Willie Nelson's new memoir is largely episodic, made up of random Musings From the Road, as the book's subtitle reads. In many ways, it reads like cloudy memories and sudden observations churned up during a dreamy, long, twilight reverie fueled by thick clouds of fragrant ganja smoke.
The fully-titled Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die also includes many photographs from over the years. Many of these are also dreamlike images and have never been published before.
The book itself is slim and modest, perhaps 6 by 9 inches, even in hardback, and -- at only 175 pages long -- is almost the size of a prayer book. I'm sort of surprised that this book wasn't published on special rolling papers bound into a deluxe hemp folder.
It is best read episodically, a tiny bit at a time, rather than being absorbed in one rapid gulp. Small bites are good, like nibbles of popcorn during a leisurely, slow-paced movie.
By now, so many decades into his fabled life and career, Willie fans pretty much know what to expect from him. And he does not let his readers down with his Musings From the Road.
Kinky Friedman's foreword to the book also does not disappoint. In summing up Willie's abandonment of Nashville for Texas, he writes, "Willie told the Nashville music establishment the same words Davy Crockett had told the Tennessee political establishment: 'Y'all can go to hell -- I'm going to Texas.'"
Willie's voice in the book is that of a gentle and knowing, but aging wise-ass. With a sense of humor. Here's one of his jokes I can repeat here:
"A drunk fell out of a second-floor window. A guy came running up and asked, 'What happened?' The drunk said, 'I don't know. I just got here.'"
This amounts to a surprisingly succinct account of Willie's life and career, told through his remembrances and sections told by his wife, children, other relatives, his band and many of his friends. And also many of the lyrics to his songs. It amounts to a scrapbook summary of his childhood, his adulthood, his family, his band and his life in music.
He begins with memories of a happy childhood in Abbott, Texas, where he and sister Bobbie were raised by their grandparents after their parents more or less went their own way. They grew up in an atmosphere of love, the church and music. Bobbie is still in Willie's band and cooks for him on the bus. They return to Abbott as often as possible.
Willie recalls he began drinking and smoking at age 6. He would gather a dozen eggs, take them to the grocery store and trade them for a pack of Camel cigarettes. He preferred Camels, because he liked the picture of the camel on the pack. "After all, I was only 6. They were marketing directly to me!"
He became addicted to both cigarettes and drinking and finally kicked both habits -- especially after his lungs began hurting -- and traded them for a life of weed. After he was busted in Texas for weed, he formed the Teapot Party, which advocates legalization and he writes quite a bit about that in the book. He has, he writes, lost many friends and relatives to cigarettes and alcohol, but he knows of no marijuana fatalities.
He is happiest now, he writes, in his house's hideout room on Maui, which his brother-in-law named "Django's Orchid Lounge." The "Orchid Lounge" part, of course, is obvious, from the Nashville beer joint where Willie got his Nashville start. "Django" is from the great gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt, whom Willie feels is the greatest guitarist of all time. Ray Price, by the way, is Willie's choice for the greatest country singer of all time.
Willie loves to sit in his Django's Orchid Lounge and play dominoes and poker and chess with many of his Maui friends and such visitors as Ziggy Marley and Woody Harrelson while wife Annie cooks for everyone.
In addition to the photographs, Willie's son, Micah, contributes several drawings.
Since the book is episodic, I can be, too. Here is my favorite self-description by Willie: "I have been called a troublemaker a time or two. What the hell is a troublemaker? you ask. Well, it's someone who makes trouble; that's what he came here to do, and that's what he does, by God. Like it or not, love it or not, he will stir it up. Why? Because it needs stirring up! If someone doesn't do it, it won't get done, and you know you love to stir it up. ... I know I do."
Listen carefully to the music and the words of Willie. He is one of the few true giants to inhabit country music, and -- when he and his few remaining fellow giants are gone -- there'll be no live artists remaining to remind the world of the true truth and majesty of great country music.
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