Here is an interesting interview with Willie Nelson, a net savy
fellow!
Enjoy!~
Lorraine
********************
photo's by Lorraine © Farmaid 2001
Y-Life Interview
On the Road With Wireless Willie
May 2001
By David Sheff
He's an old-school honky-tonk hero, but the net is always on his
mind
To anyone who's been to the "new" Las Vegas-with its pyramids,
"Greenwich Village," and a South Sea island-the south shore of
Lake Tahoe is a revelation. The snow-covered peaks and glistening
lake outside the window of Harrah's Hotel & Casino are real. As
far as Willie Nelson is concerned, however, it could just as well
be Cairo or Papua New Guinea, since it's impossible to see the
splendor through the fogged-up windows of the bus, his movable
home/office, which is parked in the snowy lot behind the hotel.
As expected, given Willie's reputation (he famously rolled a fat
one in the White House during a visit with Jimmy Carter), the
air is thick with the smoke of two generous joints smoldering
in an ashtray.
The bus is Willie's sanctuary, more home to him than his ranch
in the hill country near Austin, Texas, with its recording studio
and golf course. At 68, and after releasing more than 100 albums,
he still plays 200 shows a year throughout the world; too much
time at home is, he says, "unhealthy-I go a little crazy." That's
no surprise. This is the guy famous for singing, "I just can't
wait to get on the road again."
The miles pass slowly, so the bus, the Honeysuckle Rose III, is
better equipped than most people's living rooms-with TVs and a
sound system that could blow the roof off a stadium, never mind
a bus. But less predictably, sitting alongside an economy-size
box of Zig-Zag rolling paper is a 900MHz IBM Thinkpad, fired up
and crackling with a wireless modem. Next to that sit a printer,
a fax, a Web cam, and a CD burner. It turns out that Willie Nelson's
been online for 15 years, going back to a time when Christina
Aguilera and the Backstreet Boys, along with Marc Andreessen and
Jerry Yang, were somewhere between kindergarten and high school.
West Coast editor David Sheff, who admits that he has worn out
a half-dozen copies of Nelson's classic Stardust CD, met with
the singer-songwriter for his Harrah's Tahoe performances. Says
Sheff: "Nelson doesn't disappoint. Yes, he's got his long hair
tied back in a red bandanna, the I've-seen-good-times-I've-seen-bad-times
creased face, and, listening to his concert that night, that voice-one
of the very best in popular music. It ambles through his great
hits, including 'Crazy,' which he wrote for Patsy Cline, standards
like 'Georgia on My Mind,' and a topsy-turvy version of his signature
'On the Road Again'-a hip-hop duet recently recorded with rapper
Lil' Black. The audiences at the Harrah's concerts attest to Nelson's
ability to transcend genres-he does country, blues, pop, rock,
and classical music. There are rednecks, hippies, and stockbrokers
who share little else in common than their devotion to Willie.
This is a guy, after all, whose fans include Ralph Nader and George
W. Bush.
"What's less well known is that Nelson is also one of the most
wired -- well, make that wireless (on the road he connects via
Go America) -- performers out there. His Web site, maintained
by his children and grandchildren (granddaughter Rachael Fowler
is the webmistress), is as cool as Willie himself. While there's
not much in the way of bells or whistles -- no Java or Flash --
it has a down-home feel to it that includes an on-the-road diary
by his daughter Lana Nelson and a friendly, laid-back chatroom.
Nelson says he sees the site, Willie Nelson -- which he promotes
with a huge banner behind him at live shows -- as an extension
of his music. 'The Net at its best is like good music,' he said,
waving away a cloud of smoke. 'It brings people together and can
take you places you've never been before.'"
Y-Life Interview
On the Road With Wireless Willie
Y-Life: Every musician seems to have a Web site these days. What's
the reason for yours?
Nelson: Well...everything is www-something, but that's not what
it means to me. The best thing about the Internet is the connection
with people. The Net allows a connection that used to be impossible.
An artist always used to be forced to go through the label or
the network or some corporation or another, but the Net means
that I can talk direct to people. The Web site is just an extension
of who we are. We run it the way we do our music-it's pretty much
a family thing. My daughters and granddaughters do a lot of the
work on the site, and we use it to talk to people who are interested
in what we're doing.
Y-Life: Have you always embraced new technology?
Nelson: It's like life. Some people complain about everything
new, but I say that you use whatever comes along. Like anything
else, you can use the Internet for good or ill. You can get out
of it what you want to. There's no evil about it. The way I see
it, it's a liberation. People have a voice like they never had.
I watch The Spin Room [the CNN talk show], where people are part
of a live discussion by way of the Net. Everyone can get into
the discussion that used to be exclusively for the so-called experts.
Watching it, you get your finger on the pulse real quick. You
can have your say, and you can deal with other people directly,
without the middleman.
Y-Life: Napster and other MP3 sites have divided your industry.
Where do you stand?
Nelson: It's all for the good. The public is benefiting, which
I always like. People are getting a bargain-basement price on
all the music in the world. It won't last, but go for it while
it does. That doesn't mean that I don't want to get something
back for the work I do. It will eventually settle in and the artists
will get something out of it, as they should. For now, I'm not
worried about it. I'm not jumping up and down saying, "Shoot everybody
and put them in prison." It's a big world.
Truth is, for all the complaints, music sales are up. We put samples
of our records up all the time. We want people to stay in touch
with what we're doing even if they don't want to buy. People don't
have to rely on radio to hear new things.
