What Year Did Willie Nelson Write on the Road Again

Even with pre-summer temperatures rising it can't get much warmer, metaphorically anyway, than Friday's concert at the Tuscaloosa Amphitheater, which brings together Neighbors and Family.

That's opening act Drew Holcomb and The Neighbors, setting the stage for headliner Willie Nelson and Family.

"Man, it's pretty high on the bucket list," Holcomb said about performing on the same bill with the outlaw country legend. "I got to do it for the first time in 2017, and it was just an absolute dream.

"I thought it was kind of a one-and-done ... we did about eight shows together."

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Then Holcomb took another call about a month back, and the man Rolling Stone called "one of Americana's most popular stars" got invited back on the road with Willie again.

"I still have to kinda pinch myself," Holcomb said.

Over the almost two decades since the singer-songwriter-guitarist formed his band, it's followed something of the pattern set by Nelson, whose fellow musicians, touring crew and miscellaneous employees are mostly folks who've been with the Family aggregate for decades, if not their entire lives.

Holcomb has been playing with guitarist-keyboardist Nathan Dugger and bass player Rich Brinfield for 18 and 16 years, respectively. His wife Ellie toured with earliest versions of the group, though she stepped off tour to care for their first child, EmmyLou, in 2012. They're raising three children now, 9, 6 and 3, and Ellie's pursuing a solo career, independent of Drew's. But they still write and record together.

"Hopefully, we've got a sort of healthy environment," Holcomb said. "With bands, you wind up spending as much time with them as you do with your actual family members. Ellie was on the road with us for years. It's pretty special to be with the same people this long.

"That's my favorite thing about touring with Willie: How many of his band and crew have been with him for the majority of their lifetimes?"

Tickets for the 7:30 p.m. Friday show are available through www.ticketmaster.com, or at the Amphitheater box office, 2710 Jack Warner Parkway, for $99.50, $79.50, $69.50, $59.50, $39.50, and $29.50, plus fees. For more, see www.tuscaloosaamphitheater.com.

Rising star

The most recent Drew Holcomb and The Neighbors studio disc, 2019's "Dragons," shows the influence of connections more deeply than ever, featuring co-songwriting and singing collaborations with Ellie, Lori McKenna, Natalie Hemby, Dave Barnes, Sean McConnell, Zach Wiliams of The Lone Bellow and others.

"I had a sort of an epiphany in late 2017," he said, in a stretch when he was recovering from a bout of spinal meningitis, for which he was hospitalized eight days. He'd shared some songwriting duties with the band on the 2022 disc "Souvenir," but "... not outside the family, if you will."

Over the years, as his star has risen, thanks in part to his rich, Johnny Cash-like baritone, heart-on-the-sleeve lyrics, and production values that don't hew entirely country any more than Nelson does, touching on jazz, pop, rock and other influences, Holcomb's gotten to know any number of fellow writers and artists.

"They'd say 'Hey, let's write a song' sometime, and though you may mean it at the time, you just never get around to doing that," he said. But in that year, having hit a creative wall, Holcomb decided to follow up on those pledges.

Expanding on that epiphany, Holcomb gave a 2022 TedTalk in his Memphis hometown — the band also calls East Nashville home — about the collaborative nature of creativity, titled "Your Dreams Don't Belong to You." In it, he laid out the case for how even the most personal-seeming inspirations draw on everything that came before, and can grow based on your willingness to share.

"It was to let young creatives know that it takes a village to make anything work," he said. "It's not just you up on the stage doing the work. It's the publicist, the guy driving the bus, the man or woman selling the merchandise.... In the studio, it goes all the way back to the guy who invented the microphone you're singing into.

"There's a team to make the world go 'round. Thinking solo is a pretty narrow and selfish way to think."

Having worked up the ladder as an indie artist — they take the financial risks on recordings, but when benefits are reaped, the riches don't go to a studio — gives Holcomb the flexibility to write whatever feels right.

"You don't have to stick to any particular script," he said. "I listen to a lot of music: alt rock, jazz, pop, country, old country, old R&B ... so many influences."

For example, the title ballad from "Dragons" reminds some of Cash, but then the next cut might sound more like a cut by U2, he said.

