If they keep playing us on country radio and we get to keep doing cool stuff like playing with Willie Nelson, that's great.
Once publishers got interested in it, it was a year in developing, and it was launched, I think, in 1960. But Willie Lumpkin didn't last long - it only last a little better than a year, maybe a year and a half.
Now, I know you expected me to say that, well, I just kick back in the rocking chair, fished a little bit, listened to Willie Nelson tapes and watched old baseball games on the Classic Sports network. And, tell you the truth, I have done that for maybe about five total minutes.
It must be very strange to live in the world of Willie Nelson or Bruce Springsteen or Pearl Jam. I don't know what kind of handle they have on their own loss of talent.
Willie Mays was the best ever. When I was in college I once made a catch like the one Mays made over his head. Sometimes when I'm lying in bed at night I think about it. It still makes me warm.
What appeals to me about 'Blind Willie' is just how sparse that music is. Just this idea - the grain of it, the rawness of it and the simplicity of it. The directness of the language.
I laughed at Willie Nelson, wondering why he spends all his life on that tour bus. And I look at myself, and I'm sitting in airplanes half the time.
My guitar, it was new when I got it, but it has a hole like Willie's where it's just worn out from my pinky going back and forth over the wood over all these years. I got Willie Nelson to sign that spot on my guitar. I'm a huge fan of him.
I couldn't wait to get out of school in junior high to get with Willie Green to pick up some of the riffs he knew.
Willie Mays was the best baseball player I ever saw. He could do anything.