Y-Life: How do you respond to artists who have actively tried
to stop Napster with lawsuits?
Nelson: Everyone has a right to an opinion. I'm not putting 'em
down. In principle they're right-the artists should get some money.
But there's a whole other way to look at it. The labels are no
longer the only ones who can make or break an artist. Now a new
artist can get his work out there. There's a distribution system
in place. It's easier to get discovered on the Internet than down
at the barbershop or in the corner drugstore. The power now is
in the hands of the artist and the consumer, which is exactly
where it should be. We burn our own CDs right on the bus! We make
our own promos! I don't use Napster, because I want to give artists
their fair share, but I don't fault anyone else for doing it.
Y-Life: Are you concerned about protecting your copyrighted material?
Nelson: Sure, but this ain't new. There have always been rip-offs
and always will. You're never going to close them all down. We
hoo-ha about it as if it never before happened, but I've run across
a hundred bootleg albums of mine-albums I never seen. I see 'em
all over the world. Who cares! There's nothing I can do about
it, anyway. Plus it can't hurt you that bad. There's actually
another thing that's good about the Net. People always worry about
what I am: country, rock 'n' roll, blues. In record stores, they
don't know where to put the new Willie Nelson CD. On the Net,
you can avoid all the labels. We can just put up our latest and
see what people think. It can be anything. We came out with our
newest CD, Milk Cow Blues, which is blues music. I play with people
like B.B. King, Dr. John, and Susan Tedeschi. People can listen
in and see what they think. I play country music, standards, blues,
reggae. Maybe I'm a gospel musician, since that's my roots. But
I want to open it up, and the Net does that.
Y-Life: Is there anyone you haven't worked with and would like
to?
Nelson Barbra Streisand. She and I should do something. If you
see her, please tell her. I wish I would have had a chance to
sing with John Lennon. The Beatles are back now, and it's great.
I have a boy who is 11, and he's a huge Beatles fan. Their songs
were wonderful-they were literature.
Y-Life: What do you think about rap and hip-hop?
Nelson: Any way you can get out your feelings is all right with
me. If it's pleasing to some ear, it's music. Of course, if it's
displeasing to some ears, those ears shouldn't be subjected to
it.
Y-Life: How does that apply to some of the controversial rappers
- Eminem, for example?
Nelson: Eminem? Listen, I got two Grammy nominations this year,
and all I cared about at the awards was the duet between Eminem
and Elton John. Seeing them together done made my week.
Y-Life: Do you object to Eminem's racist and homophobic lyrics?
Nelson: I don't like the offensive stuff. I don't mind jokes,
no matter how politically incorrect. There's a place for them.
You tell them in back rooms, but they shouldn't be put to music.
They shouldn't be put out for young ears to hear. That's my objection,
though I don't want politicians telling artists what they can
and can't do.
Y-Life: On the other hand, you've done your best to tell some
politicians what to do. How have you decided what issues to take
on?
Nelson: The ones that slip through the cracks. It's why I try
to help farmers. There was the big Live Aid concert for famine
relief at the time I heard about the problems of America's farmers.
This was 15 years ago. I started out thinking we'd do just one
concert and called Neil Young and John Mellencamp. I thought that
would be it. I was wrong.
See, I'd been brought up to believe the farmer was the backbone
of the country. When I understood the trouble they were in, I
had to try to do something to help. I thought it would be easy
to solve the problem once people saw it. I didn't realize there
was a conspiracy against farmers. It's all about putting small
farmers out of business and making way for the corporate farms.
In 1953, there were 8 million small family farmers. Now there
are less than 2 million, and we're losing 500 a week. It's why
we're pushing a new farm bill so that farmers can get a fair price
for their crops.
Y-Life: You're associated with another issue: the legalization
of your drug of choice, marijuana. Despite the new administration
in Washington, some think change is in the air - witness the attention
given to New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson's crusade for the legalization
of pot.
Nelson: Things are changing. People know better now. There's some
momentum. People have watched people smoke marijuana for the last
hundred years, and they see that their teeth don't fall out and
their brain's not disintegrated. Most people now realize it's
not a big deal. There are still hard-core people out there against
it, but their numbers are decreasing.
I wish Governor Johnson all the luck in the world. Medicinal marijuana
will be the first to be legalized. It has started in Hawaii. That
pot is outlawed is so ridiculous.
Y-Life: Do you genuinely believe that pot is harmless?
Nelson: There is a downside to too much pot if you overdo it.
Same with anything-alcohol, sugar. Should they be illegal? A lot
of people I know have quit everything else and still smoke a little
pot to take the edge off.
Y-Life: Doesn't it affect your memory somewhat?
Nelson: Most shit I want to forget anyway. [Laughs]
Y-Life: And does it help pass the time on the road?
Nelson: Oh, there's lots to do on the road. I do the same thing
as I do at home: play music, watch TV. If the weather's good,
I play golf.
Y-Life: And then, of course, there's your traveling PC.
Nelson: That's right. Which we use for everything. E-mail, keeping
in touch with folks, running our business, searching out the best
golf courses when we're driving into a new town, and making sure
the weather will be all right for a round or two. When I first
went online, on a 300-baud modem, you couldn't do much. It was
like watching the first black-and-white TV-a flickering picture,
and you had to kick it once in a while to get it to work. Now?
It's limitless. We can be connected even when we're out on some
forgotten highway in the middle of America.
END