DISGRACELAND - Willie Nelson (Pt 1): A Shootout, a House Fire, and the Ballad of the Red-Headed Stranger

Episode Date: April 25, 2023

Broke and depressed, Willie Nelson almost joined the 27 Club on a snowy Nashville street late one night – before he’d even sold a single song. He drank, smoked, and cheated his way through multiple marriages. He was nearly beaten to death by an angry husband in a parking lot. He wielded a shotgun and a rifle during a shootout on his own property. And after ten years of trying to make it on Music Row, he had the courage and the confidence to start all over again after a fire threatened to destroy the world he was living in. This episode was originally published on April 25, 2023. To view the full list of contributors, see the show notes at ⁠www.disgracelandpod.com⁠. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠YouTube⁠ ⁠X⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠ ⁠TikTok To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Willie Nelson are insane. Broke and depressed, he almost joined the 27 club on a Nashville street before he'd even sold a single song. He drank, smoked, and cheated his way through multiple marriages. He was nearly beaten to death by an angry husband in a parking lot.

He wielded a shotgun and a rifle during a shootout on his own. own property. And after 10 years of trying to make it on Music Row, he had the courage and the confidence to start all over again after a fire threatened to destroy the world he was living in, a world that was made better by Willie Nelson's great music. Music that dared to challenge the boundaries of a country-politian mandate, and in turn redefined an entire genre. Unlike that clip I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Mantovani Mindmeld, MK2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to tears of a clown by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles.

And why would I play you that specific slice of sat on the inside cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on December 23, 1970. And that was the day that Willie Nelson's house caught fire, a near tragic moment that closed one chapter of his life and gave way to new phases and stages. On this, part one of a special two-part episode, drinking, smoking, and cheating, angry husbands, shootouts, fires, and Willie Nelson.

I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. The preacher returned home to an empty house. but his head was far from empty. It was full of suspicion and jealousy, fear and rage. And that eternal struggle, good and evil, the light and the dark.

It was cold. He pulled a match from the pocket of his long black coat, struck it against a wooden table, and lit an oil lantern. He called out his wife's name, silence, called out again,

nothing. Just the sound of his own breathing and the beating of his own heart. His pulse quickened as he walked through the house with the lantern in his hand. First the living room, and then the bedroom. She wasn't there. She wasn't missing. The preacher knew exactly where she was and exactly what she was doing.

He'd known for months. He had that sixth sense, that gift. It was why people came to him for guidance and comfort. They prayed with him and asked him to hold them in his thoughts. Tonight, however, he wasn't thinking about the trials and tribulations of his congregation. He had one thing and one thing only on his mind. He picked up his double-barrel shotgun, turned off the oil lantern, and walked out the front door. Then he mounted his black stallion and...

Willie Nelson was on the road again, but not back to California, where the job market was as dry as cracked Texas soil. Someone once told him California love Texas DJs. Maybe so. But San Diego didn't want anything to do with him. Not as a DJ and not as a singer. He wasn't heading back to Oregon either.

Sure, the gigs were plentiful and the locals got a thrill out of hearing a cotton pick and snuff, dip in tobacco chew and stump, jumping gravy, sop and coffee pot, dodge, and dump a d'etting frog gigging hilly-billy DJ to take over the airways. But Oregon was in Texas. It wasn't his market.

The people weren't his people. And he certainly wasn't heading back to the buckets of blood in Fort Worth, or way the hell down to Houston, where he wrote something like, what, half a dozen tunes, easy in the span of a week or two? Songs like Nightlife, Funny How Time Sips Away, Crazy, I Gotta Get Drunk. They just came to him, one after the other. And while he was out driving or walking around the way to the world pressing down, no work, no hope, wife, and three kids waiting at home,

waiting on him to make something happen. The only thing happening, though, were these songs. These fucking great songs. At least he thought so. He tried to sell them to a band leader at the Esquire ballroom for $10 a piece. Guy wouldn't buy them. Not because they weren't good. Because they were good.

