuming value. The reward, for each of us, was to be called. When I was called, would I be ready? I practiced my smile. Then just on impulse, I practiced a half-smile, first on the left side, then the right. And there it was! On the left side, it felt like a smile. On the right side, it felt like a grimace. It was the right side all along, that had been the trouble! I practiced again and again, just the left side. It felt good. Leave it to the DMV, to bring out a lifelong truth about a person.
At "G115" I was so jumpy that I stood up. Back at G079, I had reckoned my window would be No. 11. I found a standing place close to it. I packaged my checkbook, renewal form, and old license in one jacket pocket and located my number again in the opposite pocket. To my left, seated at the end of a row, was an older woman in dark glasses clutching her number: G154. She seemed abnormally calm.
G128. G129. My God, they were about to raise the curtain and I would have to speak my lines. "Now serving G130, at Window 9." It was ME. I scuttled forward into the custody of a nice man whose tag identified him as Robert. If his name had been Rick, I think I would have laughed out loud. "How are you?" he said. I said, "I'm so excited I hope I don't fall over." He smiled – a nice, easy smile – and said, "Well, let's have it," and I handed over the G130. "When I got here," I said, "it was G066."
"Just sign the form," Robert smiled, and I did, and wrote him a check for $28. "Now look at the chart." It was above and behind him. The letters stood out. I read them easily. "Go get your picture taken, and you're outta here." I reached over the counter and shook his hand. "Thanks for waiting," I said. "Thank YOU for waiting," he said. There was one in front of me in the photo line. It took less than a minute. I flashed the old half-smile and it was over. Into the sunny day I sauntered, good for another 200,000 miles. They will mail the new license to me. I can't wait to see the picture.
February 22, 2009
We play too nicey-nice with the rhinovirus
I am fortunate to have been battling a cold for the past two – maybe three, now – weeks, because it has focused my attention.
If I had felt fine, I might have missed the story in the media about research advances that could result in curing – or preventing – the common cold. Researchers now have a complete genome map for the rhinovirus that causes a cold. They believe there might be a way to neutralize the genetic strategy the rhinovirus uses to infect cells in the lining of the human nose, where the virus attacks.
I can't see the umptillion-dollar cold remedy industry throwing its entire weight behind this research, but it is immediately useful to me to know that a cold starts in the lining of the nose. In the story, a physician says that while we are waiting for the rhinovirus genome research to go forward, the only real treatment for a common cold is to wash out the nasal passages, drink warm drinks, and get plenty of rest. I know how to drink warm drinks and rest, but I am not up on washing out the nasal passages. And the story offered no guidance.
It did make me think of a new commercial I have seen for Zicam, a cold remedy in which an actress holds a Zicam-loaded cotton swab up to her nostril, not entering it into the void, but just touching it to the edge of the nostril, leaving no confusion about what happens next. A trusted friend then, last week, recommended Zicam, but the store was out. Apparently a lot of people read the same story and saw the same commercial.
We did get a version of Zicam that you spray into the mouth. I can't say if it has worked or not. One day my cold seems to be gone, the next day it is back. Today it is back. I should say the THREAT of it is back. I am not so much battling a cold as I am battling coming down with a cold. Battle is probably the wrong word. Washing out the nasal passages does not conjure a battle image, nor does suggestively touching a nostril with a cotton swab, lest we wretch into our Cheerios. Battle is not a strategy of the remedy industry, which wants a cold to last as long as it can.
And, of course, then, I remember my grandmother Susie. Susie DID battle colds. As a young girl in 1890s Alabama, she learned that a woman's medical mission was to keep the men in the fields. I am awed to having had a direct living link to someone who knew about life in 1890s Alabama, and to be only one more living link away from someone who lived during the Civil War, and how far medicine has come in less than three full human lifetimes.
Actually, I never learned how Susie may have battled colds in the 1890s. From other treatments she practiced, I expect her original cold treatment may have involved a black, tarry substance she swore by. By the time I was born, the remedy community had introduced Vicks Salve, which was brutal enough for her cold treatment standards and had the advantage of avoiding injurious violent resistance by the victim.
