Before Willie Nelson was a man I stood beside, he was a voice coming out of my father in a room with a fireplace. My dad played an old Martin and sang “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground.” I learned the song first as a feeling: the way his voice rose, then came back down easy, and the way the room held still beneath it.
In August 2013 our first record came out and we went west with Willie. The publicist wrote that The Wild Feathers had been lucky enough to join him onstage each night. Lucky enough was true and nowhere near the size of it.
The tour opened in Las Vegas. Four or five songs into Willie’s set, I heard the opening of “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground.” I stood just offstage in a casino showroom with tears running down my face, inside a dream I had never said aloud.
Taylor looked over at me. “You all right? Let’s go gamble.”
So we did. We left the most spiritual moment of my professional life and walked straight to a craps table. Half an hour later Cody called, yelling that Willie was about to bring us onstage. We stuffed the chips into our pockets and ran through the casino.
Then we were crowded around one microphone beside Willie Nelson, clapping and singing. Taylor caught my eye across the mic. I knew what he was thinking because I was thinking it too.
Can you believe this?
The fireplace, the craps table, and the stage were all true at the same time.
