Review: Willie Nelson's 50th anniversary Picnic

Late in the run of Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnics at the Circuit of the Americas racetrack amphitheater, I noticed that Willie’s son Lukas had stationed himself to the right of his father and younger son Micah was standing to the right of longtime Family drummer Paul English as they performed.

The next generation, safeguarding the now-unsteady old outlaws. For a longtime fan, to recognize it was to feel a bit unsteady yourself, at least for a minute.

At this year’s Picnic, the second at the Q2 Stadium in North Austin, Paul English was gone, like so many other Picnic performers before and since.

But the Picnic marches on. Willie does not care about your expectations, fitting finales or big round numbers. If you expect the 50th Picnic to be the last, don’t be surprised if a 91-year-old Willie keeps going next year, pushing for 51. He’ll do it if he can.

This year, Willie’s right-hand man was Micah, and the duo made a strong pair. At 90 years old, Willie, who now sits down for his hour-long set, can no longer carry a whole show without a moment of rest now and then.

Micah was there to lean on, contributing three songs over the course of the Willie show. “Die When I’m High” was the first, answering the question of why Micah didn’t play his most Picnic-friendly song during his opening set.

I’m not qualified to judge Micah’s other, somewhat experimental music – my area of expertise is narrow enough to fall right over. But with “Die When I’m High,” Micah swerved into my lane so confidently, you’d think he had three names and a record of hits and arrests from the 1970s.

Micah and Willie sang it beautifully together, likely the highlight of this year’s Picnic.

I’ve only seen Willie a couple of times since COVID, when he was still working out his new, shortened show. I’ve seen (and loved) the same Willie set at Picnics, give or take a few recent songs, for the last 15 years, at least. The new approach, though necessitated by age, was an engaging departure.

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This is the part where we would talk about Tyler Childers – who was in the ringer spot ahead of Willie, actually playing a longer set at an hour and 15 minutes. But Tyler was no surprise. Fans everywhere across the stadium were wearing hats and T-shirts fixed with his name and he sure as hell gave them what they wanted.

As Tyler wrapped up his set, a surprising and sustained roar of appreciation came from the whole stadium. As someone who had often enjoyed seeing Ray Price play that slot at the Picnic, Tyler just wasn’t for me, but, damn, most of the crowd loved him.

Instead, I’ll argue the pre-Willie highlight was Dwight Yoakam.

If you had told me before the show that Dwight would cover a Buck Owens song, I wouldn’t have blinked. If you said he’d do some Merle Haggard songs, yeah, that makes sense. If you had told me Dwight Yoakam was going to sing Ray Wylie Hubbard’s “Redneck Mother,” I’d have probably fallen over.

I have no idea what was behind that inspired cover. Did Dwight – who performed at the Farm Aid II / 1986 Picnic – even know that Ray Wylie was a long-time Picnic performer and “Redneck Mother” has been a Picnic sing-along for decades? Or did he just think it would be cool?

He scored a bullseye either way. Dwight sang the whole song for all it was worth. We all sang along. Dwight and his band were all joy and fun, something harder to find in the very serious younger artists.

For years, one of the highlights of the Picnics has been Willie bringing in an older artist who isn’t usually associated with the Picnic. For the Tyler Childers crowd, I guess Dwight counts – although at 66 he still seems young.

Between the Haggard covers, “Redneck Mother” and a bunch of his greatest hits, Dwight was the most dynamic performer, taking the Picnic back to the old days for just an hour in the evening. The people in the floor seats were dancing in the aisles.

If Willie hadn’t had his name on the show for 50 years, it might have been Dwight’s.

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I missed last year’s Picnic due to COVID, so this was my first look at the soccer stadium. It’s definitely a nice place – the concourse was shaded and large fans made it actually feel pleasant during the heat of the day. There were two air-conditioned bars for the public to duck in (if they weren’t full) and plenty of restrooms, as well as places to refill your water bottle – if you didn’t want to pay $6 a bottle.

Let’s talk prices for a minute. That kind of markup for a bottle of water during a Fourth of July Picnic is just as irresponsible as it has always been. The competition between vendors did keep the food prices somewhat grounded to reality. But damn, the beer prices.

Prices started at $13.95 for a pint of beer – something that discouraged drunkenness among the proletariat.

Some folks were stubborn though.

I was proud of the floor seats I had secured. The very back row of section A3, two seats on the aisle for me and my 16-year-old son. We could come and go with ease and had nobody behind us, save for a security guard.

Or, during Willie’s set, about a half-dozen security guards, each arguing with drunks who didn’t have the right ticket or refused to pour their beer into a cup – all of this happening in my left ear as I tried to focus on Willie.

The floor seats were unfortunate. Line after line of 30 cheap folding chairs, all zip-tied together for maximum closeness. This led to strangers sitting side-by-side, close enough to be engaged. It’s no wonder that some chose to sit on the plastic-covered pitch, farther away from the action, but with a little more Picnic feel.

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When the Picnic had Leon Russell, Merle Haggard and Billy Joe Shaver on the lineup, Asleep at the Wheel was not, I admit, my favorite band. But when Ray Benson is the only old Willie friend you got, you gotta dance with who’s there.

Asleep at the Wheel never sounded so good, at least to my ears. We Boogied Back to Texas. We rode in that Hot Rod Lincoln. We traveled Route 66, heard a little Bob Wills – everything you expect from the Wheel.

Familiarity goes a long way at a live show. Faced with an act we hadn’t heard before – Shane Smith and the Saints – we watched the whole show and pretty much didn’t understand a word. When the band likes to turn it up and jam, those who don’t know the songs are at a disadvantage.

I asked my son what he thought of them. “They were loud,” he said.

The definite disadvantage of having only 8 artists at the Picnic instead of the traditional 20+ is that if you’re not interested in a set … boy it goes on forever. But then, this wasn’t a traditional Picnic crowd. When the emcee asked if it was “your first Picnic,” there was a lot of cheering from the floor seats.

Folks like me had to make do with memories most of the day. There to help that was a slide show of past Picnic performers between sets and before the show. There’s Ray Price! Hey, Johnny Bush! Look, Ben Dorcy! Produced by longtime Willie superfan and photographer Janis Tillerson, the pictures were a poignant reminder of what’s gone.

Walking back to my seats after getting one of those $14 beers between sets, the house music was playing the Grateful Dead’s “Trucking.”

“What a long, strange trip it’s been,” Jerry Garcia sang.

Yeah. Hell of a trip.

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Onstage, Willie is wearing that hideous lime-green Austin FC soccer jersey. This year, instead of “420” it says “50.”

At 90, it’s hard to read Willie’s emotions. Is he happy? Is it a difficult night? Is he tired? As he opens with “Whiskey River” and plays standards such as “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys,” “Good-Hearted Woman” and “Always on My Mind,” it’s tough to tell what he’s feeling.

But there are clues. When he pauses to let Micah sing “Everything is Bullshit,” Willie joins in the chorus, jokingly warbling along “Bullllllshiiiiiiit.”

Long known for his sense of humor – he wrote a memoir packed with dirty jokes – Willie hasn’t often shown that side on stage. Not so tonight.

Willie ends the show, as always, with the gospel singalong, bringing out the other Picnic artists to join him. And then pulls out one more: Mac Davis’ 1980 “It’s Hard to be Humble.”

To know me is to love me / I must be a hell of a man / Oh Lord It's hard to be humble, / But I'm doing the best that I can.”

Picnic done, Willie waves to the crowd a few more times and exits to the left, the “50” on his jersey fading into the dark beyond the spotlight.

 

 

A eulogy for Mom

Before Dad died, I spent about 20 years thinking about his eulogy in my head. I knew that he wanted me to do it. I knew that I would do it. By the time he died, I had three separate Sam Peckinpah references ready and I had to edit it down to one.

When we realized Mom's death was imminent, I expected my sister, Julie, would deliver the eulogy. She knew Mom best. But she inherited Mom's distaste for standing before a crowd as the center of attention.

Julie asked me to do it, but what to do? I thought about several approaches and settled on a letter to my 16-year-old self. Here it is.

Dear Dave,

As I write to you, I am 51 years old and I’m preparing to deliver the eulogy for our mother. I know, you’re doing the math right now and thinking you’ve figured out how much time you’ve got left with her.

Really, it’s less than that. All I’m gonna say is that you should consider donating to the Alzheimer’s Association now and then.

Before we get down to business, look around the house. Your sister is around there somewhere. We have to mention her because eventually you won’t be able to think of your mother without thinking of Julie, too. They will be very close. And I know you think Julie’s got it easy now, but she’s going to end up doing the hardest work, and for a long time.

