Post by Betterout on Oct 27, 2005 12:07:03 GMT -5
The subject title is the punchline to a knock-knock joke my sister Jessica and I have been laughing at for ages. It goes like this:
One night a few years back, I told this joke to a drunken bar crowd during a downtime for my band between songs. Nobody laughed except for me, and maybe Jess. It's not funny, is it? Well, that's what makes it so funny. It's easy to picture the man known as "The Nicest Guy in North America" knocking on your door and possibly even having this brief albeit pleasant exchange with you. At the same time, this potentially real event is incredibly surreal. Or, so that's what we've been laughing about for years when we tell it.
Last night, Jessica and I got to see the man in concert at the Bartlesville Community Center--something we've both had on our things-to-do-before-death lists (1. See Willie in concert). It was a great show, and I thought I'd spend a few minutes telling you about it.
In front of a huge Texas flag, Willie sang and played acoustic guitar, backed up by a pianist, a brushed snare player, a bassist, an incidental percussionist, and a harmonica player. The songs were standards, all the usual suspects conisisting of a fair mix of covers and originals--Whiskey River, Crazy, Hey Good Lookin', On the Road Again, I'll Fly Away, that sort of thing. But despite the fact that his setlist could have come from about any date after 1980, there are just so many good things to say about his set.
First off. Willie's live set is nothing at all like his familiar radio numbers. It's the same set of songs, but the music is not. They're as different as night and day. This is much more loose, much more intense. It is more jazz than country, more blues than folk, more gospel than soul.
The live sound last night was spare and peculiar, but incredibly fun. He is an amazing guitarist, but not in the way that most folks would probably recognize as amazing. He's quirky but catchy. His style owes as much to Andres Segovia and Wes Montgomery as it does to Chet Atkins. His work is almost all leads (but without sacrificing his rhythm role--he is, after all, the only guitarist on stage), but his leads consist mainly of two and three note chords. He focuses a whole lot on the middle range, the middle strings. One of his favorite tricks seems to be descending chromatic runs followed by equally elaborate ascending runs and timed so well that he lands exactly where he needs to be to make the chord progression (which has to be implied from the interplay of just himself and his bassist) flow at the proper pace. Sometimes the progression is lost entirely in a complicated figure, but both he and the bassist trudge along, each in his own direction, to meet up later in the phrase. It's a very dizzying style, and it makes me wonder how he would have developed it in solo practice. It appears to be something that can only arise in a confident and well-informed group setting.
Guitar aside, his vocal work is just as exciting. Willie is notorious for his timing, but it's such a riot to hear live. He is nowhere near the one for much of his delivery, avoiding it like the plague. Sometimes he's early--way early--like running a phrase at the end of the previous phrase. Sometimes he's just as late. Sometimes he scrambles and puts a whole verse's lyrics into what would normally be one line. But it's all intentional, and when combined with his strange guitar stylings, it keeps the audience (not to mention his band) on their toes. His songs are impossible to sing along with!
As if that's not enough, his drummer seems to be a close disciple. He moves from shuffle, to march, to backbeat at the most unexpected times. This keeps the overall rhythmic feel of the songs completely ungrounded, but in a good way. Nowhere was this more apparent last night than in the medley of Willie's original songs made famous by other singers (the highlight of the show in my opinion): Funny (How Time Slips Away)-Crazy-Night Life. The feel of the piece went from jazz to rock to swing to country to blues almost every three or four seconds! It was so exciting to hear an unexpectedly driving thump in the usually downtempo Crazy, following directly on the heels of some serious swing.
As if you haven't figured it out by now. Willie's bassist gets stuck with a whole lot of work. It's almost exclusively his job to keep the rhythm from going haywire. He does it in spades. He also migrates with fluidity from rigid country fifths to swing, and somehow never loses track of the progression, which at times is implied only by the audience's familiarity with the songs.
This is a very jazzy approach to Willie's music. And when I say jazz, I mean it's jazz the way I like it: Song-oriented, not jam-oriented. So, even when everyone really is jamming, it still feels like the better-known tune it's slyly impersonating.
If you have never seen this guy perform, I highly recommend it. And you better hurry; the guy's not getting any younger, and he's still as heedless of rules as ever. If you wait too long, he may be in prison, or the grave.