The guy didn't want to screw Willie over. So he recorded one for Pappy Daily. And maybe Pappy's boy, George Jones, would like it. But Pappy hated him. Said it wasn't country. Well, fuck Pappy Daily. And fuck Houston. This time, it would be different.

This time, Willie was going in a new direction. He had to get out of Texas. So he dropped Martha and the kids off at Martha's folks place in Waco, and then he headed northeast in his beat-up puke-green Buick. It was 1960. Willie Nelson was 27 years old. He'd done the door-to-door thing, sold vacuum cleaners, sewing machines, encyclopedias.

Now it was time to sell something that really mattered, something he was good at. It was time to sell some song. for more than 10 bucks a pop. And anyone who's anyone knew that if you wanted to sell some country songs, you went to one place. Nashville. Willie had been writing songs since he was 10,

playing in band since before he hit puberty. Nashville, though, that was where you leveled up. Music City, home of the rhyming, where WSM's 50,000-wock-clear-channel signal broadcasts the Grand Ole Opry from coast to coast, home of Owen Bradley's Quartet Hut and Chad Atkins RCA Studio B, the place where they called the best pickers, the A-team. If you weren't on the A-Team, you're either busting your ass to get on the A-Team

or you were grinding it out on the road or in one of the many honky-tongs strewn along Broadway. Maybe that's why I took Willie until he was 27 to go there. He had to work up the courage to prove that he really could write songs and get paid to do it. And now he had it. Not just courage, but confidence. He pulled into Nashville with a smile on his face. He had arrived. But Nashville didn't want him.

Each door he opened and slammed shut in his face. Heads shook side to side. Thanks, but no thanks. Willie's songs were too weird. The way he sang, behind or ahead of the beat, it was some weird jazz shit just wasn't country. Sure as hell wasn't the Nashville sound. Willie was distraught.

Now what? He felt humiliated. And not just because he couldn't sell it. tune. Because when Martha and the kids finally arrived, she had to start waitressing just so they could afford their $25 a week trailer. The whole situation made them resent each other. So they drank, both of them, but Willie especially. Whiskey River took my mind. They fought, screamed. Martha knew Willie was sleeping around. He told her that he wasn't up to doodily shit, but said it with some hoarse lipstick smeared across his face. She responded by biting his finger right down to the bone.

Willie nursed his wounds and drowned his sorrows like a country song at Tootsie's Orchard Lounge in downtown Nashville. The Honky Talks owner, Tootsie Bess, do all the major players in town, but she endeared herself to the nobody's as well. Guys like Willie who came to town with nothing but empty pockets in a dream. Songwriters met up at Tootsie's to have polls, jam sessions to test out songs and get peer feedback and empty more than a few mugs of Flagstaff in the process. One night, Roger Miller would be picking up. out dang me on a flat top. Another night, Hank Cochran played a new composition called I Fall to Pieces,

and Willie became a regular. He got friendly with the other songwriters. He plucked up the tunes he was peddling, and he drank. On nights that there were no guitar pulls, he sat at Tutsi's bar and looked out the window across the street to the hitching post where Martha was waiting tables. He knew other men flirted with her, and he knew that she flirted back. He didn't like the thought of it, even if he was engaged in his own dutely shit. He watched. He watched. as the light snow fell down on Broadway. It was late. He poured the contents of his mug down his throat.

Just one more and then another. He was shit-faced. His mind raced. In the fights with Martha, the struggles as a songwriter, what was the point of it all? It was a darkness on the face of the earth, enough to make a guy feel permanently lonely. Willie got up from the bar and stumbled out into the cold night.

He was alone on the sidewalk. No traffic, just stillness. He was so drunk he didn't realize he wasn't wearing a coat. He stepped off the sidewalk and then just laid down. Right in the middle of Broadway. He stared straight up into the night sky, and the snow kept falling. Would a car come by? Would it see him and slam on its brakes, or would the snow obscure him there on the ground?