Maybe Julie should be the one to give the eulogy. She knew Mom best. But she’s hurting now and it’s our job to step up. I’m just saying you should probably say something nice to our sister every now and then. She’ll make you proud, I promise.

OK, business. First things first. Emotions. You aren’t all that good at them. In fact the whole family isn’t really good at it. Our mother is at the heart of it. You can’t blame her, though. That grandfather you never ask her about? He didn’t just die young. He struggled with mental illness all his life. In 1966, he killed himself with a rifle in his own backyard. Our mother was never really the same.

Sure, you really wouldn’t know it at the surface level. She was a great mother and we had a good childhood. There was plenty of laughter and good times. But you also know how easy it is to be alone and in silence. Honest expressions of emotion aren’t really our strength.

I’m telling you this so that you can try to extend a little honest emotion to her every now and then. Before you’re in your thirties. Like now. Yeah, we’ve always been good at not saying the wrong thing. But you’re going to learn that failing to say the right thing at the right moment can be just as haunting.

You need to understand the gift she gave us. The love of language and the written word. We were weaned on Scarry and Suess and Silverstein. We were raised in the library. Our home was a library of its own. And she never proscribed anything. There was no censorship. If we could read it, we could read it. Reading is an education all its own, and the breadth of that education would change who we are.

It’s natural that you want to be like the old man. Hard-living and a worker and a warrior. You’ll get to do at least two out of three. But you need to recognize that your mother’s influence is at least half of your personality. You need to know that and thank her for it.

Our mother was her own force of nature. You’ll remember her laughter. You’ll remember her young, wearing a Luckenbach T-shirt, listening to Waylon sing “Bob Wills is Still the King.”. You’ll remember her mad as hell and cussing like a sailor. You’ll remember her as a worthy opponent at Trivial Pursuit. And you’ll remember her old, worried about her short future, but putting on a brave face for you and Julie’s benefit.

The pictures will help with the memories. There y’all are on the side of a mountain in Switzerland. She was tough. Posing for a photo during a hike along a creek. She was fun. The family photo at Leavenworth. She was … let’s face it, she was just about perfect. Dancing at your 30th birthday party in Luckenbach. She was OK with you being you. Dancing at your wedding. Hey, it’s gonna happen.

You’re going to try and catch up. You’re going to give her a DVD of a movie you made about her grandchildren … only to realize that your parents no longer know how to work the DVD player. You’re going to create a little book about her early life, only to finish it when she no longer recognizes such things. Maybe this time, we can try a little sooner.

She gave us another important gift. We have always been a wanderer. We’ve scared the bejeezus out of her time and again by wandering down the road, into the woods, across the neighborhood. Now you’re 16 and you’ve got a car. She knows what it means to you to be on your own. Pretty soon she’s going to accept it and let you go. 

But that doesn’t mean you have to stay gone. You need to return a little more often, if just for a bit. You need to call every now and then. Because she loves you like only a mother could, and you love her, too. Even if both of you aren’t really great at saying so.

Let’s say it together: “I love you, mom.”

Trust me, someday you’ll wish you said it more. 

And you’ll miss her.

That’s enough truth for now.

Maybe in my next letter, I’ll offer some advice on women and whiskey. Kid, we’re gonna have a LOT to talk about there.

Regards from the future,

Dave


Little treasures, mystery, unspoken emotions and guilt line the winding path to accepting Mom's last years

My mother’s debutante dreams were right there, sacked up in a small plastic bag sitting alone on a metal workbench in my father’s garage.

I’d used those same bags to buy nuts and bolts at the Ace Hardware down the street. I poured about a dozen charms and pins out on the table. 

Some I recognized: A Girl Scouts pin. Tiny Austin High School and drama club charms. Others spelled it out for me: “1960-61 Miss Y-Teen Finalist,” and “Singer Young Stylemaker Contest Qualifier’s Award.”

My mother grew up in an upper middle-class family – maybe even wealthy – in a Hyde Park home in Austin. During the 1960-61 school year, she would have been 14. Things would change terribly for her family, but at that moment she could have seen a bright high society future.

Sixty years later, her teenage treasures were in a plastic baggie on a workbench in Pilot Point, Texas. And my mother was dying of Alzheimer’s in the shadow of Oklahoma.

The mysteries abound for my mother’s side of the family, all stemming from the afternoon of Jan. 6, 1966, when my grandfather took a rifle and killed himself outside the family home.

Mom transferred to the University of Texas from Centenary College in Louisiana after that, but had little interest in classes.

Instead she would drive aimlessly around Austin in her Mustang, smoking cigarettes and developing the silence that would eventually characterize our family.

In late 1967, my mother found solace in the sturdy arms of a good-looking member of Texas A&M’s Corps of Cadets. I don’t know if she thought much about life as an Army wife, but she knew that my dad could take her far away.

I don’t mean to say that my childhood home was silent, really. I don’t remember being unhappy. We were an Army family, semi-isolated from relatives, but we did make occasional visits. When I was young, my parents even socialized with friends. My dad’s life was an open book, full of stories he’d tell for the first time every time he’d had enough whiskey.

But mom didn’t talk of her family, or at least was extremely guarded in what she would say. I was a grown man when I found out the my grandfather’s death was a suicide. I was in my 40s when I pieced together enough clues to realize that he was manic-depressive.

Mom and I weren’t particularly close, not in the way she was with my sister, Julie. There was love there, but I struggled with my own emotions and the silence suited me. Soon enough I was a wayward son like my father before me.

It’s no mystery how my parents came to Pilot Point – the story is familiar to far too many families. When my father retired from the Army, they bought a home outside of Gladewater which they slowly built into their dream home. They loved that house until my mom’s illness forced them to move to be close to Julie.

The three years they owned that home in Pilot Point were sad to the point that I often thought about what else could have happened – though I always came up with nothing. My mother wasn’t in the house long before she had to go to a memory care facility. My dad spent the second year in a succession of hospitals as age and hard living finally took its toll. In the third year he’d die in a hospital bed in the living room.

Going through the house and the memories, we discovered a few new things – I’d have warned Julie not to read those old love letters – but I thought a lot about the things left unsaid and the answers we’ll never know.

The final mystery was that little bag on the workbench. Who put those things in there? Why was it there? 

It is, I suppose, a writer’s crutch to assign such significance to such a small thing. It was, certainly, a crutch of sorts for an Army brat who grew up in a house of repressed emotions. For the first time I wondered about her childhood dreams and tried to guess what she’d think of where she ended up.

Her memory care facility was in Whitesboro, just down the road from a doublewide trailer that flew the Confederate flag for a good while. It’s a damn far piece from Hyde Park in Austin. Cows graze in the field across the street.

Whitesboro wasn’t our first choice. We had originally put Mom in a much fancier urban facility in Frisco until it became clear that the care there wasn’t what Mom required.

Still, my sense of guilt remained until Jule shared a picture of one of Mom’s caretakers with her. 

The love there was unmistakable. Not just from the caretaker, but from Mom as well.

In her final days, there was a steady flow of visitors to her room. The caretaker I had seen in the photo stayed for an hour and held her hand and wept. All these people were there for her, just as they had been there for her. She was loved and cared for.

Yes, she died in the shadow of Oklahoma, far removed from her youthful dreams. But, somehow, in a far-traveled life, she ended up where she needed to be.


Willie's Picnic is no stranger to stadiums

The traditional Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic couldn’t possibly have returned after October 2020, when we lost Billy Joe Shaver and Johnny Bush. There’s just a certain threshold of familiar faces required at this event and as big as Ray Benson is, he and Asleep at the Wheel are not quite enough.

For the longtime Picnic fan, there are questions about the lineup: Where is Ray Wylie Hubbard? Where is Lukas and Paula Nelson? Folk Uke? 

That said, the buzz about the return of the Picnic is that it will be held at Austin’s Q2 Stadium, a venue newly built for the city’s Major League Soccer franchise.

Because I haven’t been to Q2, and I don’t know how the event will be structured, I’m at a disadvantage to tell you how the event will feel compared to recent Picnics at the Circuit of the Americas.

But I can tell you that this is not the first time, by a considerable margin, that the Picnic has been held at a stadium.

Let’s take a look at the history.

1978: Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City and the Cotton Bowl in Dallas

On July 2, the inaugural Texxas Jam in Dallas gave Willie a day for the Picnic and it drew a then-disappointing crowd of 20,000 to see Willie, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, the Charlie Daniels Band and several others.

Just the day before, more than 50,000 attended the July 1 Picnic at Arrowhead featuring Willie, Waylon, the Grateful Dead and Jerry Jeff Walker.

But Texxas Jam co-promoter Louis Messina of Houston’s Pace Concerts was undaunted.

