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PODCAST

One by Willie

Each week, music writer John Spong talks to one notable Willie Nelson fan about one Willie song that they love, leading to highly personal looks at the life, art, and legend of a genuine American folk hero. Listen here.

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All Episodes

50:58

BONUS: Sound Opinions - In-Law Country

One by Willie ·

2025/05/27

This is an episode of Sound Opinions with author Geoffrey Himes, who focuses on the scene around Emmylou Harris, Rosanne Cash, Guy Clark and others and how it changed the scope of country music forever. He calls this group “in-law country.”Sound Opinions has been publishing new podcast episodes every week for more than 25 years. Take two nationally respected rock critics Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis, the latest music news, personal commentary, and exclusive interviews and performances, add a

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48:03

Bonnie Raitt on "Getting Over You" (special Willie's...

One by Willie ·

2025/04/29

In a special, icon-on-icon birthday tribute, 13-time Grammy winner and longtime Willie friend, fan, and collaborator Bonnie Raitt talks about their sublime 1993 duet, “Getting Over You.” It was a cornerstone of one of the most important albums of Willie’s career, Across the Borderline, and produced by the brilliant Don Was—who also produced Bonnie’s own masterpieces Nick of Time and Luck of the Draw. Bonnie gets into all that, likening Willie in the studio to both the Cheshire Cat and Yoda,

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40:12

Conor Oberst on "Undo the Right"

One by Willie ·

2025/03/26

Brilliant indie rock-pop-and-folk singer-songwriter Conor Oberst, of Bright Eyes and Monsters of Folk fame, talks about another of Willie’s famous Pamper Demos, “Undo the Right.” It was one of Willie’s earliest efforts for the Pamper Publishing Company, a co-write with Hank Cochran, the legendary songwriter who first championed him when he moved to Nashville. That gets Conor thinking about the craft of songwriting, about how sneaking contradictory or counterintuitive ideas into songs helps

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37:51

Mark Seliger on "Stardust"

One by Willie ·

2025/03/19

Revered photographer Mark Seliger—who’s taken iconic images of everyone from Barack Obama and the Dali Lama to Kurt Cobain and Ice T—talks about the song that he says has informed almost every photo he’s taken of his friend Willie Nelson, 1978’s “Stardust.” Mark was a college freshman on a long, lonely road trip the first time he heard it, and he describes channeling that experience, plus the work of Edward Curtis, into his first great Willie portrait nearly twenty years later. From there

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45:25

Larry Gatlin on "She's Not for You"

One by Willie ·

2025/03/12

Larry Gatlin, a card-carrying member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame (“All the Gold in California,” “Broken Lady,” etc.), focuses on “She’s Not for You,” off Willie’s game-changing 1973 album, Shotgun Willie. Well-read Willie nerds know that record, cut in New York for Atlantic Records, was the closest Willie had yet come to creative control of a project, and Larry, who played guitar and sang backup in the sessions, describes just how different that was from the Nashville process

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43:33

Adrian Quesada on "I Never Cared for You"

One by Willie ·

2025/03/05

Black Puma Adrian Quesada, the Austin-based guitarist, producer, and songwriter who also co-founded Grammy-winning Latin funk orchestra Grupo Fantasma, looks at the centerpiece of Willie’s 1998 album Teatro, “I Never Cared for You.” That album, produced in a small movie house by Daniel Lanois as a showcase for Willie’s guitar-picking over a bouncing bedrock of Afro-Cuban rhythms, is considered a masterpiece by Willie World insiders. A close listen by Adrian leaves him marveling at the

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52:14

Amanda Petrusich on "Reasons to Quit"

One by Willie ·

2025/02/26

New Yorker music critic Amanda Petrusich looks at the other big hit off Willie and Merle Haggard’s classic 1983 Pancho & Lefty album, “Reasons to Quit.” It’s a classic Haggard drinking song, but a little more pensive than most, and Amanda reframes it—and really, all of Pancho & Lefty—as an example of what she calls the Outlaw’s Conundrum, i.e. what’s an old rebel to do when the time comes to settle down? Then we get into the all-star band that backed Willie and Merle on the record

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47:42

Charlie Sexton on "I Let My Mind Wander"

One by Willie ·

2025/02/19

Before he received wide acclaim as Bob Dylan’s lead guitarist in the early 2000s, Charlie Sexton was a fixture of the Austin music scene going back almost as far as Willie himself, having first performed publicly in 1978, as a self-taught, nine-year-old, guitar prodigy invited onstage at the famous Continental Club. This week, Charlie the producer/bandleader/singer-songwriter nerds all the way out on one of Willie’s extra-obscure, early-60’s Pamper Demos, “I Let My Mind Wander,” a recording

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36:16

John Mellencamp on "Funny How Time Slips Away"

One by Willie ·

2025/02/12

John Mellencamp, one of Willie’s fellow Rock and Roll Hall of Fame members and a Farm Aid co-founder, has been a fan since first hearing “Funny How Time Slips Away” as a pre-teen in Seymour, Indiana. That song was one of Willie’s first contributions to the American Songbook, a reliable hit for other artists for nearly 15 years before Willie finally became a star, and it gets Mellencamp musing on parallels between early Willie and Bob Dylan—and how he later followed Willie’s lead in his own

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36:34

Paul Begala on "Heartland"

One by Willie ·

2025/02/05

CNN political analyst Paul Begala, a former White House chief strategist for Bill Clinton and lifelong Willie nerd, talks about “Heartland, a song Willie co-wrote and recorded with Bob Dylan for his 1993 masterpiece, Across the Borderline. “Heartland” was inspired by the American farm crisis of the mid-eighties, a tragedy Begala saw first-hand as a young speechwriter working his first presidential campaign in 1987, and one that he still has a hard time discussing. But it’s in those

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33:52

Billy Strings on "Stay a Little Longer"

One by Willie ·

2025/01/29

One of the most mind-blowing guitarists on earth, Billy Strings, talks about an all-time great Willie and Trigger workout, “Stay a Little Longer,” off the 1978 double-album Willie and Family Live. The song’s an old Bob Wills standard that Willie updated, made his own, and plays here at a careening, 90-mph pace that Billy says blazes like bluegrass—before adding that he hears in it a hallmark of Willie’s picking: integrity in every note. From there he describes a magical day cutting

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37:46

Miranda Lambert on “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow...

