One by Willie

Three-time Grammy-winning, supergroup folk trio I’m With Her—whose individual members Aoife O’Donovan, Sara Watkins, and Sarah Jarosz also have an additional four Grammy wins outside the band—discuss the one Willie song they’ve covered together, “Wake Me When It’s Over.” It’s one Willie’s cut repeatedly over the years, but the version that caught the trio’s ear was off his seldom cited, 1972 album The Willie Way, which points at what’s special in this episode. It’s all about discovery, about the way that brilliant singers and pickers like Aoife, Sara, and Sarah, who happen also to be millennials, come to Willie’s music and what they find when they get there. All that, plus their excitement at playing this year’s Farm Aid in September—with brief cameos by Emmylou Harris, Bill Monroe, and George Clinton.

In a special episode taped on Willie Nelson’s ranch at last year’s Luck Reunion, Taj Mahal—a true genius of the blues and roots music from all over the world—talks about the first song on Side 2 of Willie’s 1974 masterpiece Phases and Stages, “Bloody Mary Morning.” That song and album were among the earliest, best examples of what Willie would accomplish once he broke free from Nashville, a fight for creative control mirrored by Taj’s own battles with the music industry in the late 60s. From there Taj walks us through rich memories of the fabled scene at the Armadillo World Headquarters, where both he and Willie would find a home, with extra insight coming from guest co-host Mickey Raphael, who calls Taj one of his all-time favorite harmonica players and a huge influence on his own playing—and thus a pivotal element in the revolutionary sound of Willie’s Family Band.

Eurythmic Dave Stewart, who along with his bandmate Annie Lennox—and, of course, Willie Nelson—is a member of both the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, discusses one of Willie’s most beloved songs of recent vintage, “Energy Follows Thought.” The song was the standout off Willie’s great 2022 album A Beautiful Time, and one Dave loves in part for the freedom he hears in Willie’s guitar-playing, but also for its deep, spiritual message, which conjures the near-death experience that fundamentally changed Dave’s life and set his career with Eurythmics in motion. From there he hits on the paramount importance of ignoring record execs, living in the moment, and Willie’s brilliant guitar-and-vocal-only collection from 1991, The IRS Tapes.

Whisperin’ Bill Anderson, a multimillion-selling Country Music Hall of Famer, 65-year Grand Ole Opry regular, and almost certainly the only living songwriter who got to Nashville before Willie did, talks about one of Willie’s earliest entries into the Great American Songbook, “Funny How Time Slips Away.” It’s a song Willie actually pitched to Bill back in 1961, when the two were part of the generation of young songwriters—think Harlan Howard, Hank Cochran, Roger Miller, Loretta Lynn, etc.—that moved to Nashville and turned it into Music City, USA., and it prompts Bill to use Willie’s example as a masterclass in not just how to write a great song, but in country music history and Willie’s singular place in it.

Comedian Ali Siddiq zooms in on Willie Nelson’s 1979 cover of the Allman Brother’s tale of a desperate outlaw’s life on the lamb, “Midnight Rider.” It’s a song Ali used to blast in his Monte Carlo during his days as what he calls “street pharmaceutical rep” in Houston’s Third Ward, as detailed in his groundbreaking 4-part comedy special Domino Effect, and it gets him thinking aloud on American culture’s enduring fascination with gangsters and outlaws…plus such Willie-adjacent lessons as the significance of working every angle to control your destiny, and the importance of taking the gifts that save you--like comedy and music--and paying them forward to save others. 
With cameo appearances by Aretha Franklin, Martin Lawrence, and Willie’s old drummer Paul English—who Ali can tell, just from looking at one photo, was an actual outlaw.