“As far as I’m concerned, this was Year One of the ‘Willie Nelson Picnic,’” Messina told the Austin American-Statesman. “The days of going out in the fields are over.”

The next two years, the Picnic would be held on the golf course at Willie’s Pedernales Country Club.

1983: The Carrier Dome in Syracuse and Giants Stadium in New Jersey

After two years off, the Picnic returned in 1983 with a 3-day series of concerts along the East Coast, ending at Atlanta International Raceway on July 4.

About 25,000 attended the show at the Carrier Dome, featuring Willie, Merle Haggard, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris and the Stray Cats – really. More than 55,000 went to Giants Stadium for the same lineup, plus Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter.

If Willie was hoping to avoid the Texas heat, it didn’t work out. The humidity inside the Carrier Dome was said to be extraordinary and the Syracuse Herald-American dubbed it “the Syracuse Sauna.” And at Giants Stadium multiple news agencies reported the temperatures on the field were over 100 degrees.

1986: A near miss … almost UT’s Memorial Stadium

Farm Aid II in 1986 was set for July 4 and the hybrid Farm Aid/Picnic was originally planned to be held at Memorial Stadium.

However UT remembered the 1974 ZZ Top Rompin’ Stompin’ Barndance and Bar B.Q., where concessionaires had run out of food and drink and hot and thirsty fans ended up tearing water fountains from the walls and causing considerable other damage. Negotiations broke down over insurance concerns and left Farm Aid II homeless. 

The event was moved to Manor Downs at the last minute and drew a crowd of more than 40,000.

2009: Coveleski Stadium, Indiana

Bob Dylan, Willie and John Mellencamp went on a tour of minor league baseball parks in July and August of 2009. With July 4 falling on a Saturday, a stop at Coveleski Stadium was promoted as a "Fourth of July Picnic" and Willie took Dylan's closing spot for the night. It drew a crowd of 8,500 – far more than the stadium’s normal capacity.


Look for my book on the history of Wille Nelson’s Fourth of July Picnics in July 2023 from Texas A&M University Press.


Bullworker: A son's eulogy

One of the things my father told me about his funeral was that he did NOT want us to play “Amazing Grace.”

We were drinking beer in my garage. It was late. I thought about that for a bit. 

Our conversations were never the hurried flurry of words you hear from most people. There were long pauses. Silence. Reflection on what was said. Then searching for the right reply. 

I thought for a bit, then gave up. 

“OK, why no ‘Amazing Grace’?”

“Because,” he said. Another pause. “I’ve never been lost a damn day in my life!”

Did he mean spiritually, as the song intended? Or physically? Both? 

He seldom explained his pronouncements.

He did have other ideas about what song to play at his funeral. We’ll get to that.

We’re going to talk about trees.

When my father retired from the Army, he moved just north of Tyler, Texas, about halfway between the Starrville Church of the Living God and Lambert’s Liquor store, just across the county line in Gregg County.

(If you’re thinking that’s a metaphor, well, yeah. He was probably a little closer to the county line than the church.)

His place was in the country, essentially. He had neighbors, but he could ride a four-wheeler, fish in a pond, shoot a gun. And he had trees. A dozen or so huge, towering pine trees. 

He loved trees and loved watching the animals that lived among them. He had been a hunter in his younger days but in his retirement years was essentially a bird watcher and animal lover. He took in several stray cats, including one that had been shot up by a neighbor’s kid. He waged a peaceful battle against the raccoons that attacked his bird feeders. Shooting them was never an option for him. He had to outsmart them.

Still, he talked tough.

He texted me one day, while he was living out there.

“Shit! Bro! Mom saw a snake in the garage and it hid before I could get it!”

I texted him back, “Well, close the garage door and put a cat in there. If the cat gets the snake, you’re good to go. If the snake eats the cat, you probably ought to move.”

He texted me back: “Move! Hell! I’ll throw the rest of the cats in there!”

(This was the man who would tell you he hated cats)

He had tried a succession of jobs after the Army -- but he didn’t fit in with the private sector. There wasn’t a lot of room in the Northeast Texas good ol’ boy network for a guy who was gonna tell the boss that he was wrong and this is how it should be done.

He worked for a car lot for a very brief time. Would you buy a used car from this man? No. Because if you asked enough questions, he couldn’t help but tell you that the car was a piece of shit.

He loved those trees. Wouldn’t cut one down unless it was dead. But he had no problem turning the remains of oak trees into family treasures. He didn’t go out to Home Depot and pick out a few boards. Lumber was delivered to him on 18-wheelers.

So, Bullworker took the plunge and started his own business -- Solid Oak Wood Products. Did I say these were his retirement years? Hell, we were 15 years away from that.

With a little bit of help, he could’ve made a good and comfortable living selling custom pieces to wealthy customers. But nobody in our family is a salesman and we had no way of connecting the craftsman to the customer.

Instead he sold display cases wholesale. Working himself stupid seven days a week out of his garage. Mom pitched in. Full time. Family members would come visit and find themselves cleaning the shop and sanding boards. If anyone thinks I picked up woodworking pretty quickly, keep in mind I spent hundreds of hours working and watching before I ever made a thing myself.

There was success -- he was proud to send cases to the George W. Bush White House. And to Super Bowl winning teams. He was proud his cases were the finest available -- “none of that plastic crap,” he’d say.

He gave up the business when he got 100% disability from the Army. At this point he had money rolling in, and he didn’t have to work -- couldn’t work -- to get it.

Over those years the big pine trees started to die. Pine bark beetles killed most of them. Lightning struck the biggest one in the front yard. One by one, he’d have the dead trees cut down and hauled off.

If you think I’m going to make a Samson-esque reference to the dying of the pines and the loss of Bullworker’s vitality, well, yes.

There were good times in the last years at Starrville. He was a fine grandfather -- he insisted on being called “grandpa.” “None of that paw-paw shit,” he’d tell me. Even though he was very fond of nicknames for everyone else.

He’d tirelessly drive the kids around on his John Deere riding mower. When my young boys identified him with his John Deere hat, he’d never fail to greet them in costume. We set up a zip-line. In true Bullworker fashion, we didn’t do it half-ass. We’re talking an 80-yard ride rigged up with professional rock climbing equipment. 

And he and mom would come to my house for birthday parties -- state visits, we called them -- and he’d come by himself to help me with some project or other, which usually involved us staying up past midnight drinking beer in the garage and pontificating -- his word -- on topics of all sorts.

But, the dying of the pines. I remember the time I came up to visit and found that he had actually left his tools out on the ground. A sin he had long warned against. There were projects left unfinished. There was a new silence at the house. He didn’t talk about the future. He wouldn’t answer questions. There was a depression. Perhaps a bitterness. Maybe even fear.

Of course he didn’t take to old age. He was used to being vital. He was used to being in command. But it wasn’t him. No, it was mom. She had dementia. Alzheimer’s. He couldn’t leave her alone. He couldn’t make the trips he loved. 

He wanted, desperately, to protect her dignity, and wouldn’t tell the family he needed help. He carried this burden even as his own health began to fail. “Bulletproof” he’d tell me. “I was damn near bulletproof.”

When it came time to leave their home, only a single great pine remained. He needed to move to North Texas to be near my sister, Julie, so she could help take care of mom. But he didn’t want to go. I appealed to his pride: “You can still steer this boat,” I told him. “Or you can wait a year and be a passenger.” 

He went, reluctantly.

Their new house overlooked the empty vista of a grass farm. They owned it for three years, but mom only spent a year there before going to an assisted living facility. Dad spent most of the second year in a succession of hospitals and rehab facilities. 

But in that first year, he planted a tree in the backyard. Not a giant pine tree. Not a mighty oak. Just a tree. Any damn tree. Someplace to hang at least a single bird feeder.

In August. Just a month ago. When he was dying in that hospital bed in his living room, he was impossibly small. In a moment that morning between hospice nurses it was just me and him. “I love you,” I told him. “But it’s OK. I got this.”

Looking out the window, that little tree he had planted was dying too.

That was the end. 

But that’s not where we’re going to leave Bullworker. 

We’re going to build him up again. He deserves to live in our memories as the man he was.

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When Larry McMurtry introduced Captain Woodrow Call in “Lonesome Dove,” he wrote:

“The funny thing about Woodrow Call was how hard he was to keep in scale. He wasn’t a big man -- in fact he was barely middle-sized -- but when you walked up and looked him in the eye, it didn’t seem that way.”

It was much the same way with Bullworker. Even in his 60s, when he had shrunk to my height and his shoulders had been worn to the point where he couldn’t raise his hands in anger if he wanted, his hard stare and commanding voice would make a big man step aside.

