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Willie Nelson’s unofficial theme song, “On the Road Again,” remains accurate as he turns 90 on April 29, 2023. The country music legend is on tour, with dates scheduled into October 2023.
Assessing Nelson’s legacy is challenging because there are so many Willies to assess. There is historical Willie Nelson, child of the Depression. There is iconic Willie Nelson, near embodiment of Texas myth. There is outlaw Willie Nelson, revolutionizing the country music industry. There is activist Willie Nelson, Farm Aid’s co-founder and biofuel pioneer. There is Willie Nelson the songwriter of rare and poignant gifts, and more Willie Nelsons yet to be named.
As a Texas music historian, I find that Nelson’s legacy also challenges appraisal because the concept assumes closure, a pastness, while the man at 90 still seems to be active everywhere. The LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas recently announced the Willie Nelson Endowment Uplifting Rural Communities. Nelson is headlining a star-studded tribute concert weekend in honor of his 90th birthday at the Hollywood Bowl on April 29 and 30, 2023. And the country outlaw is a current nominee for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
While Nelson’s story is vast, it can be distilled down to this: He sprang from the Texas cotton fields and earned his spurs in the state’s dance halls before becoming one of Nashville’s signature songwriters in the 1960s. He then returned to Texas a prodigal son, fostering Austin’s musical ascent and, as the story goes, brokering a peace between the warring rednecks and hippies. He redefined country music’s image and industry through the outlaw revolt of the 1970s. He catapulted to pop stardom in the 1980s but always went out on the road making music with his friends, night after night.
From Texas to Nashville and back
Born on April 29, 1933, in a small town between Waco and Dallas, Nelson and his sister Bobbie took to music at a young age. Nelson joined his first band at 10 and was a songwriter by 12. We know this in part from a curious artifact in the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University. Nelson’s first songbook has all the doodles of a child’s arts and crafts project. The songs inside, though – “Hangover Blues,” “Faded Love and Wasted Dream,” “I Guess I Was Born to Be Blue” – speak to honky-tonk themes far beyond Nelson’s years.
He spent the next years chasing the life in those songs, hitting the road as an itinerant performer. Like most aspiring country artists, Nelson ended up in Nashville. In 1961, he joined Ray Price’s band, the Cherokee Cowboys. Price had been a roommate of Hank Williams Sr.‘s, and the Cherokee Cowboys built on Williams’ legacy, at various times including not just Nelson but also his pals Johnny Bush, Johnny Paycheck and Roger Miller.
Nelson moved from success to success as a songwriter, with Ray Price singing “Night Life,” Faron Young singing “Hello Walls” and Patsy Cline singing “Crazy.” He likely would have made it to the Country Music Hall of Fame with this early songwriting alone. He did record, but Nelson’s flamenco guitar, jazzy phrasing and eccentric lyricism did not fit the mold of 1960s Nashville. Facing personal and professional challenges that culminated in his house’s burning down, Nelson left Tennessee for Texas by decade’s end.
There had already been inklings of the countercultural turn that came next. Willie had a soulful cover of the Beatles’ “Yesterday” on a 1966 live album. In 1971, his resonant voice opened “Yesterday’s Wine,” before any music began, with a New Age declaration:
“There is great confusion on Earth,” Nelson mused, “and the power that is has concluded the following: Perfect man has visited Earth already, and his voice was heard; the voice of imperfect man must now be made manifest. And I have been selected as the most likely candidate.”
This was not Chet Atkins’ country music. The qualities that made this imperfect man a Nashville outsider transformed him into the most prominent symbol for a new cosmic cowboy style that was coming together in Austin venues like the Armadillo World Headquarters and events like Nelson’s own annual Fourth of July Picnic, which is scheduled for its 50th anniversary on July 4, 2023.
Willie Nelson’s classic band came into shape while gigging in Texas with sister Bobbie on piano, Mickey Raphael on harmonica, Bee Spears on bass, Jody Payne on guitar and Paul English on drums. They were a family band – in the country sense like the Carter Family – but also in the hippie sense, a roving carnival akin to Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters. The group’s sound mixed traditional country with the improvisations of psychedelia and jazz. You can hear the crackling combination in live performances from the period, including the pilot episode of the long-running PBS television program “Austin City Limits.”
