The Privilege of His Company

I should be asleep (preparation for a good Sunday, don't you know) but I just got home from AutoZone Park, home tonight of the Dave Matthews Band and their opening act.
I will confess: I'm not the biggest DMB fan, or, at least, wasn't until tonight. I like their weird instrumentation and the unusual rhythmic structure of many of their songs, I've enjoyed the songs that have made the radio, and I share their politics; they just haven't been must-have when the new albums have been released. I may have to rethink that.
After all, anyone who can incorporate the Talking Heads (Burning Down the House) and Peter Gabriel (Sledgehammer) into their set is OK by me. And there is also the number they did with the aforementioned opener, a guy who put DMB's Gravedigger on his last album: Willie Nelson.
I will confess again: I got to the park wondering how Willie could be the opening act for Dave Matthews. I don't think that Willie Nelson ought to be opening for anybody, unless he and Dylan undertake another joint tour (no pun intended).
Willie is America. Now, he wasn't born just yet when the revolution was undertaken, but, apologies to Pogo, he is us. He's been on top, he's been on the bottom, and he's hit every rung in between. How could one man have written all those songs? And how could he have forgotten to pay his taxes on all the money those songs brought him? And how did that cowboy gain such a powerful, poetic sense of the language? And why does Grandpa still get caught smoking a little pot? OK, a lot of pot?
Well, that, and so much more, is all Willie.
And when he comes to town, he walks out on stage and plays his music. Barely stopping to breathe in between songs, he plays. He throws in one for Waylon. Sometimes one for Cash. Something of Kristofferson's. A Haggard song. He introduces his sister, on piano; his drummer's intro leads, always, into Me and Paul. Paul's the drummer.
Willie was the only guitar player in his band tonight. First time I'd seen him without someone playing alongside. And my great Willie Nelson suspicion was confirmed: he's one terrific guitarist.
He's been into all kinds of other things, too. He's been an actor. I thought he was hysterical in Electric Horseman. Kind of scary in Barbarosa. He has spent years helping people. He started Farm Aid in the mid-80's farming crisis, to do something for the American family farmer. Those benefit concerts have drawn the biggest names in music, and continue to this day. He is big into the production of bio-diesel to replace fossil fuels, and big against the slaughter of wild horses which are seen as nuisances by big western landowners. In short, if you have a cause, Willie will be on the right side of it, and raise a lot of money for it.
But it always comes back to the music. I love Dylan dearly, and his Neverending Tour gets a lot of press. But Willie's ten years older (75 last April), and he hasn't sat down in the last fifty years, either. I hope neither one of them every does. They make real, powerful, American music, and we are all richer for their efforts.