Growing up, toughness was a hard-earned tradition for the Thomas family. 

When my grandfather was a boy, his own brother accidentally shot him in the stomach during some foolishness with a rifle at the swimming hole. My great-uncle carried my gut-shot grandfather over his shoulder -- if you can imagine that pain -- and took him to the nearest road, where a passing horse-drawn wagon took them to the nearest hospital. 

The doctor took a quick look, decided my grandfather was going to die, and put him in an auxiliary room -- a shed really -- behind the hospital. 

Grandpa lived. This was the blood in Bullworker’s veins. This was the stock that he came from. 

Toughness was the key to growing up on the farm. First in Magnet, Texas. Then in Wharton. He raised livestock -- became president of the local FFA chapter. He welded. He rebuilt cars and motorcycles. Raised hell on a motorcycle -- he talked about buzzing the local church on Sunday morning and passing a jug back and forth among his friends while speeding down the highway. 

But most of all he worked. Because his dad did, and Bullworker was determined to be just as tough as his old man. He told me when he was under that farm truck trying to put that transmission back together, it didn’t matter how heavy it was. It didn’t matter how tired he was. If it was going to be done, he had to do it. 

And it had to be done.

When it came time to go to college, Texas A&M wasn’t his first choice. I would guess that the military was a sore spot in his immediate family. His uncles had served in World War II, but his father -- because of his childhood injury -- wasn’t allowed to serve. It was a hard thing for my grandfather to live with. 

Bullworker was going to be an agriculture teacher.

Dad told me he and a friend drove all day up from Wharton up to Texas Tech in Lubbock. Right as they entered town, a dust storm was blowing in. They turned around and drove home. Right then.

On the way back, they stopped at Texas A&M.

I’m not sure if dad had any intentions of a military career when he enrolled at Texas A&M, but he found his calling. He was traditional enough to love the farm life, smart enough to leave it behind and tough enough to handle whatever the Corps, and then the Army threw his way.

He was a senior at A&M when he met my mother. He called it a blind double-date. As much as an accidental meet-up as possible. But let’s face it. The man had no problems with his dating life.

Let’s consider this photo.

Look at this man. This looks like a still from a Hollywood movie. That is your good-looking leading man right there. The one who saves the day and gets the girl.

If you’re here because you know me. And you’ve ever wondered why I was determined to be fearless, to work hard, to be stoic -- it was because that was all I could genetically muster to try to live up to Charlton Heston here.

This man didn’t even break a sweat when he worked.

When he left Texas A&M, Bullworker and my mom were married in Austin and he was sent to Germany instead of Vietnam -- although he’d get there a few years later.

The old world was a romantic wonderland for the young couple. Here he was, half a decade away from driving a cotton picker from Wharton to the Rio Grande Valley at 30 miles per hour (you could see every rock on the side of the road, he told me) and now he’s taking in Europe’s wine and food and culture first-hand.

He didn’t pass up an opportunity to point out that I was conceived during a trip to Italy, but I’m a bit more comfortable than Julie who recently made the mistake of reading some of their love letters -- and learning more than she wanted to know.

Once I was born, me and mom came home to Austin, while he went to Vietnam. He only spoke about that year in the broadest of terms. He drove trucks. It was bad. He listened to Kris Kristofferson sing “Me and Bobby McGree” and wanted to come home. 

If anything haunting happened there, he kept it to himself.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I’ve told you about the end and the beginning. Don’t worry, we won’t take another 20 minutes to run through the middle. 

He was a good man. He worked too hard during the day. He drank too much in the evening. He smoked too much all the time. 

He struggled hard to give me the raising that he had wanted. Most often I’d just work alongside him, but he took time out every now and then for a hunting trip. A fishing trip. A Dallas Cowboys game. Turns out, most of our adventures were misadventures. But you remember those better anyway.

He served in Desert Storm. And before that he spent a year in Lebanon as a military advisor. 

He told me a little bit after he got settled in at his apartment in Beirut (I’m guessing it was about 5 minutes), he sent his driver out to find some whiskey. The guy was gone for hours. He finally returned with one small, dusty bottle of Four Roses whiskey. There basically was no whiskey to be had in Beirut. But Scotch? There was plenty of that. So Bullworker, practical as ever, switched.

There may have been some Scotch involved in this photo.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We often talked about the “Thomas optimism.” 

I told him that the title of my autobiography was going to be “It Was Harder Than I Thought” -- because we both had a tendency to look at something and think “I can do that.” He was right more often than I’ve been.

But over the last decade, I’ve realized he carried his disappointments a lot deeper than I ever thought. He retired a Lt. Colonel in the Army, bitter that he didn’t make full Colonel. The Army gave him 100% disability, but he was bitter when he could no longer work. 

Old age brought with it fear. He wouldn’t speak of cancer. He wouldn’t talk about how he would do living alone. And when mom got Alzheimer’s, man he NEVER talked about his feelings about that -- at least not with me. He carried that heartbreak all by himself.

If he drank enough on a visit with me, he’d tell the same story he’d told me a dozen times. How, after he’d made it to captain or so in the Army, after he’d made himself a successful career, he went down to Wharton and took his old man camping down by the Colorado River.

It was the same spot they had camped when he was a kid. One of their few activities together that didn’t mean working their ass off. But now my dad had all the gear. Top-notch tents. Army stuff. Coolers. Beer and whiskey and brand-new fishing poles. He wanted to show his dad he had made it. 

And grandpa came and hung out for awhile, but he didn’t stay. After a few hours, he abruptly told my dad that he had to go. And he went home.

And my dad spent the night alone on the banks of the river. Wondering what he didn’t do right.

Was grandpa really that ornery? Was grandpa already dying of lung cancer and too sick to stay? Or was he so proud that he was too choked up to stay? He never explained.

Fifty years later, my dad was still at a loss for words. Fifty years later, he still was looking for an answer. Confused enough to share that pain with his own son.

I told him it was probably a hard man struggling with his pride. But, hell, I didn’t know.

My own father did particularly well in his life. But he wanted more than he got.

There’s a Sam Peckinpah movie called “Junior Bonner.” No, it wasn’t one of his better-known ones. In it, a down-on-his-luck rodeo cowboy played by Steve McQueen finally returns to his hometown.

Of course, he wants to win the big rodeo, but one of the subplots is the backward-looking, wayward son reconnecting with his hard-drinking, idealistic old man, Ace Bonner.

Now you see what I’m getting at.

The day before the big rodeo the father signs the two up to compete in a wild cow milking contest. Not a serious competition, just a bit of entertainment for the locals before the big event.

But of course they give it all they got, and come up just short of winning.

The father is disappointed. 

“We could have won,” he tells his son..

The son sees the bigger picture. Junior puts his arm around his father’s shoulder and says “We did, Ace. We did.”

Well… we won Bullworker. I hope you know it now.

We won.

Here’s that song you wanted.

(Plays “Whiskey River.”)

Follow along as a Picnic historian rewatches Willie's Virtual Picnic

The temperature hit 100 degrees in Austin on July 4. This time, fans at Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Picnic did not care. The virtual Picnic, thanks to COVID-19, was something new entirely. And, let’s face it, it was weird.

We got 40 minutes of Charley Crockett in the afternoon -- way more than enough -- and about 3 minutes of Steve Earle in the post-sundown finale. The early live sets were way too long for too little. I know folks like Lyle Lovett and Ziggy Marley had other stuff to do, but surely there were more local bands that could have helped carry that long afternoon load.

But the 2-hour finale was interesting and fast-paced. A stretch there in the middle made even the most hard-to-please Picnic fan pretty happy. The interviews desperately needed more context -- they were a combination of surprising new information and old misinformation. Some of our interviewees were good at telling stories and some were not.

If you paid to see the Picnic on the Fourth, you can replay it through July 11. Anyway, I viewed it again this morning (I was, uh, celebrating on the Fourth) and typed down some thoughts. If you’d like to view it again, you can follow along.

---------------------------------------------

1:10 -- They never tell us who this is, but the daring fashion choice of twin denim shirts gives Daniel Rateliff away. I appreciate opening with “Whiskey River,” but let’s keep in mind that Johnny Bush was originally advertised as being part of this show, but wasn’t in the finished product.

2:17 -- The “Fourth Annual” Picnic poster you see under the TV is a poster for the Picnic held in Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City in 1978. The “fourth” is a mistake, as Gonzales in 1976 was the fourth Picnic. All three posters are enlarged versions. The original prints were smaller. I presume they were chosen as decorations for this event and not part of Willie’s usual decor. I just wonder why these three were chosen.

3:56 -- I interviewed “L.G.” in 1996 in Luck. Glad to see he’s still with us. But that chopped edit of his interview didn’t help him out much.