"The common thread is that it's performed by the same group of musicians, so it feels like the songs are coming from the same soil," he said

Those wider influences weave their own way in; he's not thinking of conforming to any style or feel, while writing.

"Sometimes the concept reveals itself after the fact, but I've never written like (Bruce) Springsteen did on 'Ghost of Tom Joad,' " an acoustic-folk disc built around the plight of the poor, exemplified by its title track, taken from John Steinbeck's seminal "The Grapes of Wrath."

Holcomb typically approaches writing in one of three ways. One is lyrics first, drawn from words and phrases that he collects in a journal. The second derives from a rhythm, like classic R&B, or Muscle Shoals sound.

"I'm literally just like mouth-drumming into a voice memo, then sort of put it to music," he said. The third method stems from a more melodic idea.

And then of course there's the melange. The song "Family," off "Dragons," began with a one-word stanza, singing "family," then adding a "Graceland-"era Paul Simon kind of "rhythmic chaos."

The ecstatically happy accompanying video starts with a barefoot Holcomb hoofing it to that backbeat, joined by a host of others, and concluding with he, Ellie and the three kids doing as the refrain suggests, taking off their shoes and dancing.

At the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, on the same record he pours out "You Never Leave My Heart," about the brother he lost suddenly, when Holcomb was just 17.

Those cathartic moments couldn't foretell the coming two years of pandemic-induced fear, when tons of shows were canceled, leading to financial woes. Rather than cave to despair, Holcomb and company worked out of necessity in livestreams and home concerts, Zoom performances.

"We sort of hustled to keep the lights on," he said. "And in that I learned I don't have to tour as much as I used to. Now I tour based on what sounds creatively engaging, and financially doable."

He's been fortunate that some of his songs have found placement on TV series such as Lifetime's "Army Wives," Showtime's "United States of Tara," and A&E's "The Cleaner," all bringing in royalties.

But the slow return to live shows — outside of their kitchens — feels great, he said.

"When you lose something, you can forget how much it meant, until you get it back," he said. "Touring has always been the bread and butter, the meat and potatoes, or whatever metaphor."

Before arriving in Tuscaloosa, Holcomb and company will be going into the studio this week to start work on a new studio disc, working from roughly 30 songs, of which they'll probably record 20, letting the process guide them.

"That's the cool thing, some of that stuff reveals itself as you go," he said. "Last time we had a lot of preparation; this time we're going in kind of open-handed. The band's playing the best we've ever played."

Recording and playing live feed off each other.

"Music is the engine that drives the whole thing," he said. "If I stop making records, people stop coming to the shows. The songs they love come from the records we make. It's a weird sort of intertwined thing.

"Making the record's the most satisfying part. The joy of being on stage is kind of the icing. Financially it's the heart of it; creatively, it's the payoff."

Holcomb is no stranger to Tuscaloosa, having played the Bama Theatre in 2015, and he opened for Needtobreathe at the Amp later that year. For Friday's opening slot, with only about 40 minutes, he'll whip up a set list down the middle between songs people expect to hear, and "giving them something they don't know they want yet."

On social media, they've taken requests as often as possible, and so they know to add favorites such as "Dragons," "Family," "What Would I Do Without You," "American Beauty," and "Here We Go."

"But we don't want to be a band that just plays old stuff," he said. "Making a set list every night is one of the great art forms of what we do, to take people on some sort of journey."

Though they'll stretch some to show off the band's instrumental chops, "... at the end of the day we're a song band, so we're going to put in a lot of songs. It's just a style choice."

Holcomb remembers that previous Amp show, opening for Needtobreathe.

"I remember that was the first show of the tour, and I was very stressed out," he said. "So it'll be good not to be in that state, this time. We're going to enjoy the outdoors; bring the spring."

Young singer-songwriter Peytan Porter will open the night at 7:30, with Drew Holcomb and The Neighbors following. Willie Nelson and Family will be performing their third show at the venue, after 2013 and 2022 concerts, a week from the legend's 89th birthday.

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Source: https://www.tuscaloosanews.com/story/news/2022/04/19/drew-holcomb-neighbors-open-tuscaloosa-amphitheater-show-willie-nelson/7334626001/

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