One of my very best friends, David Greene, is a host of NPR’s Morning Edition, and a few weeks ago, he invited me to tag along when he interviewed Willie Nelson in Oklahoma. To say it was one of the coolest moments of my life does not even suffice. I got to meet Willie and hang out on the bus during the interview. Though Nelson didn’t touch the joint that was sitting in his ashtray, the bus smelled just as you can imagine–which is probably why I couldn’t open the bus door to leave after the interview.
Afterwards, I took the above picture as Nelson walked off the bus and prepared to go on stage to play a sold-out show that was more than an hour long. The guy just turned 82, and his voice sounds as good as it did decades ago, when he was a young artist battling producers who were skeptical about his sound and his songs. As David pointed out to him, he’s outlived Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and many others who along with him who changed the sound of country music. “Ain’t many of us left,” he said.
Listen to the interview here (via NPR)