Was he ready to die? Did he want to live? The question swirled around in his head, one after the other. and honestly, he had no answers for any of them. He simply felt calm, ready to accept whatever fate had in store. Turns out fate did not plan to run Willie Nelson over with a car. Instead, he got up and dusted himself off and walked back into Tootsies, kept dat, kept picking and singing, kept grin,

no matter how he felt on the inside. Hank Cochran really liked what he heard, and soon he took Willie to audition at Pampere Music. Hank's music publishing firm. Willie played them crazy and funny how time slips away. Pamper was impressed, but they didn't have the budget to hire another songwriter. Hank told them they could pay Willie using the raise they'd recently given him. And that meant $50 a week.

Hank tried to write with Willie, but it was obvious from the start that Willie didn't collaborate. He wrote alone, and he wrote different, wrote simple, wrote what was right in front of him. Like this feeling he'd had ever since he arrived in Nashville. vulnerability, despair, and this room he was sitting in now, these walls. Some days, it felt like all a fella had to talk to were these four walls. The first thing Willie wrote while under contract at Pampa Music was a hit. Farron Young took Hello Walls to number one on the country charts in 1961.

And a few months later, Willie got his first royalty check. $3,000. Hello Greenbacks. How'd things go for you today? Willie could hardly believe it. There was his name, in parentheses, right below the song title on the label of a Capitol Records 45. Willie Nelson could write a Nashville hit,

but he could never have written what was about to happen next. The preacher found his wife's horse tied outside the one saloon in town. He dismounted and tied his stallion to the same post. He walked inside, shotgun in hand. Drunks ran their sloppy mouths. piano players spun out a melody from the corner. Smoke hung from the ceiling. And the moment he came through the swinging doors,

all eyes were on him. He was a sight, a man of God in an establishment like this, a house of vice, a den of sin. The preacher saw his wife, there against the bar, one arm around another man. And the preacher was expecting the sight,

but still it hurt to see it. She returned his gaze. And the preacher thought she would give him this look of regret, panic that she would beg for forgiveness. But she didn't. She just looked at him like a stranger. His coat as dark as a forsaken soul. His hair as red as the flames in the saloon's fireplace.

The preacher didn't speak. He lifted up his shotgun, pointed it directly at the man standing next to his wife, and pulled the trigger. The man's chest ripped open as he was blown backwards. Blood splattered all over the bar and all over the preacher's wife who was now screaming. Everyone in the saloon docked for cover.

The preacher swung open the hinge of the shotgun and dumped out the two smoking shells. He reloaded and snapped the double barrel shut. He raised the shotgun again, and this time aimed it at his wife. She was crying now, weeping, tears running down her face. She held her hands up. She begged for her life. Now she was sorry. Now she was penitent.

Too little, too late. The preacher aimed the shotgun at his wife and then pulled the trigger. One more time. Martha Nelson was yelling at her husband. That lying, cheating, no-good scoundrel. Willie Nelson didn't deny it. Guilty is charged. We yelled back.

She wasn't listening to him. Not anymore. She shot back the two fingers of whiskey in her glass and then hurled the empty glass at Willie's head. Willie ducked. His friend Hank Cochran was standing right behind him. He took the glass in the face. It shattered.

Broken glass sliced Hank's face, blood all over the bathroom floor. and Martha had no regrets. Neither did Willie when he left his wife of ten years standing there, and instead took his buddy Hank to the emergency room. Willie knew this day would come. It was the one thing he could actually predict that his hound dog behavior would land him in hot water with the missus.

The rest of it, though, he couldn't have imagined it. Farron Young's recording of Hello Walls made him rich, but Patsy Klein's recording of a song Crazy made of even richer. The checks just kept coming. Willie took a side hustle as the bassist in Ray Price's band, and in each town on the tour, the money went right through him. Willie wasn't the leader of the group, but he sure acted like it. He rented the fanciest hotel suites with his small fortune, and he drank the rest.

