Only a country music god could bring the sunshine to Big Valley
Nelson delights soggy Jamboree crowd while opener Colton Wall impresses
CAMROSE It was a mud-clogged Friday that had the frozen-panic feel of waiting for medical test results. Breaking through all this soul-crushing rain, would Willie Nelson even get to play? Were all those weather apps showing giant lumpy weather monsters eking down from the north onto Big Valley Jamboree going to be wrong?
Well, you know the answer, and 25,000 people in the bowl faced that affirmation with giant grins.
Nelson, 84-year-old country music giant, right there live and in person, and wouldn’t you know it, for the first time in the entire day, he brought out the sun that would only shine on his performance because, well, gods and stuff.
That was during Georgia, in a bull’s-eye, best-of playlist that was singalong, satisfying and perfectly lovely. Nelson opened with Whiskey River as his voice warmed up, then did Still is Still Moving to Me, then rather excellently, Beer for My Horses. Let me interject and say Nelson prefers Nelson brand red bandanas, because why trust the amateurs with such things?
His banter was spartan, and in every case about others: “Glad to be here with y’all — let’s do one for Waylon,” he told his sharp and perfect band, including his sister Bobbie Nelson, whose keystrokes were perfection on BVJ’s new-and-improved sound system.
The Jennings jam: Good Hearted Woman, which led into If You’ve Got the Money and the tender Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground. On the Road Again — damn! — led to You Were Always on my Mind, then tributes to Hank Williams: Move it on Over and Hey Good Lookin’, which got people two-stepping in the honey-gold light during Georgia.
“Thank you, I’m doing all right,” he said to someone yelling from the crowd, who grinned and waved and pointed through the concert. Tom T. Hall’s Shoeshine Man was followed by Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die. Off the excellent Phases and Stages: Bloody Mary Morning. And, Still Not Dead with its fine lyrics: “The gardener did not find me that way. You can’t believe a word that people say.”
Nelson, looking us in the eye, through all the health scares and everything else, saying: Still here, dawg.
Opening the day up, Swift Current, Saskatchewan’s incredible Colter Wall, the consolation prize if the Asgardians were against Nelson playing.
Wall’s voice is absolutely unique,
His banter was spartan, and in every case about others: ‘Glad to be here with y’all — let’s do one for Waylon’.
deep and sad and deliberate, and a great number of his songs are about drugs and hardship — a perfect bookend to Hank Williams with Nelson’s many stories in the middle.
13 Silver Dollars was first, and a great one called Me and Big Dave. Mandolin, fiddle, dobro, it all complimented him and Nelson’s harp player Mickey Raphael even came out.
Wall, 22, noted his hit Sleeping on the Blacktop “filled the gas tank a few times.” When you’re done reading this, look him up — just a great performer.
Jess Moskaluke, meanwhile, ended up playing a different indoor venue out here, the Cider House. In front of a forest of close-up raised beers that would be forbidden in the concert bowl, she played the punchy Used and the new one, Drive Me Away. With a big smile she noted, “This is awesome! And you’re all going to get to see Willie Nelson!”
And so we did. Nelson looked up at the clouds at the end, playing Will the Circle Be Unbroken and I’ll Fly Away. Then, as he sang I Saw the Light, the sun ducked out. Wait a sec — the sun wanted to watch Willie! Hilarious.
“We love you,” the man smiled before getting onto his bus and driving off. “Y’all have a good evening.”
We sure did. And thank you — and your sphere of fire in the sky sidekick — for it.