4:59 -- I’ve heard a lot about Dahr Jamail, but this is the first I’ve ever seen him. “Probably the biggest star in the world at that time was Leon Russell. We asked Leon to come to the Picnic and of course he’s agreeing, but his management’s going ‘no way.’ So they say, if you don’t announce it, then he’ll come.’”

5:33 -- Geno McCoslin (who often blurred the line between promoter and gangster) gets the first of several mentions here, but the man who should get the credit for successful radio advertising of the Picnic is Woody Roberts. 

5:44 -- Dahr Jamail: “I got a loan for my car for $5,000 and used that money to print tickets. We printed tickets, gave Jim Franklin a couple hundred bucks for the first poster and then I went out and bribed the mayor of Dripping Springs with $500 and the sheriff for $500 and rented the land out there for $2,500.” This is the first I’ve heard of the “bribing.” Will have to ask about that. It’s worth remembering that the Hurlbut Ranch had already hosted the Dripping Springs Reunion.

6:27 -- Ray Wylie Hubbard: “I think I’ve played at all the Picnics except for probably three or four.” It’s actually been more than that, but let’s give Ray Wylie credit for attending more Picnics than anyone except Willie.

7:41 -- Sorry, Mickey Raphael, the stage was not a flat-bed truck. And it did have a roof. The story goes that the roof came off a few days before the show and Eddie Wilson had a new one made in a hurry out of chicken wire and sprayed-on urethane.

7:58 -- “Well the first one was in Dripping Springs, and it was a shit show.” Thank you Freddy Fletcher. No, it was not on a flatbed trailer. “The funny thing about that Picnic was the money disappeared mysteriously.” Later on, the IRS wouldn’t think it was very funny.

9:10 -- Mickey Raphael is obsessed with roofs. The stage had a roof in ‘73.

9:45 -- It was awesome when Waylon Jennings played Luckenbach in 1996. But it wasn’t cool -- it was one of the hottest and dustiest Picnics. There was such a drought that year that Willie donated some of the proceeds from the Picnic to Farm Aid.

11:22 -- Sorry, Kurt Vile, Luckenbach has not hosted the Picnic “more than any other spot.” Fort Worth hosted it 7 times and Austin has hosted it at least 8 times depending on how you count the outlying communities. Luckenbach had a great five in a row, but it’s not the most.

18:04 -- This is the best shot so far of the beer cans “scattered” in front of the drum kit. What brands are they? Are they decoration, or was someone really thirsty?

18:30 -- Before John Doe leaves the stage, I should point out that X performed at Farm Aid II in Manor Downs on July 4, 1986.

19:53 -- Willie has long embraced diversity, and this year’s Picnic features more diversity than ever when it comes to Black performers. But still, it’s a boys club. There’s not a lot of women artists at the Picnic and I’d love to see more. Anyways, I like Devon Gilfillian’s cover of “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Cowboys.”

23:20 -- I suppose it’s the Aggie in me, but it’s weird to see “Goodnight Irene” at the beginning of the show. This was the last song performed at the Armadillo World Headquarters and I always wanted to confirm that’s where Don Ganter got the idea to make it the closing song at the Dixie Chicken in College Station, but Don died before I could ask him about it.

27:47 -- I mean, seriously. Use some title cards to introduce L.G. set up the year and the location that he’s talking about and let him tell a complete story. 

28:46 -- “It looked like the U.S. troops exiting Hanoi,” says Mickey Raphael on performers exiting the ‘79 or ‘80 Picnic via helicopter. 

29:05 -- Actually, it was the second Picnic that was in College Station, Mickey.

31:41 -- I wonder if when the artists signed up to do this, they knew the finished product would show the house band a lot more often than them. 

32:16 -- I love Steve Earle and I love this song (a duet with Willie on Earle’s album), but I have enough small children that those hanging guitars are making me nervous.

32:55 -- There’s beer cans and blankets and lawn chairs amid the nonexistent audience, too. It’s a Picnic! Set design!

33:30 -- There’s no way Kinky Friedman wouldn’t show up in person. This is a nice song though.

37:40 -- And there’s no way Lyle Lovett wouldn’t be sharply dressed. Damn shame he hasn’t played a Picnic before this one. I’ve never interviewed him before and would really like to. 

39:27 -- Are those Topo Chico bottles new? A little more product placement?

40:58 -- “I think that I was the date because I was the guy with the car.” I know what you mean Robert Earl Keen. 

41:43 -- I’m gonna feel really bad if someone tells me it’s a skin condition, but right now I’m wondering what kind of superhero mask Robert Earl has been wearing that has left him with that sunburn.

44:28 -- Keen’s first one he performed at was in 1995 in Luckenbach. People started throwing their empty beer cans in the air to the point where it looked like a giant popcorn popper during “The Road Goes on Forever.” He came off stage and I was there to greet him and he looked at me and said “Did you see that?” 

47:25 -- By the time this is over I’m going to know how to play steel guitar.

52:47 -- As we go from Robert Earl Keen to Ray Wylie Hubbard, this seems to be an appropriate time to point out I’m really missing Billy Joe Shaver.

53:26 -- This is the slow-dance version of “Redneck Mother” If you count playing the song in the car during the 2018 rain out, I’ve sang this song with Ray Wylie at 22 Picnics. Yes, I’m singing along right now.

57:40 -- This is what I’ve been waiting for all night: A reggae cover of “On the Road Again.” Or if not a true reggae rhythm, at least in Ziggy Marley’s wonderful Jamaican accent. I’m a sucker for reggae versions of country songs I like. I have no idea why. 

58:32 -- The best shot so far of Jim Franklin’s poster for the 1975 Picnic in Liberty Hill. This poster appeared in rock poster book “The Art of Rock” and subsequently fake versions of it flooded eBay. The fakes were all distorted to fit an 11x17 sheet of paper. The original prints are narrower.

1:05:20 -- Ben Dorcy!!! The legend. Guy started off in 1950 with Hank Thompson. I shook his hand once. When he found out I was a journalist he took it back pretty quickly. For some time I’d always spot him running some errand for somebody at the Picnic. He’d move through the crowd and people wouldn’t notice. I wanted to tell them he was more legendary than whoever was on the stage would ever be.

1:07:20 -- I had known Waylon had written a song for Ben Dorcy, but I wasn’t sure I had ever heard it. It’s damn cool that Randy Rogers and Wade Bowen are doing this salute during their time on the virtual Picnic. 

1:10:55 -- Two more stories about Geno McCoslin. The guy knew how to make people remember him. Again, the guy who was behind the Bob Dylan rumor for the first Picnic was Woody Roberts. If Geno stole his idea for Picnic No. 2, good for him.

1:11:54 -- Another Geno story. There must be some sort of anniversary or something. This time Freddy tells the bathroom/exit story that Mickey didn’t quite pull off.

1:13:00 -- Ray Wylie with the quote of the night: “You wanted to be a part of it. Each one was like a magical thing that wasn’t happening anywhere else in the world. … You would show up there early. You’d get there and stay, as long as you could. It was such an incredible world that you didn’t want to leave that Willie world and go back to the rest of it.”

1:14:00 -- Mickey goes into a long story here about Farm Aid II without pointing out that it was Farm Aid II or that it was 1986. I mean, some captioning here would have really helped.

1:14:26 -- I had no idea that Mickey Raphael played on a Motley Crue album. I bet you didn’t know either.

1:15:20 -- My wife and I spent this whole song debating who this was. It turns out I was right, but they didn’t have to make it a guessing game.

1:19:12 -- Jamey Johnson has done “This Land is Your Land” at the Picnic the last few years and it has always been great. Not sure why he picked this one.

1:22:14 -- The Picnic had been short on saxophones up until now.

1:24:07 -- Not only did we not get to see Margo on the Fourth, but that meant we didn’t get the band introduction either. Glad that we added her back on the replay -- we needed a Leon Russell tribute.

1:26:34 -- OK, at least three of those crumpled beer cans on the floor are Lone Star cans. What is sponsor Budweiser going to say?

1:27:41 -- Lukas is just better than us at everything. Hell, even his Zoom meetings are awesome.

1:33:10 -- I just want to know what Sheryl Crow has on her ceiling. Waiting for the Willie Picnic Cribs show on CMT. 

1:36:46 -- The McCrary Sisters have just tripled the number of women featured in the Picnic finale. 

1:40:11 -- Willie mentions Dripping Springs twice in this show. I can’t imagine that we’d return to a Picnic in a field at this point, but with Willie, you never know.

1:41:53 -- It’s not bad to see Micah back on drums. It’s just weird not to see an English back there.

1:45:00 -- Willie sounds good. The time off the road has agreed with him, apparently. 