But the cash was never really gone. Just when he thought the money had dried up, there'd be a new check to cash. And now that he was a real Nashville songwriter, though, Willie wanted to be more, and not just the base plan. sideman. He wanted to sing. Stand center stage. He wanted to be more than a tiny name written under a song title on the label of a record. He wanted to see his face on the cover of a record's sleeve. He wanted to be a best-selling artist. And Liberty Records saw Willie's potential to become one. The LA label home not only to the ventures, Jackie DeShannon and the Chipmunks, but also Bob

Wills and Tex Williams, signed Willie to a record deal in 1961. At Liberty, Willie discovered first-hand how he had to fight for artistic integrity. Liberty wanted him to go with the flow, and that flow was the Nashville sound, Country-Politan, they called it, saccharine strings and backup singers. To Willie, it sounded overproduced. Willie wanted zero frills. The songs were simple, and so they should sound simple. Willie didn't bristle at all of Liberty's ideas, though. In fact, there was one he accepted without hesitation, a duet with fellow country singer Shirley Colley. Shirley was the real deal. Played with Bob Will's and Letgy Frasel.

Pretty as hell also. Willie and Shirley's duet, willingly, didn't make Willie a star, but it made the two singers an item. It was love at first sight. And just because Shirley was also married didn't stop her from running up a $2,000 tab on her husband's Amex card while running around with Willie.

Willie and Shirley married a few years later. In 1963, before Willie's divorce to Martha was final. They tied the knot when they finished. playing a residency at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas. Six 40-minute shows between 8 p.m. and 2 a.m. every night, night after night. It was a slog. When 2 a.m. rolled around, you expected to be dead tuckered, but you were wired. You couldn't sleep. Green meanies, though, they did the trick.

Placidale's sleeping pills make you feel like you just destroyed the world, or rather that the world had just destroyed you. But because Willie had fallen in love again and married again didn't mean he was done chasing other women. Quite the contrary. He loved women. He loved their company, how they smelled, and the way they smiled, and the things they said. From Vegas to Fort Worth and North Hollywood to Fresno, Oklahoma City to Tulsa to Dallas, and everywhere in between Willie toured. And Willie flirted. What Shirley didn't know wouldn't hurt her. In Phoenix, at J.D.'s nightclub, he made sure to talk up one particularly fine-looking lady. Willie turned on the charm

between sets. She blushed. She was flattered. Her husband. on the other hand. Not so much. He followed Willie out of the parking lot after the show. He walked to his vehicle and grabbed a carjack from the trunk. And then he walked right up to Willie Nelson. Just look at him, all fucking full of himself in his classy suit and nice white shirt and tie. Some big-time Nashville prick thinking he was better than the good people in Phoenix and that he could just do what he wanted with their women. Cock at the goddamn walk. This was one husband who wasn't going to take it lying down. He didn't even have to say anything. Willie knew the guy was an enraged cuckled.

He took one swing and the carjack bit into Willie's head. The blood gushed, ruined his goddamn suit. When Willie collapsed at the pavement, his head pounded. The blood didn't stop. He was rushed to the hospital and he nearly died. Still, he wasn't about to stop. Not stop touring, not stop drinking, not stop smoking, and not stop fucking with someone else's wife.

It was what you did as a struggling country star on the road. Well, it was what Willie Nelson did anything. way, a lot harder than it looked. Every time you made eyes at another woman, you put yourself in danger. And Willie looked a lot, which meant the danger was always lurking around every corner and in every parking lot. And when you weren't dodging jealous husbands, you were shaking down club owners to get the money you erode. And the whole goddamn circuit coast to coast was staffed by chiefscape rattlesnakes. For every night that you got paid where you were promised, you played three more nights where you got stiffed. When Willie needed protection, someone who had us back,

Someone who wasn't afraid to get rough when the going got tough. Someone who wouldn't think twice about getting a little crazy. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. 1970, Ridgetop, Tennessee. Willie Nelson's knuckles stung like hell. His son-in-law, Steve, lay in a crumpled ball at his feet. Steve was holding his face in his hands. Don't hit me again, Willie, Steve yelled.