Still, it was a battle image: me against her, and her and Vicks against this cold that was keeping this six-year-old man out of the first-grade fields. She layered it on my chest and on top of that placed a cuptowel that she had pre-heated to 500 degrees in the oven. She pulled the covers up under my chin, got a teaspoon, heaped it with Vicks, handed it to me and told me to swallow it.
That is the kind of battle image I almost want to deploy against this cat-and-mouse cold. Almost, but not quite.
If I had felt fine, I might have missed the story in the media about research advances that could result in curing – or preventing – the common cold. Researchers now have a complete genome map for the rhinovirus that causes a cold. They believe there might be a way to neutralize the genetic strategy the rhinovirus uses to infect cells in the lining of the human nose, where the virus attacks.
I can't see the umptillion-dollar cold remedy industry throwing its entire weight behind this research, but it is immediately useful to me to know that a cold starts in the lining of the nose. In the story, a physician says that while we are waiting for the rhinovirus genome research to go forward, the only real treatment for a common cold is to wash out the nasal passages, drink warm drinks, and get plenty of rest. I know how to drink warm drinks and rest, but I am not up on washing out the nasal passages. And the story offered no guidance.
It did make me think of a new commercial I have seen for Zicam, a cold remedy in which an actress holds a Zicam-loaded cotton swab up to her nostril, not entering it into the void, but just touching it to the edge of the nostril, leaving no confusion about what happens next. A trusted friend then, last week, recommended Zicam, but the store was out. Apparently a lot of people read the same story and saw the same commercial.
We did get a version of Zicam that you spray into the mouth. I can't say if it has worked or not. One day my cold seems to be gone, the next day it is back. Today it is back. I should say the THREAT of it is back. I am not so much battling a cold as I am battling coming down with a cold. Battle is probably the wrong word. Washing out the nasal passages does not conjure a battle image, nor does suggestively touching a nostril with a cotton swab, lest we wretch into our Cheerios. Battle is not a strategy of the remedy industry, which wants a cold to last as long as it can.
And, of course, then, I remember my grandmother Susie. Susie DID battle colds. As a young girl in 1890s Alabama, she learned that a woman's medical mission was to keep the men in the fields. I am awed to having had a direct living link to someone who knew about life in 1890s Alabama, and to be only one more living link away from someone who lived during the Civil War, and how far medicine has come in less than three full human lifetimes.
Actually, I never learned how Susie may have battled colds in the 1890s. From other treatments she practiced, I expect her original cold treatment may have involved a black, tarry substance she swore by. By the time I was born, the remedy community had introduced Vicks Salve, which was brutal enough for her cold treatment standards and had the advantage of avoiding injurious violent resistance by the victim.
Still, it was a battle image: me against her, and her and Vicks against this cold that was keeping this six-year-old man out of the first-grade fields. She layered it on my chest and on top of that placed a cuptowel that she had pre-heated to 500 degrees in the oven. She pulled the covers up under my chin, got a teaspoon, heaped it with Vicks, handed it to me and told me to swallow it.
That is the kind of battle image I almost want to deploy against this cat-and-mouse cold. Almost, but not quite.
February 21, 2009
Archives: here's an interview I did with Willie Nelson in 1986
Willie Nelson grinned amiably -- all of Willie's expressions rise from amiability -- at the suggestion that, as the 800-pound gorilla of country music, he can sing anything he wants.
"Well, I am country," he said. "Always have been, always will be. Country is what I write, what I sing, what I think I do." He grinned again. "But I do like to sing other kinds of songs."
And so in any given concert, Willie with his Family Band will offer rock and roll ("Whiskey River"), hard country ("The Party's Over"), blues ("City of New Orleans"), ballads ("To All the Girls I've Loved Before"), ethnic folk ("Seven Spanish Angels"), maybe a classical instrumental ("Bach Minuet in G") if the mood strikes him, and of course "Blue Skies," "Georgia on My Mind," and other pop standards, including -- you can count on it -- "Stardust."