Rise of the outlaws
Nelson’s albums from the 1970s blazed new paths for country music. Nelson secured complete creative control for his album “Red-Headed Stranger,” released in 1975, and its success struck a blow in support of artists’ independence from the constraints of the country music industry in Nashville, a rebellion that took further root with “Wanted! The Outlaws” the following year. That album – a collaboration with Tompall Glaser, Jessie Colter and frequent partner Waylon Jennings – named a movement.
Outlaw country was in part a marketing move for country artists who wore their hair long, leaned into rock’s grit or wore biker leather. On another level, though, Nelson and Jennings lodged a successful critique of industry practices for country artists who wanted to use their own bands in the studio, have a greater say in the material they recorded, and be regarded as serious artists rather than simply the label’s hired help.
The outlaw years took Willie to a new class of stardom. He made films with Robert Redford and duetted with Julio Iglesias.
There were twists in the path, though. In 1990, the outlaw image turned literal in a high-profile dustup with the IRS. The loss of his son Billy the next year was a much more harrowing setback. Through it all, he kept on the road, kept recording and stuck with family, community and song.
Advocate and elder statesman
It was, perhaps, these ups and downs that made Nelson a prominent advocate for others.
He held the door open for the sorts of folks who had traditionally had a hard time breaking into country music. He has consistently showcased artists and issues from just outside the bounds of traditional country, from early support for Black artist Charlie Pride and benefits for the United Farm Workers in the 1970s to his recording of the gay-themed “Cowboys are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other” in 2006. More recently, in a moment when country music’s gatekeepers have not been generous with women artists, Nelson has championed new voices like Kacey Musgraves, Margo Price and Allison Russell.
Nelson has been an elder statesman for a very long time, but he has chosen to stay in the thick of things, even as the wheels on the bus begin to slow. Members of the Family Band that traveled so many miles with him have been exiting the stage of late: Bee Spears died in 2011, Jody Payne in 2013, Paul English in 2020 and sister Bobbie in 2022. Nelson’s sons Lukas and Mikah have often joined the band in the meantime, as has Paul’s brother Billy English.
Things change, seasons pass, but there is continuity, too, in Nelson’s world.
He reminds us that eccentricity is among the most traditional of country music’s verities. In a single concert, the joking wink to mortality of “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die” can share the set with a rousing gospel closer, Nelson singing “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” or “I’ll Fly Away” as he points skyward, imploring the audience to join in on what he calls “the big finish.”
Jason Mellard, Director of the Center for Texas Music History, Texas State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
When doing estate planning, a person should give consideration to how future repayment of debts owed to them and also debts owed by them will impact the inheritances to be received by their intended death beneficiaries.
First, debts in a person’s estate are payable from the decedent’s assets in the course of administering their probate estate or administering their living trust estate.
Assets passing directly to a beneficiary without any administration (e.g., life insurance, joint tenancy assets, and Pay on Death (“POD”) and Transfer on Death (“TOD”) accounts) are not typically subject to repaying a decedent’s unsecured debts.
Thus, estate planning should consider how a person’s debt is repaid. One approach is to purchase life insurance made payable to the trust estate.
Second, a person may specifically gift real property that is subject to repaying an outstanding debt (e.g., a mortgage).
Should the beneficiary who receives the residence take it subject to repaying the secured debt or should other assets within the estate repay the debt, and so reduce the balance of the estate for distribution elsewhere.
The desired approach should be expressly stated; otherwise, the general (default) rule is that any secured debt goes with the gift. That may or may not be what is intended by the person making the gift.
Third, parents and children may loan money between themselves; typically from parent to child.
Such intra (within) family debts merit the parent’s attention when doing their estate planning. Parents may loan money to a child to pay higher education costs, to purchase a house or to start a business.
At the parent’s death, should any unpaid balance be repaid by the child to the parent’s estate or should the child’s debt be forgiven? The desired approach should be stated expressly in the will or trust, as relevant
If the parent wants the unpaid balance to be repaid, then the debt obligation (e.g., promissory note) and its payment history (ledger) both need to be in writing and be kept up to date. The debt can be assigned to the parents’ trust and be enforced by the successor trustee (during the parent’s incapacity or at death).