Knock, knock
Who's there?
Willie
Willie who?
Willie Nelson. Can I come in?
One night a few years back, I told this joke to a drunken bar crowd during a downtime for my band between songs. Nobody laughed except for me, and maybe Jess. It's not funny, is it? Well, that's what makes it so funny. It's easy to picture the man known as "The Nicest Guy in North America" knocking on your door and possibly even having this brief albeit pleasant exchange with you. At the same time, this potentially real event is incredibly surreal. Or, so that's what we've been laughing about for years when we tell it.
Last night, Jessica and I got to see the man in concert at the Bartlesville Community Center--something we've both had on our things-to-do-before-death lists (1. See Willie in concert). It was a great show, and I thought I'd spend a few minutes telling you about it.
In front of a huge Texas flag, Willie sang and played acoustic guitar, backed up by a pianist, a brushed snare player, a bassist, an incidental percussionist, and a harmonica player. The songs were standards, all the usual suspects conisisting of a fair mix of covers and originals--Whiskey River, Crazy, Hey Good Lookin', On the Road Again, I'll Fly Away, that sort of thing. But despite the fact that his setlist could have come from about any date after 1980, there are just so many good things to say about his set.
First off. Willie's live set is nothing at all like his familiar radio numbers. It's the same set of songs, but the music is not. They're as different as night and day. This is much more loose, much more intense. It is more jazz than country, more blues than folk, more gospel than soul.
The live sound last night was spare and peculiar, but incredibly fun. He is an amazing guitarist, but not in the way that most folks would probably recognize as amazing. He's quirky but catchy. His style owes as much to Andres Segovia and Wes Montgomery as it does to Chet Atkins. His work is almost all leads (but without sacrificing his rhythm role--he is, after all, the only guitarist on stage), but his leads consist mainly of two and three note chords. He focuses a whole lot on the middle range, the middle strings. One of his favorite tricks seems to be descending chromatic runs followed by equally elaborate ascending runs and timed so well that he lands exactly where he needs to be to make the chord progression (which has to be implied from the interplay of just himself and his bassist) flow at the proper pace. Sometimes the progression is lost entirely in a complicated figure, but both he and the bassist trudge along, each in his own direction, to meet up later in the phrase. It's a very dizzying style, and it makes me wonder how he would have developed it in solo practice. It appears to be something that can only arise in a confident and well-informed group setting.
Guitar aside, his vocal work is just as exciting. Willie is notorious for his timing, but it's such a riot to hear live. He is nowhere near the one for much of his delivery, avoiding it like the plague. Sometimes he's early--way early--like running a phrase at the end of the previous phrase. Sometimes he's just as late. Sometimes he scrambles and puts a whole verse's lyrics into what would normally be one line. But it's all intentional, and when combined with his strange guitar stylings, it keeps the audience (not to mention his band) on their toes. His songs are impossible to sing along with!
As if that's not enough, his drummer seems to be a close disciple. He moves from shuffle, to march, to backbeat at the most unexpected times. This keeps the overall rhythmic feel of the songs completely ungrounded, but in a good way. Nowhere was this more apparent last night than in the medley of Willie's original songs made famous by other singers (the highlight of the show in my opinion): Funny (How Time Slips Away)-Crazy-Night Life. The feel of the piece went from jazz to rock to swing to country to blues almost every three or four seconds! It was so exciting to hear an unexpectedly driving thump in the usually downtempo Crazy, following directly on the heels of some serious swing.
As if you haven't figured it out by now. Willie's bassist gets stuck with a whole lot of work. It's almost exclusively his job to keep the rhythm from going haywire. He does it in spades. He also migrates with fluidity from rigid country fifths to swing, and somehow never loses track of the progression, which at times is implied only by the audience's familiarity with the songs.
This is a very jazzy approach to Willie's music. And when I say jazz, I mean it's jazz the way I like it: Song-oriented, not jam-oriented. So, even when everyone really is jamming, it still feels like the better-known tune it's slyly impersonating.
If you have never seen this guy perform, I highly recommend it. And you better hurry; the guy's not getting any younger, and he's still as heedless of rules as ever. If you wait too long, he may be in prison, or the grave.