1:52:00 -- I wonder who is keeping track of Ol’ Dillo while Willie is off the road.

1:58:16 -- The video and the sound have gotten off track on this viewing for me and now this is like a bad kung-fu movie.

1:59:30 -- I never was as enthralled with “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die” as everyone else in the world seemed to be, but I have enjoyed it being part of the gospel sing-along at the close of the Picnics these last few years. 

2:02:52 -- End credits show Willie was supposed to play “I’ll Fly Away” and “I Saw the Light” which traditionally close the Picnic. I guess he didn’t have time, but we’ll close here.

Let's drop this "since 1884" farce and celebrate 80 years of Lone Star Beer

Happy 80th birthday, Lone Star Beer!

But … what about “since 1884”? Well, it turns out that date has been co-opted. Borrowed. Eh, it’s more like stolen. 

Basically, it’s a lie — not any less than me introducing myself as Dave Thomas, wealthy hamburger entrepreneur.

The “National Beer of Texas” has its roots in the 1940 purchase of a San Antonio brewery by Kansas City-based Muehlebach Brewing Company. That San Antonio brewery was built just after Prohibition by Sabinas Brewing Co. and operated until 1939, when it was briefly run by Champion Brewing Co.

Muehlebach bought the brewery from Champion and in April of 1940, Muehlebach put their “Munich-style lager beer” on the market: Lone Star Beer was born.

“But there was a Lone Star Brewing Company in San Antonio in 1884!” you say. And that’s true. Adolphus Busch had an interest in it, along with a couple other early Texas breweries, and it stayed in business (brewing Alamo beer, not Lone Star) until Prohibition shut it down in 1918. 

But here’s the key. It was a completely different company. There were absolutely no ties between the pre-Prohibition Lone Star Brewing Co. and the beer that would emerge in 1940. The breweries were at different addresses, the management and ownership is different. Basically, it’s just two companies with the same name separated by 30 years (the latter Lone Star Brewing Co. would not emerge until it split off from Muehlebach in 1949).

Early on, there was little confusion. There’s no evidence that Lone Star Beer traded on any residual fame from its pre-Prohibition forebear. Instead it stood on its own legs and rose quickly.

Lone Star Beer grew into “The National Beer of  Texas,” eventually outpacing Pearl beer and becoming a cultural icon during the 1970s.

And Lone Star Beer was proud of its own history. They talked of their 1940 beginnings in their official communications, and marked their 25th anniversary in 1965. They celebrated 60 years in 2000. They even had a whole “65 years of Pure Texan Beer” marketing campaign in 2005.

So what happened?

Inexplicably, by 2010 Lone Star had labels that said “since 1845” — not just on the cans and bottles, but on promotional materials as well. I wrote a letter to the company asking for an explanation, but got none. Texas became a state in 1845, of course, but if you’re just going to absolutely make something up, 1836 would have been a better fit for the National Beer of Texas.

I never have seen an explanation or an acknowledgement of the "since 1845" branding, but by 2016, Lone Star had quietly dropped it and adopted the “since 1884” that it brags about today. Media writers who rely on news releases have fallen for it, of course, and every time they do, they just push us all a little farther from the truth.

Why does Lone Star do it? Well, it makes them the oldest beer in Texas — beating out Pearl by 2 years and Shiner by 25 years. And it gives them a rarefied history. Who needs to be associated with the cosmic cowboys when you can claim you were there with the real thing?

But, in the end, the fact is that they are claiming the history of another company as their own. It's not true and it's not right.

The day labor hall, the trailer park and the catalytic converter

For a minute there I thought it was gone. If so, it all would’ve been gone.

Yeah, I know the Public Storage that we built is still standing, looming over the Austin Chronicle. Over the course of a few months, alternative journalists and regular construction workers looked over their shoulders, each worried that the other was gonna report them for smoking pot.

But after two dozen years, a building becomes just a building. You don’t clearly recall the brooms and dust, taco trucks and dirty jokes. Where did we carry that Port-A-Potty again? Never has shit been moved so literally and delicately. What was the name of that asshole kid from Manor who ruined a thousand-dollar door trying to install a hydraulic closer? Must’ve drilled 40 holes in that son of a bitch. Some days I drive by without thinking about it at all.

No the last bit was the Congress Mobile Home Park, where a leathery old ex-miner named Colorado climbed under my ‘82 Chevy truck and sawed off the catalytic converter, in exchange for a steady stream of Busch beer. 

Well, he probably did it for the company, what with Brian being in jail and all.

I drove by again. I took a good look.

Nah, the trailer park is still there, at least for now. The future is settling in just north of it. New construction — condos and coffee shops. It’ll feel just like home to asshole kids from Indianapolis.

This story takes place between the beginning of October and the middle of December in 1996. It was just about 10 weeks. 

I’m pushing 50 and these days, 10 weeks are gone before you turn around. The years go almost as fast, memories vanishing under a roiling wake of stress and responsibility. A quarter-century ago, I had equal parts nothing and nothing to lose. 

And I remember.

* * * * *

My clothes were clean.

I had driven from Hyde Park to South First and Oltorf, unshaven and hungover. I walked into the day labor hall at 5 a.m. in worn jeans and old flannel. Labor Ready was crowded with broke men — those broken by circumstance and those broken by hard living. There was only one guy in there who could and did walk away from successful journalism job. Still, with the right attitude and my quiet nature, I figured I’d be just another guy looking for work. It took me most of an hour to understand why I still stood out.

By then I’d been selected for a work crew cleaning up a construction site at East 41st and Interstate 35. I had a truck and so I was driving two coworkers back north — one of them was Max.

* * * * *

I can’t write about Max. Not and get away with it. He was a young black man who delighted in teaching me the ways of the day labor hall. It took him all of half a minute to figure out I wasn’t really just another hard-up guy. 

(Apparently, having a bunch of silver change in the truck console was a dead giveaway. If you haven’t paid for a tallboy with a bunch of dimes and nickels, you’re not really broke.) 

I didn’t talk about who I was, though he didn’t stop trying to solve the mystery the whole time. “Why you on skid row?” he asked me daily. He was curious and gregarious and a source of nonstop energy — for talk and mischief, at least. Yet the man was a walking black caricature of himself. He spoke in stereotypes, with the speech patterns and subject matter you’d find in the most unabashedly racist material.

(Max had a sweatshirt with a prominent cross on the chest that he wore sometimes. “Lawd, this is my panhandlin’ shirt,” he  told me. Then he demonstrated the Uncle Remus-meets-black preacher routine he said would always get him money — and he was convincing.)

Maybe Max was a hell of an actor. Maybe he was messing with my head. At one point he asked me to scoot a trashcan his way and I literally said “shit, that motherfucker be full” before recoiling in realization that I was imitating his speech. I waited for him to call me out, to give me shit, but he didn’t seem to notice.

I eventually found out his real name was Marvin. I didn’t tease him, instead, I called him “Mad Max.” He never understood the reference, though he seemed to enjoy the notoriety. One day he called me a “95% white boy,” and to my regret I never asked if that was good or bad or what the other five percent was.

I don’t know if he was looking out for me or working the long con. If I had to choose, I’d say Max was my friend.

* * * * *

The other guy in the truck, more often than not, was a Hispanic guy named Johnny. Johnny C was a lovable goofball who was just smart enough to not think twice about hiding in a storage unit and pulling a jump scare on a black guy with a wooden broomstick in his hand. He didn’t get hit — but it wasn’t for lack of trying. Johnny C was the sort who physically shrank from me when I yelled at him for smoking pot in my truck while Max and I ate lunch at the H-E-B at the Hancock Center. (Max had to tell me, I was too naive to figure it out.)

Johnny R was a short, quiet guy who had blue ink prison tattoos featuring spider webs and tear drops. Nobody asked him much and he seemed to deeply prefer it that way. Johnny R was the sort who if I had yelled at him for anything they probably would have found my body a few days later in a field in Dove Springs. (Max didn’t have to tell me, I figured that out on my own.)

We had guest stars sometimes. The tall lanky guy whose body was missing something terribly and worked so little and so ineffectively that Max used him as a prop to educate me in the different ways of passing the work day. I remember “Cadillacking” (working steadily but at a snail’s pace) and “Posting Up” (just leaning on the broom everytime the boss wasn’t in sight).

Then there was the country boy from Manor who thought he knew how to do everything. He figured he could worm his way into the ranks of the real construction workers from the day laborers and ended up being the only guy I saw just get outright fired — after the thousand-dollar door incident.

* * * * *

So that was us. The unskilled labor. Most of the time we swept up dust and debris and wiped down walls, starting at the top, which had windows and a view of I-35, and working our way down to the first floor, which was lit like a scene from “Alien.” 