At death, the unpaid balance would need to be added back into the value of the trust estate in order to arrive at the gross value of the estate needed to compute each share of the total estate (i.e., including the unpaid debt).
Typically, the unpaid balance is then subtracted from the debtor’s share as an advance.
Children may also be owed money from a parent, e.g., the child provides a parent with at-home personal care services or lends money to cover a parent’s costs of living. If so, the debt and its repayment history should be in writing and kept up to date.
Also, it may help if the parent’s living trust acknowledges the parent’s debt to the child and that the debt will be paid from the proceeds of the parent’s estate (e.g., sale of home) prior to the division of the parent’s remaining estate amongst the parent’s death beneficiaries.
The foregoing is a brief discussion of some issues to be considered where debts impact a person’s estate planning. For legal guidance consult a qualified attorney.
Dennis A. Fordham, attorney, is a State Bar-Certified Specialist in estate planning, probate and trust law. His office is at 870 S. Main St., Lakeport, Calif. He can be reached at
A pair of quakes in 2021 sent seismic waves deep into the Red Planet’s core, giving scientists the best data yet on its size and composition.
While NASA retired its InSight Mars lander in December, the trove of data from its seismometer will be pored over for decades to come. By looking at seismic waves the instrument detected from a pair of temblors in 2021, scientists have been able to deduce that Mars’ liquid iron core is smaller and denser than previously thought.
The findings, which mark the first direct observations ever made of another planet’s core, were detailed in a paper published April 24 in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.
Occurring on Aug. 25 and Sept. 18, 2021, the two temblors were the first identified by the InSight team to have originated on the opposite side of the planet from the lander — so-called farside quakes.
The distance proved crucial: The farther a quake happens from InSight, the deeper into the planet its seismic waves can travel before being detected.
“We needed both luck and skill to find, and then use, these quakes,” said lead author Jessica Irving, an Earth scientist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. “Farside quakes are intrinsically harder to detect because a great deal of energy is lost or diverted away as seismic waves travel through the planet.”
Irving noted that the two quakes occurred after the mission had been operating on the Red Planet for well over a full Martian year (about two Earth years), meaning the Marsquake Service — the scientists who initially scrutinize seismographs — had already honed their skills.
It also helped that a meteoroid impact caused one of the two quakes; impacts provide a precise location and more accurate data for a seismologist to work with. (Because Mars has no tectonic plates, most marsquakes are caused by faults, or rock fractures, that form in the planet’s crust due to heat and stress.) The quakes’ size was also a factor in the detections.
“These two farside quakes were among the larger ones heard by InSight,” said Bruce Banerdt, InSight’s principal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “If they hadn’t been so big, we couldn’t have detected them.”
One of the challenges in detecting these particular quakes was that they’re in a “shadow zone” — a part of the planet from which seismic waves tend to be refracted away from InSight, making it hard for a quake’s echo to reach the lander unless it is very large.
Detecting seismic waves that cross through a shadow zone is exceptionally difficult; it’s all the more impressive that the InSight team did so using just the one seismometer they had on Mars. (In contrast, many seismometers are distributed on Earth.)
“It took a lot of seismological expertise from across the InSight team to tease the signals out from the complex seismograms recorded by the lander,” Irving said.
A previous paper that offered a first glimpse of the planet’s core relied on seismic waves that reflected off its outer boundary, providing less precise data. Detecting seismic waves that actually traveled through the core allows scientists to refine their models of what the core looks like. Based on the findings documented in the new paper, about a fifth of the core is composed of elements such as sulfur, oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen.
“Determining the amount of these elements in a planetary core is important for understanding the conditions in our solar system when planets were forming and how these conditions affected the planets that formed,” said one of the paper’s co-authors, Doyeon Kim of ETH Zurich.
That was always the central goal of InSight’s mission: to study the deep interior of Mars and help scientists understand how all rocky worlds form, including Earth and its Moon.
