It’s a Long Story
I finished reading Willie Nelson’s memoir, It’s a Long Story, earlier this week.
The book collected dust on my shelf for a bit. But after I played a cover of Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain I thought, maybe I’ll read that now.
He wrote it when he was a little younger – in his eighties.
Willie is an American antique.
He ‘was born in the middle of everywhere’ with ‘the itch to look beyond the bend in the road.’ He found his mission early on in life when he witnessed on the silver screen a group of cowboys who, sitting around a campfire, ‘cradled guitars in their arms and sang the stars down from the heavens.’ His grandmother taught him and his sister the hymns they sang in church. Willie quickly ‘equated music with love, 'cause to hear or play or sing a song put [him] in a loving mood.’
His ‘heart was being filled up by melodies.’ And he soon figured out how to ‘marry words with melodies.’
Willie is a tunesmith.
‘Without trying, I heard everything.’
‘The words of the song[s] seep out of the darkness. They fall from my imagination like tears from my eyes,’ he writes, ‘putting [songs] together was too easy… I can hardly take credit.’
Tom Petty described songwriting like this, too. Petty said the best songs just fall out of you – they ‘come out of the air.’
‘When songs fall from the sky… all I can do is catch them before they land,’ Willie describes.
‘Songs [filled] up all the space in my head, songs [crowded] my heart.’
Reading these statements from artists I admire tempts me to discouragement, candidly. I am often too quick to compare myself to others.
Songs don’t just fall out of me. I have to dig and dig and dig. I read something like this and am tempted to think, Well, I guess I’m not a songwriter after all, then set the pen down.
But I’m not Willie Nelson. Nor Tom Petty. Never will be.
It’s important to understand that their ability to catch those songs came after years of chasing them, getting better and better at catching the elusive songsparrow and notating its melody in the moments they hear it.
A couple chapters before, Willie describes since he was a kid and ‘in the margins of his days’ of early adulthood that he ‘was always writing songs. Some were okay, some awful, but good or bad made no difference,’ he writes, ‘I didn’t judge them. I just let ‘em happen… I was always scribbling down ideas on the back of matchbooks or cereal boxes, little pieces of poetry that eventually became lyrics.’
This is the station I’ve been in for a long time – collecting words and melodies whenever and wherever I can. Sometimes a full tune comes to fruition. Even a full record. And over time, no matter how discouraged I feel or how long the pen sits neglected on my desk, a melody rings in my ears.
So I pick the pen back up and start digging again.
Willie is hilarious.
I laughed out loud throughout the whole memoir. My housemate said, ‘You’re getting a real kick out of that book, aren’t you?’
Willie started doing karate to ‘whip [himself] into shape.’ He loved breaking wooden boards in half.
His teacher asked him, ‘What’s the point?’
Willie responded, ‘When I’m attacked by a board I’ll know what to do.’
Hah!
He writes of another time when a harmonica player jumped on his tour. He apparently played a fine harp.
‘How much we paying him?’ Willie asked his tour manager.
‘Nothing.’
‘Great. Double his salary,’ he joked.
Willie has a great attitude.
Willie learned to control his thoughts. He writes how controlling one’s thoughts was ‘a helluva concept. It means that you don’t ever have to fall into the trap so many people can’t seem to avoid: victimhood. That’s the worst feeling in the world ‘cause it means that there ain’t shit you can do about your current situation.’
Willie’s sure of himself.
In the studio producers argued with him, ‘These arrangements take your songs to a higher level.’ (Nashville at the time loved to smother songs with strings.)
Willie writes, ‘I was skeptical of that kind of thinking. I didn’t really think I had to be brought up to a higher level. I was perfectly fine where I was.’
Another time the suits tried to convince him that his newest record would confuse his audience.
Willie responded to them, saying, ‘It’s good to change. If the change brings about confusion, who cares? Confusion makes you think. And that’s another good thing.’
Promotion time…
Feelin’ Fine is doing well. There have been over 4,300 listeners now and over 9,000 streams on Spotify. (I haven’t really checked the other services.)
If you’ve been following along, you’ll notice in the last few weeks the number of monthly listeners dropped pretty dramatically from 3,000 to 900. It’ll likely keep going down.
I think there are a couple reasons for this change: Firstly, enough time has passed for the bots to be filtered out of the numbers (check out my last letter for context). And secondly, more people listened to the tunes when they first came out. Plain and simple.
I don’t have social media nor do I play shows (yet), so it’s hard to keep the music at the top of anoyone’s minds. I thought of how many artists I come across, listen to their whole catalog for like two weeks straight, and forget about them until I see them perform or they pop up in a playlist after being buried by other music.
There is so much music to listen to.
Candidly, seeing the number of monthly listeners plummet kind of bummed me out at first. There’s still a part of me that seeks validation from people. This is why I’m glad I’m not caught up in the social media. Looking for love in all the wrong places, man.
Let’s keep making word of mouth great again.
I trust I’m on the right path at the end of the day. And all I can do is be faithful with the time that I’m given.
Just keep walking.
I don’t know what else I’d do, honestly. So I’m gonna go pick my guitar back up, sit down in front of my amp, and learn that Freddie King tune I’ve been listening to.
Until next time,
CLO
p.s.
I made a playlist curated around the tunes on Feelin’ Fine. It’s called Good Vibrations. I like it.
You can find it at this link here.
Yes, I doubled up on my songs. Pluggin’ away.