Don't hit me, Willie. I got anxiety. That was rich. Anxiety. The guy beats his wife, Willie's 17-year-old daughter, black and blue and bloody, and he's the one with anxiety. Willie told Steve that if he ever laid another hand on his daughter, he would kill him. And then he walked out the front door and drove back up the road to his house.

Seven years earlier, in 1963, Willie and his wife Shirley bought a red brick ranch-style home on 17 acres of land east of Nashville. It was close enough to Willie's day job on Music Row, but far enough away to provide a much-needed respite from the trials of life as a professional musician. They worked the land when they weren't working the road. They raised hogs, chickens, geese, ducks, horses, cattle, and the simplicity of life on a farm lessened the blow

when Liberty dropped Willie after two lackluster albums or when RCA picked them up and scratched their heads at what to do with them. Still, the songwriting checks kept pouring in. Eventually, Willie had enough money to buy a couple hundred more acres, and the ranch soon became a family affair. Willie's sister Bobby moved in with her three boys. Willie's mother, Murrow, and her husband, and Willie's father, Ira, and his wife.

One by one, Willie's kids from his marriage to Martha moved onto the farm, and eventually even Martha did, too, up the road with their daughter, Lana, and Lana's husband, Steve. The mailbox at the top of the road read, Willie Nelson and many others. some called it Nashville's first hippie commune. But all wasn't quiet on the Western Front. First, in 1969, surely, like Martha before,

felt the sharp unexpected sting of betrayal when one of Willie's many affairs came to light. But this was more than just another affair. A hospital bill arrived in the mail for the birth of a baby girl named Paula Nelson. Sleeping around on the side was one thing, but a baby? Shirley was out.

The baby's mother, Connie, was in. And then Lana showed up at the house with a black eye and bloody nose. Paul English, Willie's drummer, suggested that the knuckle sandwich Willie had provided to Lana's husband was not enough. It had to do something else. Something that would send a message. Really teach that low-life piece of shit a lesson. They should break the guy's legs. Everyone in Willie's house laughed.

Everyone except Willie. He knew Paul wasn't kidding. Paul was dead serious. This is what Paul did. Collected debts. And when debts couldn't be collected, he settled them. Paul English had history. The kind of history you want a guy to have who's paid to watch your back, literally.

Because Paul wasn't just Willie's drummer. Paul was Willie's muscle. Paul's childhood was full of petty theft, Biennese delinquency. He claimed to have been arrested more than 100 times over the course of his life, including three busts in one day. At 17 years old, he did nine months for burglary, even though like most people on the inside you know, he was actually innocent of that one.

Paul had connections all over. He knew the guys who would be the most helpful, the guys you wanted to avoid, too. He knew the dealers with the best weed, which meant Paul had the best weed. He kept sought-off shotguns and assault rifles in the piano. One of his most prized possessions was a silver 45 with a gold trigger. On one side of the barrel was a filigree depicting Paul. Paul engaged in an orgy. And the other side of the barrel displayed Paul going down on a woman.

When you pointed it at someone, all they saw was welcome to hell written over the barrel. Sometimes Paul used the guns and sometimes he didn't. He had many ways of making motherfuckers pay. Hey, you, the deadbeat club owner in New Mexico who didn't pay Willie Nelson what he was owed, that's your thunderbird on the business end of that forklift over there, 10 feet in the air. Paul English has the keys to your car and the forklift, and he's also the guy. who wrote you this little note, the one that says, Come see me.

