Willie in the Bardo
I am not feeling much like an outlaw at the Outlaw Music Festival.
Maybe it’s the $21 beers, or the Mosh Burger™ with its meat patties that are “built to thrash,” or the even the omni-present ad for the latest Citibank credit card. (Scan the QR code to apply!) I noticed they aren’t showing it to the people who have paid for seats under the awning. This one’s just for us out here in general admission, huddled up in folding chairs, or otherwise prone on the lawn.
The weed gummies we bought at the Christian dispensary out on the outer edge of town are a total bust. I should have clocked it sooner: All of the pre-rolls in there had little white crosses stamped on them.
Oh, Missouri. Pure anathema. Place of muddy dreams.
The old-timers in front of us are the only ones doing this festival right, sprawled out on the grass and chain-smoking little Cheyenne cigars. He looks like Willie Nelson’s slightly younger cousin. She’s wearing bedazzled jeans and drinks slowly from a giant can of “Smirnoff Smash: Red White & Berry.”
They just spent most of Bob Dylan’s set throwing popcorn at people walking toward the bathroom. Earlier today, they sparked a joint and tried passing it to some kids sitting next to them.
The kids shook it off meanly, staunchly, so much so that Willie Nelson’s slightly younger cousin actually said, “Gee-whiz.”
As we wait for the stage to be change over from Dylan to Willie, I look over at Sara, who’s wearing my father’s crop top from the original Farm Aid in 1985. The lineup on the back serves mostly as obituary now, but both Dylan and Willie are on there.
I realize that we’re participating in one of our last great shared American traditions: the Willie Nelson concert. Culturally ubiquitous, now this thing is multi-generational, venturing out to some state fairgrounds or football field or speedway infield across this American empire to see Willie Nelson.
Not only because you were told that you just had to go do it, but because you knew it was an important thing for you to do. A certain American rite-of-passage. An alternate kind of patriotism itself.
You went out and you got drunk. You got sunburned. You got lost, or you got stoned if you were lucky, and stood in a patch of grass and squinted to see Willie Nelson. He was singing somewhere off in the distance, and Trigger was hanging loose around his middle.
We all share some version of this story, from our eldest all the way down. I bet you took a picture with your friends like this:
We wound up at Waffle House.
How about you?
When the house lights dimmed, the music video for “Living in the Promiseland” played on the screens.
Give us your tired and weak
And we will make them strong
Bring us your foreign songs
And we will sing along
Leave us your broken dreams
We'll give them time to mend
There's still a lot of love
Living in the Promiseland
He played the whole video and then he let us sit with it for a moment. No speech. Nothing.
Willie Nelson wanted us to think about it.
About all of this. This promiseland. Our country. Its inherent greed and emptiness. How all of this madness and suffering is actually just more business as usual around here. Just another cruel chapter in our long legacy of anger.
In that quiet, the curtain finally dropped, and Willie Nelson fell back in to “Whiskey River.” Can you name me a more American sound than the first twenty seconds of this?
Halfway through his set, Sara comes up to me with crying fresh in her voice and asks the question that I assume everyone has been asking for the last twenty five years. At least.
“He’s going to die soon. Isn’t he?”
It doesn’t look good. He keeps blowing his nose and coughing into a white towel during songs. He’s sweating a lot. His voice cracks when he sings the first verse of “Funny How Time Slips Away”, right as he asks himself “How am I doing?” You can sort of see it in his eyes if you look hard enough at the screen.
The end of the road.
Willie Nelson is 92 years old. He had his 70th birthday blowout special on live TV, Live and Kicking, back in 2003. He’s been on this perpetual last chance tour for so long now I think we all kind of forgot that one day Willie Nelson was going to have to die.
Tonight feels less like a concert and more like we're paying our respects to Willie Nelson and that pure, ineffable thing he’s come to represent. In lieu of prayer, we all sing “Night Life" and “Crazy" and “Georgia On My Mind.” Just like our parents did before us and some of their parents did before them. I imagine my dad, forty years ago, doing the very same thing in the shirt that Sara is wearing right now.
As the set finishes, I start actively thinking about his death. About how when we do finally lose him, we will be losing along with him the America that Willie Nelson always believed in.
I am now openly grieving at the Willie Nelson concert.
How’s your summer been?
Thanks as always for being a part of this.
The Five and Dime is a member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Each week, the Collaborative features new work from writers like Art Cullen, Mary Swander, Peter Hedges, and dozens of others across Iowa.
This is easily my favorite substack I read. Great stuff, man.
If this was STL i was there and the transition from “last leaf on the tree” to “roll me up and smoke me when i die” did in fact make me cry at the willie nelson show!!! Also we spent $42 on a beer, a pretzel, and a little tube of ice cream </3