One by Willie ·

2025/01/22

The reigning queen of country music, Miranda Lambert, talks about one of the all-time great Outlaw anthems, Willie and Waylon’s Grammy-winning, #1 hit from 1978, “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow up to Be Cowboys.” It’s a song Miranda can’t remember ever not knowing, one she suspects she first heard her dad played on the front porch, before she could even walk. The memory of those family get-togethers gets her thinking about the vital role pickin’ parties have played not just in her own

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03:10

Introducing One by Willie Season 6

One by Willie ·

2025/01/15

Music writer John Spong talks each week to one notable Willie fan about one Willie song they love, then runs down the kinds of rabbit holes that open up when the subject is Willie Nelson. Starting January 22, ten new episodes featuring Miranda Lambert, John Mellencamp, Billy Strings, Black Puma Adrian Quesada, New Yorker music critic Amanda Petrusich, and so on…each giving a uniquely personal take on the life and art of a genuine American folk hero.

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03:58

Introducing Viva Tejano

One by Willie ·

2024/11/06

Introducing the latest podcast from Texas Monthly, "Viva Tejano.” Latin music is ascending in the U.S., and, in some surprising ways, much of the story behind the trend begins in Texas. On Viva Tejano, host J.B. Sauceda talks with legendary tejano artists and well-known tejano music fans about how the music has shaped their lives. It’s a nostalgic journey and a close look at the influences behind many of today’s biggest acts in música Mexicana. Audio subscribers to Texas Monthly can listen

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34:20

S5 E10: Lucinda Williams on “Angel Flying Too Close...

One by Willie ·

2024/04/03

This week, one of America’s greatest living poets, singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams, celebrates the easy beauty of one of Willie’s most cherished songs, “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground.” From there she’ll get into how inspiring it was to first see Willie do his thing when she moved to Austin in 1974; how weird it was, when she moved back to Austin in the 80s, to live in a run-down apartment complex-cum-artist’s colony that Willie owned on South Congress—sharing it with the old boyfriend,

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42:10

S5 E9: Lana Nelson on “Red Headed Stranger”

One by Willie ·

2024/03/27

This week, Willie’s first-born, daughter Lana Nelson, talks about one of the songs her dad used to sing to her at bedtime, “Red Headed Stranger,” calling his breakthrough 1975 recording of it one of the first times an album of his sounded the way he did at home. From there she’ll walk us through some wonderful family history...like dodging rent-hungry landlords during the lean years, her dad’s hog farm/commune outside Nashville through the RCA years, and the session with Merle Haggard that produced

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37:28

S5 E8: Wade Bowen on “Me and Paul”

One by Willie ·

2024/03/20

This week, one of the brightest stars of the Texas Country/Red Dirt scene, singer-songwriter Wade Bowen, examines “Me and Paul,” Willie’s 1971 chronicle of the road-warrior life he was sharing with his erstwhile partner in crime, drummer Paul English. It’s a perfect song for Wade to get into, partly because, as he rightly points out, Willie was a progenitor of the circuit where he makes his living now, but also because of the setting for our visit: Wade zoomed in from his tour bus, which was broken

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40:46

S5 E7: John Leventhal on “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain”

One by Willie ·

2024/03/13

This week, six-time Grammy-winning producer, songwriter, and virtuoso guitarist John Leventhal—see Shawn Colvin’s A Few Small Repairs; his wife, Rosanne Cash’s The River and the Thread—discusses the song that first hipped him to the genius of Willie, 1975’s “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” He describes it with a producer’s ultimate praise, calling it a record that seems to exist outside of any era, before getting into his session work with the Hall of Fame band that backed Willie on 1993’s Across the

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36:25

S5 E6: Susan Tedeschi on “Somebody Pick Up My Pieces”

One by Willie ·

2024/03/06

This week, one of Willie’s longtime tour mates, Grammy-winning blues singer and guitarist Susan Tedeschi, talks about a deep cut off his 1998 album with Daniel Lanois, Teatro, “Somebody Pick Up My Pieces.” It’s a song she and her husband, slide-guitar hero Derek Trucks, play almost nightly with their group, the Tedeschi Trucks Band, and it gets her thinking aloud on a foundational principle of Willie World: The absolute importance of making music with people you love—with meaty cameo appearances by

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39:27

S5 E5: Bruce Robison on “Walkin’”

One by Willie ·

2024/02/28

Singer-songwriter Bruce Robison is famous for writing highly intelligent, richly detailed country songs—that happen also to be incredibly sad. (See “Angry All the Time,” by Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, and “Travelin’ Soldier,” by the Chicks.) This week, he focuses on a track that first taught him how emotionally sophisticated country music can be, “Walkin,’” off Willie’s 1974 masterpiece, Phases and Stages...before describing his own Willie tribute song, “What Would Willie Do,” and the weird reception

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