" `Stardust' is probably the greatest song -- well, `Stardust' and `Moonlight in Vermont' are the two greatest songs -- that I think were ever written," Willie said.
"This is the same guy that says, `I'm country,' but I also know what is really beautiful and what's good and what's difficult. `Moonlight in Vermont' is a difficult melody, it's a difficult lyric. Your regular ordinary run-of-the-mill picker don't jump out there and start playing `Moonlight in Vermont' like he might `Fraulein,' you know."
For the moment, Willie was only talking about music, over cups of coffee in his suite at the L'Ermitage in Beverly Hills. He had come to Los Angeles in T-shirt and jeans to dangle before distributors rough cuts of another in a series of movies -- this one featuring, among others, Morgan Fairchild -- in which Willie has basically played himself.
A month ago, in a studio he owns in the rustic Texas hill country, he and his pal Merle Haggard finished a duet album -- "I like to sing duets" -- for release next month.
This week, Willie picked up the tour again, 100 dates (including "Farm-Aid II," in Austin, July 4) carrying into August, where from Maine to San Diego he sings the songs he likes and the songs he writes and the standards that he grew up loving. Next Wednesday, Willie will be 53 years old, living beyond the need for image, dabbling in music and film and vinyl, an eclectic cowboy recording his autobiography one day at a time.
Its title song is his own "On the Road Again," and you can see the lyric coming again to his mind when he says, "People say, well, how long are you gonna be out on the road, and it's really hard for me to say, because I feel like I've always been out. I travel around, and I play music. That's what I do."
This is Willie's silver anniversary on the road. It was in 1961 that he left Texas for Nashville and his first music job, playing bass for Ray Price. Pretty soon he was writing songs and selling them to Price ("Night Life"), Faron Young ("Hello Walls") and Patsy Cline ("Crazy").
Those songs were country, and then again they weren't, quite. Willie built into their country framework a little of the sophisticated '40s styling that he so admired; "Night Life" was to "Fraulein" as a buggy was to a buckboard.
"There's a lot of people in Nashville that didn't think I was country when I went there, and maybe still don't," he said.
As a singer, Willie scored in Nashville with "Touch Me," but it was not until after he moved to Austin in 1972 that the gorilla began to stir. He tapped into the "progressive country" scene already underway in Austin, and later cultivated, principally with Waylon Jennings, the "outlaw" image that, in its appeal to studio executives, propelled Willie and Waylon into the recording mainstream.
Willie survived the image, moved beyond it, on the strength of musicianship and personal chemistry. Seldom is so compelling a face matched exactly by the voice.
A person's voice, when it is recorded and played back, does not sound the same to him, and it is a curious thing when the voice is Willie Nelson's. Is he the only one who doesn't know what he sounds like?
"I know now," he said. "I didn't; I thought I sounded different for a long time, and I couldn't get used to it. I've accepted it because I don't dislike it. It sounds probably higher than I would like it to sound."
Right now, the voice is about 70 or 80 songs ahead. The album by Willie and Haggard, due out next month, features the work of a young songwriter, David Lynn Jones, who wrote the lead song on Willie's new "Promiseland" album.
There are another "40 or 50 sides in the can" after a different session including Nelson and Haggard and a long-time but underpublicized Texas musician named Freddy Powers.
"I'm definitely going to do something with them," said Willie. "They're all the same kind of stuff we were talking about, '40s stuff."
And there is also Willie the singer re-interpreting Willie the early songwriter.
"I've re-recorded a lot of those songs with my band," he said. "I'm just kind of waiting for a slot to put them out. I've had so much product out there over the last few years that I don't want to flood the market.
"The only way to know if you're getting overexposed or not is if people quit coming to see you. So far, the crowds have been pretty good."
"Well, I am country," he said. "Always have been, always will be. Country is what I write, what I sing, what I think I do." He grinned again. "But I do like to sing other kinds of songs."
