Last Night: Willie Nelson At Verizon Wireless Theater

Willie Nelson & Family
Verizon Wireless Theater
April 28, 2011

See Willie Nelson’s extended Houston family in our slideshow.

There are few times you don’t want the Rolling Stones in your head. A very few. But on your way to a Willie Nelson show trying to fight off the insinuating strains of “The Last Time” is one of them.

Not to be morbid, but the Red Headed Stranger is getting up there. It could be the last time. He looked stiff and, well, aged walking onstage at Verizon at 9 p.m. sharp Thursday night. He ought to; he turns 78 on Saturday. “Little sister” Bobbie had to be escorted to her grand piano.

Then Willie starts to play, and a different realization sets in: The man is eternal. Ain’t it funny how time slips away.

It really does, too. When Nelson and his band – besides Bobbie, just bassist Bee Spears, drummers Paul and Billy English and Mickey Raphael on harmonica Thursday – get locked in, most often on a ballad like “Angel Flying Too Close To the Ground” or “Blue Eyes Crying In the Rain,” the clock freezes and there’s nothing except those notes ducking and diving around one another, searching for the meaning the singer is denied in the words. Beautiful.

On the faster songs, say “Good Hearted Woman” or “If You’ve Got the Money, I’ve Got the Time,” it becomes clear what a unique guitarist Nelson is. It’s almost expressionist the way he scratches and stabs at his instrument – trusty acoustic Trigger until switching to a pearl Fender electric on Hank Williams’ “Jambalaya” – as he plays above, below, ahead of and behind the beat laid down by the Swiss-timed Spears and English.

The carpal tunnel he mentioned before new single “Superman” (a duet with Snoop Dogg on record) must not have been bothering him too much. The way he negotiated the tricky thickets of “Bloody Mary Morning” and “Nobody’s Fault But Mine,” it couldn’t have.

Aftermath’s main (and admittedly minor) knocks on Nelson the past few times we’ve seen him have been that he plays the exact same set every time, and sometimes the songs come and go so fast it can be hard to soak them in. They don’t call him Shotgun Willie for nothing.

Neither was really true Thursday. Gone were anything by his old pals Kris Kristofferson and Merle Haggard – maybe he’s mad at them right now – and, equally surprisingly, Bob Wills. He might have shelved that after the whole Asleep at the WheelWillie and the Wheel cycle.

In their place were several country-blues numbers (“Rainy Day Blues,” “Shoeshine Man”) that sounded vintage but not fusty, “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before” – which drew a laugh when Nelson blew a lyric near the end – and one of those songs that comes along at exactly the right moment you need to hear it, this time Billy Joe Shaver’s “You Asked Me To.” The title track/theme to 1973’s Phases and Stages was another deep cut that cut especially deep.

And all that time Nelson has spent making records with T-Bone Burnett and jazz musicians like Wynton Marsalis lately is paying some serious dividends live. He and the band really burrowed into several songs Thursday, especially the bluesier ones, overlapping and trading licks until Nelson called time with a nod of his head or one final stroke of his guitar. Any creakiness was a distant memory by the trifecta of “Night Life,” “Ain’t It Funny How Time Slips Away” and “Crazy.”

The Englishes (see comments) must know about a million different ways to play a single snare drum with two brushes by now, and showed them all off Thursday. Same as her brother, Bobbie Nelson showed few signs of age on the lively churchhouse licks of “I’ll Fly Away” and her solo showpiece “Down Yonder.” Harmonica genius Raphael deserves a medal for what he did to the already-gorgeous “Georgia On My Mind.”

One bit of song placement stood out more than the others Thursday. After Nelson and the band had about half the theater on their feet and vigorously clapping along with “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” and “I’ll Fly Away,” they did a complete 180 into the forlorn, desolate, almost crawling blues “Nobody’s Fault But Mine.” Both songs are meditations on mortality and the afterlife, but it takes a brave man to put the sobering song that acknowledges maybe this really is all there is after the we’ll-all-meet-in-heaven blessed assurance.

But Nelson had the crowd eating out of his hand all night, and by the time he and the Family finally closed out with a revival-style “I Saw the Light,” he could have sold snow to an Eskimo.

Personal Bias: It’s. Willie. Nelson.

The Crowd: A Willie crowd – people of all shapes, sizes and stations. A whiter shade of Texas.

Overheard In the Crowd: A lot of singing along. A lot of singing along. Also, “Happy birthday, Willie!”

SET LIST

Whiskey River
Still Is Still Moving To Me
Beer For My Horses
Shoeshine Man
Good Hearted Woman
Ain’t It Funny How Time Slips Away
Crazy
Night Life
Down Yonder (Bobbie Nelson solo)
Me & Paul
If You’ve Got the Money, I’ve Got the Time
Blue Eyes Crying In the Rain
Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys
Angel Flying Too Close To the Ground
On the Road Again
Always On My Mind
Superman
Jazz Instrumental
Jambalaya
Hey Good Lookin’
Move It On Over
Rainy Day Blues
Georgia On My Mind
City Of New Orleans
To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before
Will the Circle Be Unbroken/I’ll Fly Away
Nobody’s Fault But Mine
Bloody Mary Morning
I Gotta Get Drunk
You Asked Me To
Phases and Stages (Theme)
I Saw the Light