Happy Birthday Willie

The redheaded stranger turns 75 today. If you live in Texas (or even if you don’t) I’d highly recommend the latest issue of Texas Monthly, featuring an oral history of our most iconic troubadour, told through interviews with the likes of Merle Haggard, Kinky Freidman and Jimmy Carter to name a few.

To write those lyrics, which are poetry with great music, it requires real tragedy. You can’t sit in a room and do it. Even if you worked 24 hours a day with a committee of men, you couldn’t do it. As a country singer, he’s never happy. That’s not the goal of being a country singer. If you’re not miserable, you’re not going to be very good. – Kinky Freidman on Willie Nelson