And so in any given concert, Willie with his Family Band will offer rock and roll ("Whiskey River"), hard country ("The Party's Over"), blues ("City of New Orleans"), ballads ("To All the Girls I've Loved Before"), ethnic folk ("Seven Spanish Angels"), maybe a classical instrumental ("Bach Minuet in G") if the mood strikes him, and of course "Blue Skies," "Georgia on My Mind," and other pop standards, including -- you can count on it -- "Stardust."
" `Stardust' is probably the greatest song -- well, `Stardust' and `Moonlight in Vermont' are the two greatest songs -- that I think were ever written," Willie said.
"This is the same guy that says, `I'm country,' but I also know what is really beautiful and what's good and what's difficult. `Moonlight in Vermont' is a difficult melody, it's a difficult lyric. Your regular ordinary run-of-the-mill picker don't jump out there and start playing `Moonlight in Vermont' like he might `Fraulein,' you know."
For the moment, Willie was only talking about music, over cups of coffee in his suite at the L'Ermitage in Beverly Hills. He had come to Los Angeles in T-shirt and jeans to dangle before distributors rough cuts of another in a series of movies -- this one featuring, among others, Morgan Fairchild -- in which Willie has basically played himself.
A month ago, in a studio he owns in the rustic Texas hill country, he and his pal Merle Haggard finished a duet album -- "I like to sing duets" -- for release next month.
This week, Willie picked up the tour again, 100 dates (including "Farm-Aid II," in Austin, July 4) carrying into August, where from Maine to San Diego he sings the songs he likes and the songs he writes and the standards that he grew up loving. Next Wednesday, Willie will be 53 years old, living beyond the need for image, dabbling in music and film and vinyl, an eclectic cowboy recording his autobiography one day at a time.
Its title song is his own "On the Road Again," and you can see the lyric coming again to his mind when he says, "People say, well, how long are you gonna be out on the road, and it's really hard for me to say, because I feel like I've always been out. I travel around, and I play music. That's what I do."
This is Willie's silver anniversary on the road. It was in 1961 that he left Texas for Nashville and his first music job, playing bass for Ray Price. Pretty soon he was writing songs and selling them to Price ("Night Life"), Faron Young ("Hello Walls") and Patsy Cline ("Crazy").
Those songs were country, and then again they weren't, quite. Willie built into their country framework a little of the sophisticated '40s styling that he so admired; "Night Life" was to "Fraulein" as a buggy was to a buckboard.
"There's a lot of people in Nashville that didn't think I was country when I went there, and maybe still don't," he said.
As a singer, Willie scored in Nashville with "Touch Me," but it was not until after he moved to Austin in 1972 that the gorilla began to stir. He tapped into the "progressive country" scene already underway in Austin, and later cultivated, principally with Waylon Jennings, the "outlaw" image that, in its appeal to studio executives, propelled Willie and Waylon into the recording mainstream.
Willie survived the image, moved beyond it, on the strength of musicianship and personal chemistry. Seldom is so compelling a face matched exactly by the voice.
A person's voice, when it is recorded and played back, does not sound the same to him, and it is a curious thing when the voice is Willie Nelson's. Is he the only one who doesn't know what he sounds like?
"I know now," he said. "I didn't; I thought I sounded different for a long time, and I couldn't get used to it. I've accepted it because I don't dislike it. It sounds probably higher than I would like it to sound."
Right now, the voice is about 70 or 80 songs ahead. The album by Willie and Haggard, due out next month, features the work of a young songwriter, David Lynn Jones, who wrote the lead song on Willie's new "Promiseland" album.
There are another "40 or 50 sides in the can" after a different session including Nelson and Haggard and a long-time but underpublicized Texas musician named Freddy Powers.
"I'm definitely going to do something with them," said Willie. "They're all the same kind of stuff we were talking about, '40s stuff."
And there is also Willie the singer re-interpreting Willie the early songwriter.
"I've re-recorded a lot of those songs with my band," he said. "I'm just kind of waiting for a slot to put them out. I've had so much product out there over the last few years that I don't want to flood the market.
"The only way to know if you're getting overexposed or not is if people quit coming to see you. So far, the crowds have been pretty good."
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