We worked from 6 a.m until 3 p.m., taking a half-hour break when the taco truck came at 10 a.m. and another half-hour for lunch at noon. Well, we got paid until 3, but most work petered out about 2 and it was usually about 2:40-something when we eased on out of there.

Still, we were better than the average day labor crew. One Johnny or the other would work hard about half the day. Me, the undiagnosed asthmatic, would happily spend the day in the broom-stirred dust singing Johnny Cash songs. And Max would be here and there, trying to hustle an electrician out of sandwich or something.

At some point, the site management decided that, with a little leadership, we could do more. So we were joined by a second car — Brian and Colorado.

* * * * *

Colorado was tall and lanky and craggy, as true a vision of Lonesome Dove’s Pea Eye as I’ve ever seen. He’d been a miner in Colorado during his younger days, thus the nickname.

Brian was a little guy who was just waiting for you to tell him about it. Our new leader was middle-aged and skilled, but had seen some sort of trouble that made it hard for him to get better work.

Two white guys with experience and skill, Brian and Colorado (you just generally said their names together when they weren’t around) were the inseparable stars of the day labor hall. They didn’t have to take a passenger when they went to the job site. They got to pick where they went. When the day was over, they’d go back to the trailer they shared on Far South Congress and drink cans of cold beer, maybe eat something if it’d been a good day.

The work got more interesting after that. There was still plenty of sweeping and cleaning, but it was always interrupted by something the site managers had told Brian to get done. We moved the port-a-potty from one end of the parking lot to the other — the guy with the shakes got to stand and watch on this job. We hauled materials from the parking lot to the lower floors. We did small repairs and installations, sometimes under Brian’s supervision and sometimes not (the kid from Manor and the door).

Hell, we were a unit. For a few weeks, we were the best damn paid-daily team around. 

Then one day Colorado drove up by himself. 

* * * * *

Brian had been arrested on a criminal trespassing charge. And that was all we got. Max pressed for details, Colorado offered none. The four of us stood there. Then Max looked at me. “You the boss man now.”

I looked at Colorado. He just shook his head. This 50-something experienced worker was willing to defer to me if it meant he didn’t have to talk to management. And so it was at 25 years old, I spent a few weeks in charge of the best day labor crew in Austin. 

Colorado hung around with us after that, and a few days in, he overheard a running argument I had with Max — I would drive down the I-35 access road for a ways on the way back to the hall, rather than risking the short entrance ramps on the lower deck. My old ‘82 Chevy just didn’t have much acceleration. I didn’t know what was wrong, but I couldn’t trust it to get up to speed.

“Catalytic converter is clogged,” Colorado said.

“The what?” I was not and have never been a car guy.

“Come on over to the trailer tonight,” he said. “I’ll fix you up. Won’t take too long. You buy the beer and I’ll help you out.”

* * * * *

The Congress Mobile Home Park existed then in a swath of Austin that was home to junkyards, tire shops, ramshackle houses and seedy bars. Hill’s Cafe, not too far to the north, was probably the southern edge of respectability. Beverly’s, a few miles south, was the point of no return.

Colorado was sprawled out on the porch of his trailer when I got there at 4 p.m. 

“Let me drive her to the store,” he said. And he listened to the engine tell things only he could hear as we chugged back through the park and up Congress Avenue to a convenience store where he was greeted by name.

Colorado retrieved two six-packs of Busch tallboys, set ‘em on the counter and nodded at me. About $10 with tax — or 25% of my take-home pay for the day. He climbed into the truck and poured two of them into a large insulated mug and drank deeply.

I asked him what his plan was. 

“I’m going to drink this beer and saw that catalytic converter off.”

“Is that legal?”

“Well, don’t run over any cops and they won’t notice.”

“OK.”

And that’s what happened. He climbed under Old Red with a hacksaw and went to it, emerging every once in awhile to tell a story and take large, cartoonish drinks from his mug. When he got tired, I got under the truck for a little sawing and law-breaking of my own.

Finally, about the time it got too dark to continue, the saw broke through the second side and the clogged converter fell with a clank. Colorado emerged, dirty and grinning.

“There you go, boss.”

I thought about the effort he had put in. “Hell, let me pay you some money.”

“Nah,” he said, eyeing the surviving half of my six-pack. “You gonna take those with you?”

“No, you need them. I’m good.”

* * * * *

The rest of my day labor career would unravel over the next couple weeks. I would decide to go visit my parents for Christmas before returning to the journalism world in Southeast Texas. It was good timing — the storage building job was done and they were going to send us to work at some place called “Sun City” next. I would say goodbye to Colorado and I gave Max one of my nicer L.L. Bean jackets to augment his panhandling shirt.

(And, predictably, for the next four years, getting my truck inspected involved asking around until I found somewhere that didn’t lean too hard on the “inspecting” part.)

But at that moment, the night was cool as Old Red rumbled freshly out of the Congress Mobile Home Park and then accelerated up Interstate 35 like a scalded dog. 

At the moment, the night was young. I had $30 left in my pocket. There were bars up north. With a little help from a leathery old ex-miner, I was gonna get there fast.

On stage with Willie, sort of: Adventures at the 2019 Fourth of July Picnic

Until this year, the Circuit of the Americas racetrack had left me with few indelible memories as a Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic fan. But one of those was from 2015 — Sturgill Simpson playing the main stage in the heat of the afternoon.

Sturgill was fine, but the memory is of watching Kris Kristofferson watch Sturgill — intently. Not quite hidden behind the black mesh in front of the right side of the stage, his lean frame and gray hair unmistakable, his enjoyment of the music just as obvious. It wasn’t a passing of the torch or any such cliche, but it was a fine benediction. It was a moment.

Now here I am, four years later, standing in the same spot as Kristofferson. Standing on the side of the stage at the Picnic, amid musicians and their family, watching Willie Nelson and his Family. Now this is a moment, perhaps THE moment of my 21 Picnics. At least within range of seeing Waylon Jennings in Luckenbach.

I didn’t know I’d be here when I was in front of this stage a few hours earlier singing “Copperhead Road,” in the searing sun with Steve Earle, or over yonder singing along with “Snake Farm” or “Green Snakes on the Ceiling.” (Yes, I had called this the “Reptile Trilogy” on Twitter, and, verily, it came to pass).

Jamey Johnson was onstage when I got a phone call from a friend who said he had an extra backstage pass. I didn’t ask questions. I met him by the gate and when I put that pass on, I was gold. Security didn’t ask questions, either. 

Of course, I fit in nicely among the cowboy-hatted, full-bearded musicians. While going through the Statesman photo gallery the next day, I recognized Colter Wall as one of the guys who had stood next to me for a good portion of Willie’s performance. I didn’t know him because I had missed his set — truth be told, I was just too lazy to hike over there when I could sit on a padded chair in the shade at the Luck Lounge and drink free Budweiser.

Yeah, that happened, too.

But let’s tackle the obvious questions first: How was Willie? What was it like backstage?

Willie was great, possibly better than last year. It seemed grim for a minute as he walked stiffly to the microphone, and his show has been shortened to only an hour — we ended the night on “I’ll Fly Away” instead of the traditional “I Saw the Light.” But if the show started right at 11 p.m. and ended exactly at midnight, everything in between was fantastic. You wouldn’t confuse him with young Willie, but there was plenty to be grateful for.

Backstage was a maze of buses and friendly, hairy faces. Some red eyes to go around, but any outlaw behavior was discreet. I did climb the tower, and if you’re suspecting there was someone up there smoking a joint, you’d be right. Later I would spy a skunk — an actual skunk — shuffling along a fence line. I joked to everybody in earshot, “Boy, I have some apologies to make.” I got no laughs.

There were plenty of attractive women, but nobody I’d have dared call a groupie. There were no tubs of beer or other such hedonism out in the open, which was probably good, given my afternoon indulgence. The stars were in their buses, or the trailers provided for them. And on stage … with me.

Yes, that’s Jamey Johnson stopping to hug old outlaw Paul English. There goes Luke Combs to pay his respects to David Allan Coe, slouched in a chair a few feet away. Hey, it’s Ol’ Dillo — the band’s taxidermied mascot — atop the sound board in front of me. When the all-star sing-along finale closes the night, Coe limps up to the group that includes Combs, Wall and Earle. 

Coe didn’t look much better half a day earlier when he opened the Picnic at noon, compressed into a chair under the weight of the years and his ever-more-ridiculous wig. Sadly, his “Storms Never Last” duet with wife Kimberly Hastings was even more painful to behold than his wig. Still, we got to sing along with “You Never Even Called Me By My Name” one more time, at least.

