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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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.
Lawrence Wright on “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die”
One by Willie
33 minutes 28 seconds
1 year ago
Lawrence Wright on “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die”
This week, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright talks about a Willie hit of recent vintage, 2011’s “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die.” That may seem an odd focus song for Larry, a New Yorker staff-writer known for tackling topics like Scientology and the rise of radical Islam, but he’s also a native Texan who’s written whole books on the Texas myth. In that vein, he’s got deep, personal thoughts on how Willie’s most truly subversive move was to wear his hair—in the 70s in Texas!—in long, braided pigtails; the existential quality of watching him and Trigger grow old together; and the weirdly difficult role Larry played in getting a Willie statue erected in downtown Austin.
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.