Guess what the deadbeat club owner in New Mexico did. He went to see Paul, and then he paid him. Or maybe you're one of the couple jerk-offs who lost a bet playing a game of pool with Doyle, Willie's stepbrother, and Torbus driver. But you didn't cough up the money. It's just a quarter, you say. Fucking smart ass. Paul starts beating on your friend to make a point.

A bet's a bet, fuck-o, so you wrap that pool cue around Paul's throat and pull tight. And that's when Paul pulls the 22 out of his pocket and sticks. it's straight up your right nostril. You think the steel caressing your nose hairs is uncomfortable. Just wait until he pulls the trigger, Haas. You want to see what it's like picking up pieces of your fucking nose off a felt table, you fucking redneck? It didn't matter if the bet was a quarter or a quarter million dollars.

It's the principle of the thing. You fuck with Willie Nelson or remember Willie Nelson's extended family, and you regret it. That was the thinking back at Ridgetop when Paul English was gun-hoed or break the legs of Lana's abusive husband, Steve. They didn't have much time to mull over in the plan. An engine rumbled in the distance. It was getting closer, louder. It was right outside the house now.

A gunshot rang out, a rifle, and then another, and a third. Willie grabbed his shotgun and Paul found his M1 rifle. They high-tailed it outside. Connie hit the deck inside the house. She made the kids do the same. Lana and Martha just come inside through the back door, now they were on the floor too. The truck drove past the house, but it started to circle back.

As it came around for a second pass, Willie jumped up from the yard with his shotgun, and he looked at the truck. Steve and his brothers, armed with rifles, took aim at the house again. A bullet raised Willie's head. Undeterred, Willie raised the shotgun and pulled the trigger. Paul English appeared at the side of the house, M1 in his hand, locked and loaded. He aimed underneath the truck and fired. The bullets peppered the back bumper, air hissed from a tire that had been shot out,

and the truck receded into the distance. And then, with a jerk, it turned around and headed back. for more, wobbling on three good tires. Fucking balls on this asshole. Paul tossed Willie the M1 and pulled a snub nose 38 from his sock. They both took aim and began to fire again. And then the brakes whirled and the truck came to a stop. Willie and Paul paused. Steve came out, hands in the air. Truce. The next day Steve returned to Willie's house, though this time he came in peace and in shame. He told Willie he would never hit his daughter again. Paul, for one, said he was glad that Steve didn't stop his truck when they shot out his tire.

Otherwise, I would have had to aim to kill rather than shoot to miss, he said. Once again, everyone in the house laughed, but not Paul. Paul liked jokes as much as the next guy, but when it came to the safety of family, and he, like so many others at Rich Top and Beyond, considered himself a lifelong member of Willie Nelson's family. There was nothing funny about that at all. The preacher drifted from town to town. He rode his jet black stallion and led his dead wife's horse by the reins. His reputation preceded him.

He was the stranger who quenched his thirst for revenge by gunning down his wife and her lover. But now he was driven by something else. Self-loathing, despair. He hadn't heard from God in days. He'd been abandoned. Some called him preacher. Others called him the stranger. Most people didn't say more than two words to him.

They minded their own business. Looked the other way. They did this when he arrived at the next town on his journey, all except for one. The preacher was hitching his stallion to a post outside a saloon when a woman approached him. She was young, pretty. She made small talk. The preacher was rusty, but he feigned a smile and responded with a few words. She asked if she could pet the horse, and he obliged.

The setting sun caught his eye. He squinted. For a fleeting moment, the woman looked like his dead wife. He knew it was just his eyes and the sun playing tricks on him. But he allowed himself to be tricked. The tense muscles throughout his body began to relax. Then the woman grabbed the horse's reins. She pulled the horse towards her.

The preacher's dead wife's horse. This woman intended to make that horse hers. The preacher couldn't let that happen. He reached for his shotgun in the leather pouch of his stallion saddle and swung the barrel around. The woman had managed to climb onto the horse's back. She was getting ready to ride off into the sunset. She wasn't fast enough.

