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What Would Willie Nelson Do?

April 17th 2008 in Americana, Country Music, Legends

- Chet Flippo at CMT’s Nashville Skyline features thoughts on the new Wilie Nelson bio “Willie Nelson: An Epic Life” by Joe Nick Patoski. From the post:

Patsoki has ascribed his fascination with Nelson to his own decades-long quest to discover a way to write the real Texas book, the one that finally captures the giant sprawling state and its larger-than-life characters. He says he finally realized the answer lay right before him in the form of a Texas superstar he had already interviewed many times before. Willie Nelson was Texas.

- Ryan Adams has written on his blog that the Ryman Auditorium is a “shit hole in Nashville”and that he hates, HATES country music. And always has. And he “references” it when he makes music that sounds like that, the way a director would use water as a backdrop for a svcene (sic) with a shark in it.

And here I thought that sobriety would make Ryan less of a sniveling self-absorbed prick.

- Plans were announced today for this year’s 25th Annual International Country Music Conference.

“The International Country Music Conference is the premier academic event for those studying and writing about country music,” stated conference co-chair Don Cusic. “It is appropriate that ICMC is held at Nashville’s Belmont University.”

This year the conference is set for May 22 to 24, 2008.

2 comments to...
“What Would Willie Nelson Do?”

trey
wrote on April 20th, 2008

Ryan Adams can be so full of shit sometimes. He says he hates country music, unless it is the Grateful Dead, but a few lines above that he says Gillian Welch and David Rawlings are heroic figures to him. wtf is he talking about?

Whatever, I guess that whole line about how your heroes will always disappoint you is clearly applicable in this case.

Baron Lane
wrote on April 21st, 2008

Trey – It seems to me that Adams spends half of his time writing great music and the other half being the self-loathing enfant terrible he’s been cultivating since leaving Whiskeytown.

Some of it might be the uncomfortable boundary between country music and indie rock. If you straddle that you will never be country enough for the purist (or at least those brainwashed to believe that Nashville is making quality country music) I saw Ad,as open for Wwillie Nelson here in New York City and the New York Willie fans were booing him. And he will be too “twangy” for the indie hipsters.

I get that this might be a tough place to work your trade…that might be part of his silliness. Hard to know without sitting down with the man.

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