Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die: Musings From the Road (8 page)

My daughter Renee with her family

PAUL ENGLISH

I first met Willie through my older brother Oliver. They had booked a job and didn’t have a drummer. I played trumpet, but I had never played drums before. I told them I could do it. Later on I found out I had the beat backward! They found a Coke crate and put it on a chair for me to use as a drum stool. They gave me a snare, and then way later I got a bass drum and a sock cymbal. I just counted either a one-two-three-four beat or a one-two-three beat. I remember Paul Buskirk coming to Willie’s house, and every night Paul, Willie, and myself recorded every song for Willie’s radio show. Our special guest every night was Lana Nelson. She was two years old. She was a beautiful child, and she is beautiful now. After a couple of weeks we got a job at the Hemphill Club, which paid us eight dollars, three nights a week. We had another front man (I don’t remember who), so Willie just played lead guitar and sang on a few songs. Willie spoke up for me when they first got the job because they were trying to figure out who to use for a drummer, and Willie said, “I think we ought to use Paul. He’s been playing with us all this time for nothing.”

I remember one night we were going home from the Hemphill Club and we drove up to Willie’s house, which was this little side apartment. I sat and waited a minute to make sure he got in. Then I knew he got in because I heard a loud noise, which was pots and pans being thrown at him by Martha, his wife. She ran him out of the house, and about that time I figured I’d better leave. We worked for about a month at the Hemphill Club, and then the owner sold it. Me and the other band members went out to play at another club on the Jacksboro Highway. Willie went to a better job than that, but we stayed friends, and I sold him a car. I own a car lot, but I didn’t have one good enough on the lot, so I went somewhere else and found one. I paid $150 for it, got the title and license, and sold it to Willie for $175, with a $25 down payment. Ten years later Willie was playing with Johnny Bush, and I was living in Houston. They would come over to my house every time they came into town.

One night Willie was asking me if I knew how to get hold of Tommy Roznoski, this other drummer, because Johnny Bush had been playing drums behind Willie, but Johnny wanted to go to the front and sing, and so he needed a drummer to fill in while he was singing. I said that I could play drums better than Roznoski anyway. Willie said, “Well, you wouldn’t work for thirty dollars a day, would you?” I said, “I would,” and here I am still today. I am so grateful to Willie for keeping me on and making me a part of this adventure that has been our lives. I played my first job with Willie, and I will play my last with him too.

MICKEY RAPHAEL

In 1972 I got a message from Darrell Royal, the coach of the University of Texas football team. He said he was having a little picking session in his hotel suite after the Texas-Arkansas ball game and asked me to bring my harmonicas and jam with some friends of his.

Coach was a serious music fan and patron of the arts. I was a struggling musician and had been playing in Dallas and Austin with B. W. Stevenson and Jerry Jeff Walker. The coach had seen me play and thought I’d fit in with his famous after-game jam sessions.

The coach and his wife, Edith, were very welcoming and introduced me to some of the musicians. Willie Nelson happened to be one of the guests. I didn’t grow up listening to country music, although I owned one Willie Nelson record. By the end of the evening, I was a huge fan.

Willie was playing the classic songs “Night Life,” “Funny How Time Slips Away,” and “Crazy,” and I would try to play along. His guitar playing and lyrics were mesmerizing. I couldn’t believe this was the guy who wrote these songs. The guitar was passed around the room and other singers sang Hank Williams tunes or ones they had recently written. At the end of the evening Willie invited me to come see him play and sit in with his band.

Well, this piqued my interest.

Several months later I heard that Willie was playing a benefit in Lancaster, Texas, for a volunteer fire department. I drove down from Dallas with my little box of harmonicas and showed up at his bus and asked if the offer still stood to sit in with his band.

He very graciously invited me to play. As a novice at country music, I was lost and struggled to keep up, faking it the whole time. I think by the fourth time we played “Fräulein” I was getting the hang of it.

Willie had left Nashville and moved to Austin, where the music scene was exploding. Long-haired hippie types (my peers) were mingling with rednecks, and what brought them together was music. Willie saw this was happening and found a new home in Austin.

Willie and the band would travel in this camper called an Open Road, like a Winnebago, but it only had a screen door in front, which really made it an “Open Road.”

After I played with Willie for several weekends, Willie asked Paul English, his drummer and bandleader, “What are we paying Mickey?” Paul told Will, “We’re paying him nothing; he’s just coming around on his own.”

Willie’s response was “Double his salary.”

This was 1973 and it’s 2012 now.

Life never gets dull out here. Every day is an adventure and some days are harder than others, but it beats a real job. We just finished an outdoor gig in Las Vegas tonight, where it was 106 degrees onstage. The cooling fans onstage were blowing and Willie thought a heater was on because the blowing air was so hot. He just kept playing and gave them his all.

When I started this gig, I was twenty-one and I’m sixty now. I learned so much from watching Willie play, and his unique phrasing has given me a musical education I would have received nowhere else.

It’s been an amazing ride, and I’m thankful every day for the call I got from Darrell and Edith Royal. I’m even more grateful Willie took their advice and took a chance on me.

Willie has been a friend, a brother, a father, a boss, a benevolent dictator, a sometimes crazy motherfucker, and a great inspiration to me.

I grew up in this band of heathens and I’m thankful to be a foster child in this family.

MARK ROTHBAUM

When you wholeheartedly adopt a “with all your heart” attitude, and go out with positive principle, you can do incredible things.

—D
R
. N
ORMAN
V
INCENT
P
EALE

The album
Willie Nelson and Family
was released in 1971. The cover was a photograph of all the members of the band, along with their families, posed around a campfire. The first time I saw that picture was in 1973. There is Willie, the patriarch, proud, strong, focused—a man on a mission. His wife, kids, friends, and bandmates surround him. At one end, Bobbie, looking so beautiful and proper. At the other end, Paul “the Devil” English, wearing red pants and a red cape, looking just insane enough to be feared, but adorable just the same. Standing around the fire were Bee, Lana, Susie, Billy, P.C., and many others. . . . I wanted to be a part of that circle.

Mark Rothbaum

I was working for a management company in New York City that represented musicians, in particular Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Miles Davis, who, as a matter of fact, got me the job. I was responsible for the day-to-day needs of Miles. I was twenty-four years old and had no music business experience, but I kept going back to that photo, and of course, the music. I was now completely head over heels into Willie Nelson.

When the company needed someone to represent Willie, they did not think of me. I had no desk and no phone. I had no responsibility other than Miles’s daily needs. Soon a music industry veteran was given the huge sum of $5,000 to come in and take over Willie’s day-to-day management. This guy was supposed to show up on Monday morning; in fact, he showed up after lunch! He was a mess. His hair was all disheveled, and sleep was in his eyes. It hit me all at once: positive thinking! I could run this guy into the ground. Why couldn’t I manage Willie Nelson? Why couldn’t I be a part of that circle? I was positive I could be a great manager.

As a kid, I would make deliveries for my dad’s furniture store and get $75 a week in return. Right away I would run out to buy albums with that money. He would always say to me, “What can you do with that music? How can you make a living with just music?” I always loved music. For as far back as I can remember, great songs were part of my life.

Now I had the opportunity to do what I loved, and I wasn’t going to let it get away from me. Everything crystallized at once. I began to study concert, television, and record-company contracts. I was paying attention to details. When the phone rang, I was the first one to answer it. For each question I asked, I continued to have more swirling through my head. About a month later, I had a desk and a phone, and that music veteran was dismissed. I was on my way. But it always came back to that cover.

I’ve loved these folks from the very beginning, and I still do.

Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.

—W
ILLIE
N
ELSON