![\"M-32-Willie-Nelson\"](\"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/M-32-Willie-Nelson.jpg\")
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Willie Nelson knows how to\u00a0throw a party. He marked his 80th birthday last April with the release of two albums: Let\u2019s Face the Music and Dance<\/i>, covering material from the Great American Songbook and gypsy jazz pioneer Django Reinhardt, and To All the Girls<\/i>, a collection of duets with female artists. Over the course of his career, Nelson has recorded more than<\/p>\n
60 studio albums of country, pop and even reggae. And the living legend has no plans to slow down. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to keep running, and you can\u2019t look back because they might be gaining on you,\u201d says Nelson. \u201cI still enjoy the chase.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Why an all-female duets album?<\/b><\/p>\n
A friend of mine suggested we do an album with all girls. I thought it was a great idea, so I got in touch with a producer friend, Buddy Cannon, and he put it together. We decided on the songs and who would sing on each song. I cut my parts, then the gals came in to do theirs, and then I went back in again. It came together pretty good.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
How do you write?<\/b><\/p>\n
If I knew the answer to that, I could make a whole lot more money telling others how to write. If you\u2019re a writer, you get a good idea and somehow you know it\u2019s good. Then you either write it down or forget it. The best place for me to write is usually when I\u2019m driving down the highway. I\u2019ll jump in the car and head down the road\u2014and within 100 miles I\u2019ll come up with some kind of idea or a line. Whether it\u2019s good or not, who knows, but if I need to write a song, that\u2019s the way I do it. Sometimes I\u2019ll hear a melody and a lyric will show up to fit, or I\u2019ll hear somebody say something that will give me an idea.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Are you still prolific?<\/b><\/p>\n
No, I\u2019m not as prolific as I was in the early days of my career. When you\u2019re writing to keep the weekly paycheck coming in, you find it\u2019s a lot easier to write. I was with Pamper Music back then\u2014along with a lot of great writers, like Harlan Howard, Don Rollins, Ray Pennington, Hank Cochran. We\u2019d show up every morning and play the songs we\u2019d written the night before. It was like a friendly competition between us. I think that\u2019s part of why I wrote so much back then.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Who are your guitar influences?<\/b><\/p>\n
I am a huge Django Reinhardt fan, and have been for years. I listened to a lot of his music, and to a lot of Western Swing\u2014which has jazz and blues in it. I even bought my guitar, Trigger, because it had a similar tone to Django\u2019s guitar. Whatever I\u2019m playing is not half as good as Django played, but I\u2019ve got him in mind when I play.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
What\u2019s next?<\/b><\/p>\n
I have a few new songs. I\u2019ve been in the studio with Buddy, and we\u2019re about halfway through another album. We haven\u2019t decided if there will be a theme like To All the Girls<\/i>. We\u2019ve got some nice ballads and some pretty good uptempos. I have a song I recorded with Barbra Streisand that I\u2019d like to hear come out one day, but that\u2019s up to her. It\u2019s a song called \u201cFriends\u201d that she wrote for us. She recorded her part, sent it to me to record mine\u2014it\u2019s really a good song. Naturally, she sounds great.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
What\u2019s left you want to accomplish?<\/b><\/p>\n
I still haven\u2019t gotten into skydiving yet\u2014though that\u2019s probably not in my future. But I\u2019ve been lucky to do many things in my life, and I\u2019ve been so fortunate to work with everyone from Patsy Cline to Frank Sinatra. I wouldn\u2019t want to get greedy.<\/p>\n
\u2013Juli Thanki<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WILLIE NELSON The projects keep coming for the Red Headed Stranger\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Willie Nelson knows how to\u00a0throw a party. He marked his 80th birthday last April with the release of two albums: Let\u2019s Face the Music and Dance, covering material from the Great American Songbook and gypsy jazz pioneer Django Reinhardt, and To All […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[7403,2005],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12315"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12315"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12317,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12315\/revisions\/12317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}