NORTH COAST, Calif. — Mendocino College is proud to announce that it has been awarded a $2.6 million Hispanic Serving Institutions grant from the U.S. Department of Education through a highly competitive process.
The grant will support the college's ongoing efforts to enhance student success and retention, with a specific focus on supporting Latinx students.
“Mendocino College is committed to improving retention and program success for its Hispanic and minority students,” said Congressman Jared Huffman. “The METAS Project will provide research-based strategies with a focus on equity to increase academic and counseling services for success in college and careers. I’m glad to have been able to support the college in their application for this federal grant from the U.S. Dept of Education — it’s going to mean a lot to the college and the many bright minds who will benefit from the program.”
The grant will be used to fund a range of initiatives, including increasing the retention rate of first-year students, increasing the percentage of students completing core transfer courses, reducing the number of units completed by degree- or transfer-seeking students, training staff in student retention best practices, and increasing the total percentage of students completing a degree or transfer.
These initiatives will help Mendocino College continue to provide high-quality education and support to its diverse student body.
“We are incredibly grateful to receive this grant from the U.S. Department of Education, which will provide critical resources to support our efforts to improve student success and equity,” said Mendocino College President, Dr. Tim Karas. “With this funding, we will be able to strengthen our institutional systems and services to support the success of Latino students, improving retention, re-enrollment, followup and degree/transfer completion.”
Mendocino College serves two counties, including 51 towns and cities in one of the most isolated regions in California.
The average student population at Mendocino College is 6,800. While Mendocino County has a 26% Latinx population, and Lake County 22%, Latinx students at Mendocino College account for 41% of all enrollments, a 4% increase since 2012.
The HSI program supports colleges and universities that have a significant Latinx student population by providing grants to fund educational and support programs.
Mendocino College was selected for this highly competitive grant based on its demonstrated commitment to serving Latinx students and its success in advancing their academic and career goals.
“We are excited to use this grant to help our students achieve their goals and pursue their dreams,” said Dr. Karas. “Mendocino College has a long history of serving our community, and this grant will enable us to build on that legacy and continue to provide transformative educational opportunities for all of our students.”
For more information about Mendocino College and its programs and services, visit the college's website.
The burn restriction applies to all areas in Lake County.
All burn permits expire on April 30.
The burn ban includes all open green waste burning, though exemptions are possible for agricultural operations, essential control burns for fire hazard reduction projects, public safety burns and others.
The annual burn ban was first implemented in 1986 in response to weather conditions that often create extreme fire danger and poor air quality.
Officials said a managed approach incorporating fire and air agency concerns has been implemented and improved upon for many years.
The ban allows a quick fire agency response to all fires observed from May 1 on, as they are all assumed to be uncontrolled fires unless specifically authorized by an exemption permit.
This successful program is one of the primary reasons Lake County has superior and healthful air quality.
To obtain an exemption permit to burn after May 1, contact the Lake County Air Quality Management District at 707-263-7000 for details.
District office hours are Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Appointments may be requested any time Monday through Friday between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.
Anyone responsible for open burning during the ban without an exemption permit may be subject to citation, fines and fire agency response costs to extinguish the fire.
Help reduce the danger and losses caused by uncontrolled fires, and protect Lake County’s clean air.
“Public cooperation is greatly appreciated and results in a safer and more healthful environment for us all,” the Lake County Air Quality Management District reported.
CLEARLAKE, Calif. — Clearlake Animal Control’s adoptable canines include several new arrivals and many others that continue to wait for their new homes.
Twenty-eight dogs are waiting at the shelter to meet their new families.
They include “Snow White,” a 2-year-old miniature smooth-haired dachshund mix that shelter staff describe as “the happiest little girl in the world,” whose tail is always wagging.
Also available is “Henry,” a 3-year-old pit bull mix with a red and white coat.
Shelter staff describe Henry — a staff and volunteer favorite — as “sweet as pie.” He also loves to give hugs, adores people, is good on leash, and enjoys long walks.
The shelter is located at 6820 Old Highway 53. It’s open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
For more information, call the shelter at 707-762-6227, email
This week’s adoptable dogs are featured below.
Email Elizabeth Larson at