Willie Nelson conquers time in Sugar Land
How many times have you caught yourself bracing for a future without Willie Nelson?
I mean, for me, such thoughts occur. Nelson is 86. Sure, the Houston Chronicle archive has photos of him doing long-distance runs and some sort of martial arts. Years ago he gave up the drink for an herbal remedy to cloud the reality of life’s burden. But it’s not like he hit this Zen-like state of being as a youth. The laid-back Willie we know is a more recent construct. This is a long way of saying, he’s put some miles on the tires.
So his show Monday night at Smart Financial Centre brought with it some anxiety for me, partly because of people reacting strongly to a performance at the Country Music Association Awards a few nights earlier. Nelson at the CMAs sounded a little winded singing “Rainbow Connection” with Kacey Musgraves. Sufficiently so that reports of the performance made the web rounds wondering if his race was run.
When he walked on stage in Sugar Land, Nelson showed no signs of labor. He turned up the bottle that is “Whiskey River” as he’s done thousands of times before. “THWUNG,” went Trigger, his shadow entity, an old Martin nylon-string classical guitar full of marks, creases, cracks and age. THWUNG. THWUNG. THWUNG. I took a deep, anxious breath. I assume Nelson did also; well, maybe just a deep breath — he doesn’t seem the anxious sort.
“Whiskey river take my mind,” he sang. Everything was in its right place. The that whooshes out after the “whis” in the name of the titular liquor. The way “mind” drifts off, as minds do when they’ve been overserved.
In short, he sounded just like Willie Nelson. His voice was full of spit and no polish. He’s never made his vocals conform to polite music societal standards. Why would he now? Which isn’t to say Nelson’s voice isn’t a dynamic thing. How many times must he have sung “Always on My Mind,” his huge early-’80s hit? And still he pours the ache and melancholy into that song’s bridge (a late addition to the song written by Houston native Mark James): “Tell ll ll me. Tell me that your sweet love hasn’t died .” As he does, Nelson fell far behind the beat, and like the tortoise, he always catches up with the hare. The moment was sublime and gorgeous and untouched by time.
I’ve watched all sorts of august singers singing their songs from the past. Singers are like baseball pitchers: As they get older, they learn tricks to hide the effects of time. Elton John doesn’t have the rocket fuel to hit the high-as-a-kite parts in “Tiny Dancer” anymore. Tony Bennett and Ray Price — singers who worked in pop/jazz and country idioms — adapted with their voices, adding seasoned resonance to what they did.
“If I ever lose control of my vibrato,” Price told me once, “that’s when I know I’m done.”
Price — a mentor and friend to Nelson — died six years ago, having never lost control of that vibrato.
Nelson similarly has a remarkable instrument in his voice. He makes some decisions as to how it’s used: the way he plays with the beat like a cat batting around a toy. But his voice also has its own qualities and limitations that he can’t control. It was a hindrance when he was young: Nobody wanted to put out music by this oddball with a nasal tone whose idea of tempo was as rigid as the wind.
But that reedy quality resonated over time. And it is remarkable, still. It courses through his uptempo stompers with assertiveness. But the ballads: There, Nelson is an American singer with few peers. Some of it is natural, some of it is learned. Compile any list of great interpreters of 20th-century American song. He has to be up there with Louis Armstrong, Aretha Franklin, Frank Sinatra and Ray Charles.
I don’t mean to fall too deep into a Nelson rabbit hole. But such was the spell he casts, decades after I first saw him play. The sets are shorter. The band is smaller. Consider the credits on “Willie & Family Live,” a record he released in 1978, when he was enjoying his first peak as an entertainer.
First the band: Gone are bassist Bee Spears and guitarist Jody Payne, who died in 2011 and 2013, respectively. Gone, too, are just about every single composer featured on the album: Irving Berlin, A.P. Carter, Eddy Arnold, Hoagy Carmichael, Lester Flatt, Lefty Frizzell, Leon Russell, Bob Wills, Johnny Paycheck.
The credits for a Nelson performance are like the credits for a Nelson show: an aural history book. This show was compressed by comparison but still touched on all manner of great writers, some of those deceased along with folks like Billy Joe Shaver.
Nevertheless, when Willie gets on stage, as he did Monday night, and does “one for Waylon” and “one for Merle,” it’s a reminder of just how rare his presence is today.
As for the band, from the old guard only sister Bobbie on piano, Mickey Raphael on harmonica and Paul English on percussion remain. Nelson added a bassist and drummer but kept the lineup spare.
I’d argue that is a deft decision: The emphasis shifts to the way he colors a song, whether it’s a standard such as “Georgia on My Mind” or a ’70s country classic such as “Good Hearted Woman” or a song by Frizzell or Hank Williams. Despite the reports from the CMA show, his voice still moves like reeds in the wind. And his guitar playing was inventive, creative and remarkable, as two gnarled claws worked like an aged machine: His left hand moved along the fretboard as though it had just been oiled, and his right was a marvel of aged persistence, with two fingers picking out notes while the other three simultaneously strummed a rhythm.
Remarkable is how familiar this whole ritual has become since Nelson’s creative rebirth in the ’90s. Remarkable also is how it still bears the sensation of new skin.
No matter how many times he sings “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground,” the song still finds a new whisper of gorgeous melancholy.
There’ll come a day when Nelson isn’t able to do this, when these sounds — both familiar and askew — cease. Concessions were certainly made to time. But, as Nelson put it in the second song he sang Monday night, he’s like a fish in the sea, swimming all the time. Because still is still moving to him.