This is where we compare Coe’s performance with Johnny Bush, who followed him a few acts later. Bush started off a little shaky as well, but gained strength along the way. “All the Rage in Paris,” was a little rough, but I got goosebumps all the same. The difference was in the supporting players. Where’s Coe’s band was tiptoeing around his ragged vocals, Bush’s band was having a helluva time, bringing the San Antonio legend along in the process.

Over the previous few weeks, I had examined files, photos and videos of almost fifty years of Fourth of July Picnics, and for at least half that time, Willie kept answering the same question: “How long are you going to do it?” (“As long as it’s fun,” was the most common answer.) 

When I started writing about the Picnic consistently in the mid-2000s, I would often end my stories with Willie leaving the stage, convinced each time it could be the last.

I have finally realized that it’s a fool’s errand trying to guess which Picnic will be the last. Instead, the past 25 years has been one continuing farewell. Goosebumps? Yes. I realize there are people out there who love David Allan Coe the way I love Johnny Bush, and I hope they felt like I felt: grateful for one more Picnic set.

(Still, there’s always gonna be some wannabe outlaw singing “The Ride” to any sumbitch who will listen. This very well might’ve been the last time I’ll hear anybody sing “There Stands The Glass.”)

Thanks to the rain, I missed Ray Wylie Hubbard last year, who had been to every Picnic that I had been to since 1995. Hubbard has consistently been my favorite set of the day, but this year I might have finally tired of the predictable lineup of fan favorites, if not for Lucas Hubbard’s heroics. I am not a guitar guy, but has Lucas taken another step up? More than ever, I’m thinking of Billy Joe and Eddy Shaver when I see Ray and Lucas together — in the best way, of course.

And Billy Joe? Shaky is the word that came to mind. He came out gripping a plastic water bottle with what fingers he had, only to set it down on the stage. After each song, as he leaned over to pick up that bottle and take a swig, I kept worrying he was gonna fall over.

But there he was, wearing that battered brown hat with its crown stretching toward the heavens and a worn denim shirt, a large hole in the sleeve calling attention to the set list he’d written on his arm. Four songs and he was gone, forgetting the set-up to the punchline of “That’s What She Said Last Night,” but getting a big laugh anyway from the crowd and Steve Earle, watching from the side of the stage.

Earle was the man of the Picnic, a much-needed fresh face who gets my vote to join the dwindling ranks of Picnic regulars. After all, he very much seemed to get the spirit of the day. There he was, introducing Bush. There he was, hugging Shaver after he left the stage. There he was, coming out at midnight for the all-too-brief all-star finale.

And there he was, putting in another fiery Picnic set in the searing heat of the main stage in late afternoon. His Guy Clark songs (including “Rita Ballou” and “LA Freeway”) came off well, his originals (including “Guitar Town” and “Firebreak Line”) even better. 

If it seemed particularly hot in the concrete pit at 5 p.m., it’s because I’d spent most of the previous 2 hours kicked back in the blessed shade and padded chairs of the Luck Lounge. This luxury added an extra $100 to my ticket, but it seemed worth it at the time, even before I discovered that it also meant free cans of Budweiser. 

I pulled up a chair near the bar at the back of the tent and supervised Gene Watson from there. (Earlier, Bush had told us he had borrowed Watson’s steel guitar player because his was “in rehab.” I was thinking Bush was damn lucky to find another steel guitar player at the Picnic these days.)

Watson went through his hits, including “Love in the Hot Afternoon.” Ordinarily, I advise against slow songs during the daylight heat of the Picnic, but this one felt right. Hayes Carll, who had broken this rule a few years earlier — singing a couple of slow weepers as his crowd just melted into the concrete — picked it up this year, drawing from his newer songs and at least keeping the crowd moving. 

I left the shade and had meant to pick up a bottle of water and a burger on the way to see Earle when I picked up an $8 tall boy instead. By the time Earle was done, I was half-lit and thinking of that long 90 minutes between the end of Alison Krauss and the start of “Whiskey River,” with nothing to do. It’d be hard enough to stay sober for Luke Combs’ set, and now I had a head start in the wrong direction.

Salvation, oddly enough, was backstage. Over the next five hours, there was too much to take in to think about drinking. For instance, I bet you didn’t know there’s a small battalion of roadies under the stage. Some in hammocks, others in front of glowing computer monitors and cell phone screens. That’s not how we did it in Luckenbach in the ‘90s, y’all.

Back in those days I knew a bar owner who referred to the pop country of Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney as “flat-belly music” — meaning that they were more models than musicians. I reckon the guy did not anticipate Luke Combs.

I saw just enough of Combs to feel that he was an OK ticket-pusher for the Picnic. On the scale of Brantley Gilbert (so bad he’s entertaining) to Eric Church (dreadfully self-serious) to Dierks Bentley (entertainingly OK), he’s closer to Bentley than Church.

(Don’t ask me about Nathaniel Rateliff. I missed every bit of him, wheezing my way up the tower and limping my way down.)

And here we are, back at Willie. His walk is stiffer, his set shorter. We get songs ranging from “Beer for my Horses” to “My Favorite Picture of You.” We get standards ranging from “Whiskey River” (of course) to “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die” (of course). 

I stay until the end. What’s a Picnic story without a description of Willie disappearing backstage? It happens quickly this year, one gospel song and then he’s gone — passing right by me as he heads for his bus.

I go the opposite way. Down the stairs at stage left and through the gate. Into the crowd, heading for my car. 

TEXAS PRE-PROHIBITION BEERS: Who are the top nine?

By the mid-1840s, the Germans were coming ashore at Indianola and finding room for themselves throughout Texas. As soon as they settled, they started brewing beer, of course. The Czechs did the same — with the added bonus of kolaches. Whatever Texans thought about immigration then or whatever your views are now, there’s no doubt it was a damn fine thing for Texas beer.

Home brewing slaked the immediate thirst, but as individual brewers began to prove their talent, larger operations began taking shape in towns such as New Braunfels and La Grange. True commercial brewing in Texas, however, first emerged in the state’s oldest urban center, San Antonio.

Things got started by (German immigrant) William Menger who started his Western Brewery in 1855 even as raids by Comanches were still winding down. You might have heard of Menger’s hotel, which he built a few years later. Fellow German Charles Degen was his brewmaster and when Menger shut down his brewery in 1878, Degen operated his own brewery until 1915. Indeed, San Antonio was the early beer capital of Texas, boasting at least 8 breweries before Prohibition that lasted a decade or more.

I can recall the bit of beer memorabilia (a Pearl beer calendar, give to me by my wife who probably regrets the move) that sparked me to first dive into the history of Texas beer. Given the lack of definitive information I had then, I decided to limit my investigation to post-Prohibition Texas beers — easily traceable from the 1930s boom down to the remaining trio of Lone Star, Pearl and Shiner.

I do not recall what inspired me, these five years later, to study the pre-Prohibition beers. I’m sure it was something very attractive on eBay that my heart desired and my wallet rejected. Once the desire to learn about them was sparked, though, all it took was to find Mike Hennech’s book “The Encyclopedia of Texas Breweries” to give me a base of knowledge to operate from.

The goal for this series was to narrow the field and come up with a list of the top pre-Prohibition Texas breweries. It was easy enough to eliminate the startup breweries that only lasted a year or two, or perhaps never opened at all. Then I came up with two rules: The brewery had to have lasted 10 years and it had to exist into the 1900s when rail lines and growing technology allowed brewing on a scale we would today consider to be commercial.

The second rule eliminated the Kreische Brewery near La Grange which for a short time was one of the largest in Texas. Heinrich Kreische opened his brewery in the 1860s, not long after the Western Brewery, which I have also eliminated. The rule likewise rules out the William Esser Brewery in San Antonio, which was absorbed into Adolphus Busch’s Lone Star Brewery in 1884, and Alamo Brewing Co., also swallowed up by Lone Star.

With 11 breweries on my list, it was time for some judgment calls. Because of their continuing service to Texas, I bent the 10-year rule to let Shiner in (it was open for 9 years before Prohibition). Then I had to take a trio of San Antonio breweries off the list: The Degen Brewery, the Ochs & Aschbacher Brewery and Schober Ice & Brewing. All three simply did not match the remaining nine’s level of success and recognition (though Schober did produce some really nice promotional items which you could buy for me if you ever see any).

So here are the Texas pre-pro nine: Dallas Brewery, El Paso Brewing Association, Texas Brewing Co., Galveston Brewing Co., American Brewing Association, Houston Ice & Brewing, San Antonio Brewing Association, Lone Star Brewing Co. and Shiner Brewing Association.

Tomorrow, we start with the Metroplex.