The preacher aimed, the shotgun fired, and the woman fell lifeless from the horse face down in the dirt. The preacher thought back to the man he was just days ago when his wife was still alive, and he'd yet to discover the betrayal was an unwelcome guest in his home. He thought about that man, but he didn't recognize him. And he would never be that man again. December 23rd, 1970. Willie Nelson was at a Christmas party in Nashville when the phone rang behind the bar. The bartender answered.

He motioned Willie over. It was for him. One of his nephews, back home on the farm in Ridgetop. His voice was breathless. Uncle Willie, he yelled. You got to get up here. Your house is on fire. This house is melting.

It took Willie 25 minutes to haul ass from Nashville back to Ridgetop, where he found his house was indeed melting. At first he thought of his family. Had they made it out safely? Yes, they were all here, all outside. Each one accounted for. And then he thought about the things besides his loved ones that he couldn't lose. Two very specific things inside the house that he had to save.

The firefighters told him not to go inside. It was too dangerous. The entire place was engulfed in flames. Your family is safe, they told him. Everything else is just stuff. Willie didn't listen. He ran inside the burning home. on flames looking at his face.

Willie's family stood outside, fearing the worst, fearing that Willie had walked himself into an early grave. Seconds, felt like hours. And then, Willie emerged from the fire and the smoke, coughing and wheezing, grateful to be alive. In one hand, he held a plastic bag with two pounds of Grade A Colombian grass. Thanks to Paul English's connections,

Willie was smoking more grass than he ever had before. The real reason he wanted to grab the weed so the firefighters wouldn't find it and turn it in to the authorities. Besides, he was already going inside to save the thing that was in his other hand. Trigger. Trigger was Willie Nelson's guitar, named after Will Rogers' horse. Trigger was a Martin N-20 nylon-stringed acoustic guitar made out of Brazilian Rosewood that Willie bought the previous year for $750.

A nylon-stringed guitar was an odd choice for anyone not playing classical music, But the tone fit Willie to a tee. It got him closer to the tone of his favorite guitarist of all time, Django Reinhardt. As Willie himself put it, it's just got a good sound. It was simple, just like Willie's songs, just like the cause of the blaze. Faulty wiring the basement rigged up by Willie's stepfather. Little else survived the fire. Willie was 37 years old.

The homestead he had cultivated for seven years was gone. He had a wife and four kids to support, plus two ex-wives. And the royalty checks weren't as big as they once were. He was still grinding it out in dive bars. Despite nine albums under his belt for RCA, his career as a country artist had stalled. Something had to give. Something had to change. They say you can't go home again, and they're only half right,

because Willie Nelson did decide to go back to Texas. But not the Texas of his youth. This time, it was two hours south of Willie's home. town of Abbott. A place where the rent was cheap, and so were the good times. 99 cents for a six-pack of Texas Pride, extra light locker. Ten bucks for an ounce of killer weed. And Willie Nelson was on the road again, to a place where he could grow his short hair long and ditched the clean-shaven face for a big old beard. Trade in the suit and tie for a t-shirt and blue jeans. A red bandana to tie around your head. A place where Willie Nelson

could be himself. Just who was that? It was shotgun, Willie, a non-conforming badass ready to take up arms and defend his family. It was a twice-divorced ladiesman working through the phases and stages

and cycles and circles of his life. It was a red-headed stranger who wandered from town to town. But soon, Willie Nelson would be a stranger to no one. Soon, the whole world would know him by name, by his voice, by the sound of his guitar, trigger.

Soon, he would be famous the world over when he sang the ballot of that revenge-seeking preacher who murdered his own wife, an entire album that would cross-country music over to the pop mainstream. But first, Willie Nelson had to get himself to Austin, Texas. I'm Jake Brennan, and this episode of Disgraceland is too beacon. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it.

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