One by Willie

Celebrated author George Saunders digs deep into one of the best-loved songs not just in Willie Nelson’s catalog, but in all of American music, Townes Van Zandt’s legendary tale of betrayal, “Pancho and Lefty.” It is, in many ways, a song full of mystery, and George, who also teaches Russian short fiction at Syracuse University’s acclaimed creative writing program, walks us through it verse-by-verse, unlocking the secrets in the song’s story; the way Townes, Willie, and Merle Haggard made us care so much; and what the song tells us about what it means to be human. All that, plus the way hearing “Hello Walls” as a little kid crawling around under his parents’ poker table awakened him to the importance of elegance in art—with cameos by Dostoevsky, Chekov, Jeff Tweedy, and Ernie Banks. 

Americana star Tami Neilson—a New Zealand-based singer-songwriter and, essentially, adopted member of Willie Nelson’s family—talks about a deep cut off his sublime 1996 album Spirit, “I Thought About You, Lord.” It’s a hugely important song to Tami, who first came to Willie through his gospel side as a young girl barnstorming the US and Canada with her country-gospel family band, The Neilsons. And ‘family’ is the strong undercurrent running through this episode, as Tami talks about sharing the Luck Reunion stage with Willie just a week after Sister Bobbie died; the sisterly bond she’s formed with his wife, Annie; and the way Willie subbed in for her late father, Ron Neilson, on their beautiful 2022 duet, “Beyond the Stars.”

With Willie Nelson turning 93 today, One by Willie hooks up with Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now and its host, RS Head of Country Joseph Hudak, for a special birthday collab episode. We’ll open with a look at how OBW host John Spong managed to turn listening to Willie Nelson records into a full-time job, plus the unique, almost metaphysical way that individual songs connect fans not just to Willie, but to people in their own lives. And then, proving that point, we pivot to Hudak’s favorite Willie song, “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys,” which takes Joe back to being a kid in rural Pennsylvania watching The Electric Horseman on bootleg HBO with his mom.

In another of our annual, Icon-on-Icon birthday tributes to Willie, 14-time Grammy winner and Country Hall of Famer Emmylou Harris talks about a song she sang every night with him when they toured together in the 70s, “Till I Gain Control Again.” It was, of course, written by one of her and Willie’s all-time favorite songwriters, Rodney Crowell, and it gets Emmy thinking about being a young artist watching the deep, almost spiritual connection Willie forms with his fans—plus the way she and Willie had to swim against the Nashville tide to pull country music back to its roots, the day Elvis died, the making of Teatro…and the death-defying, high-wire act of trying to sing harmony with Willie Nelson.

Matt Berninger, lead singer and lyricist of beloved Brooklyn rock band The National, talks about Willie’s 1978 cover of “All of Me.” It was the third single off his dad’s favorite Willie record, Stardust, an album Matt loves so much that, when he went to record his first solo album, Serpentine Prison, he enlisted Stardust producer Booker T. Jones to produce, and Willie’s harmonica player, Mickey Raphael, to play harp. We’ll get into all that, plus the pre-Willie history of “All of Me,” the decidedly unorthodox sessions in which Willie and Booker recorded it, and the healing power of music…with brief cameos by Roberta Flack, Billie Holiday, and Lester Young, and a full-on co-star role for Mickey, who sat in on the interview and provided his own detailed memories of creating Stardust.