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There's trouble on the stage at Winston's. The sound guy has boosted the drums to full arena sound. The electric bass likewise thunders. The only place left to set Willie Nelson's guitar in the mix is at full gain, which becomes problematic. The old Martin has a dodgy pickup inside that hums wildly until a hand is laid across the bridge rendering it impractical to play, or, unless the bass EQ is rolled off the guitar channel entirely leaving the six-string trebly and turned way down.
This, it turns out, will be the sound guy's solution. The net effect is that when the full band plays, one can barely hear Willie. Even the harp fills drown the singer out.
"Dude," Harmonica John politely asks the sound guy. "Am I hearing myself through the monitors, or through the house mains?" The big house mains, it turns out.
But what a listener can hear of the singing is pure Willie Nelson magic. It's Red Headed Stranger, a Nelson tribute band and Willie, in this case played by Red Shepherd, and it is right on the Austin money. In spite of the Metallica sound the guy at the mixing table has put on the modern country quintet Shepherd punches through on "Whiskey River" with that unmistakably forlorn warble. He carries it right into the next song, an old Royal Bannon country classic in true Willie-style, meaning, without a word to the audience:
"Chasing a dream in a whiskey world / Down the neon avenue / I've never gone to bed with an ugly woman / But I sure woke up with a few."
Outside, it's a slow Saturday afternoon in the seaside community of Ocean Beach. The sky is low and gray and threatens to dump some rain. A few stragglers wander into the club.
Shepherd picks out one-note solos and makes his Martin sound as painfully limited as does the real Willie. Harmonica John, a fine blues harpist in his own right blows Mickey Raphael-style. Even the keyboardist who is new today and struggling to find level footing is adding the right fills and flourishes.
In spite of the sound, and the small audience, and the bad weather, Red Headed Stranger shines. As a band, it should. Drummer Dave Madden knows the tribute game having toured with world for 25 years with Wild Child, the Doors show.
"Red and I started this a little while ago," he says during a break. Madden, who bears more than a passing resemblance to '80s rock guitar god Pat Travers answered a Craigslist ad. Shepherd was looking to start something up.
"A big red flag," says Madden. "He didn't post a picture." He explains that in order to make it over as a tribute band the lead has to look and sound like the original. "You gotta be a dead ringer."
Red Shepherd, from Vista, a part-time rocker and country musician who looks like a Willie with no hair (in performance he wears a wig braided by his wife) approved of Madden's style.
"He called me. Everybody else wants to email all day long." The two forged a musical partnership.
"And then, we went though the 'looking-for-musicians' thing," Madden says.
"There's a lot of great musicians out there," says Shepherd, "but day jobs or wives wouldn't let them out to play with us."
And possibly for good reason: there are, after all, those infamous pictures of the real Willie in a tour bus addressing a king-size salad bowl full of weed. Nelson, 79 this year, is said to live in a dope-haze. He claims to have once smoked out on the roof of the White House.
Does Shepherd likewise indulge? He laughs.
"No dope." He works construction and he looks it -- craggy and weathered. "Hopefully," he nods toward Winston's stage, "this will be the last of my house building days."
Willie Nelson may have played the once-legendary Bostonia Ballroom in El Cajon. This would have been back during the 1960s or possibly even in the late 1950s - no one is certain. There is a photo of a clean-cut Nelson floating around posing with Bostonia owner Mickey Whalen with claims that it was made backstage at the East County tour stop, back when Johnny Cash and Lefty Frizzell and a host of country stars were gigging there.
Nelson is easily one of the most familiar artists in country music. First emerging on the scene as a song writer, Nelson came into the public view as a performer near the end of the 1960s as part of so-called outlaw country, a subgenre of country music that existed in protest of Nashville's ham and politics. Nelson has since acted in films, co-authored books, and has been involved in activism for the use of bio diesel (essentially, recycled cooking oil) and, the legalization of marijuana - possibly a self-serving move.
In 2011 he was charged with possession after Border Patrol searched his tour bus near the U.S.-Mexico border in November 2010. The matter could be settled for a song and a little money, a West Texas prosecutor said.
"You can bet your ass I'm not going to be mean to Willie Nelson," Hudspeth County Attorney C.R. Bramblett told a reporter. In fact, Bramblett famously said he would recommend a plea deal for Nelson: would Nelson sing "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" in the courtroom? That and a hundred bucks would seal the deal.
The judge was not amused.
"My court is not a jester court," Judge Becky Dean-Walker told CNN. "I understand that people are star stuck. I'm not one of them."
Neither, it turns out was the IRS. In 1990 they seized Nelson's assets, claiming he was behind by a whopping $32,000,000 in back taxes. It turns out that accountants had not paid Nelson's taxes for years. The next year Nelson released The IRS Tapes: Who'll Buy My Memories? the sales of which helped clear his debt by 1993.
Willie Nelson tours constantly, lives in Hawaii, and has released 60 studio albums. He is a country artist, but he sings what can only be described as unpredictable scatty jazz lines over the top of the plodding four-four or shuffle beats of country.
A student of all things Willie, Red Shepherd knows all too well of this musical eccentricity.
"Don't bother bringing charts or keeping time, Nelson tells new musicians. It's gonna trip you up. Just follow me. And if I start to fall off the edge," Shepherd says, "he tells them reel me back in."
"Country is not as easy as it sounds," says Madden. "A lot of people who are very good musicians try to play with us and think all of country is all just 2 -3 -1 [the basic country chord pattern] and they don't get it."
"Many of Willie's songs are really two songs rolled into one," Shepherd says. "A lot of people into the country experience find this hard."
"We've learned that less is more," says Madden, who lives near La Mesa in Casa de Oro. He says he's been busy plotting Red Headed Stranger tours through New Mexico and in Arizona. "There's certainly a lot of Willie tribute bands. That's for sure." (A web search turns up another Red Headed Stranger band, this one in Blair OK.) "But none of them both look and sound like him."
"My dad actually looks more like Willie than I do," Shepherd says. "He introduced me to country." Shepherd played in rock cover bands as a teen and in some original-music bands "that never went anywhere."
The tribute approach has been gravy for Madden, who played in one long before tribute bands were in vogue. He agrees that the genre has soared in popularity. "Especially the ones you can't see anymore." But even when founding members are still alive and working together a concert ticket price can be prohibitive. "A couple hundred bucks to see the originals? It's cheaper to see the next best thing [meaning, a tribute] and, they may even be better." He laughs.
San Diego is fertile ground for tribute bands. Consider Back 2 Black (AC/DC,) the Red Not Chili Peppers, King Kruk (Elvis,) Dwight Lightning (Dwight Yoakam,) OU812 (Hagar era Van Halen,) and more, all veterans of traditional and cover bands who decided that as a career move, the tribute dollar is the strongest. As rock and roll ages into the golden years of retirement and its fans and its founders become bona fide elders, all bets are off.
"Some of the vintage acts out there are really tribute bands," Shepherd says, "because they only have one original member."
For a schedule of coming area shows visit www.redheadedstranger.com
http://sandiegoreader.com/users/photos/2012/apr/02/22064/
http://sandiegoreader.com/users/photos/2012/apr/02/22065/
There's trouble on the stage at Winston's. The sound guy has boosted the drums to full arena sound. The electric bass likewise thunders. The only place left to set Willie Nelson's guitar in the mix is at full gain, which becomes problematic. The old Martin has a dodgy pickup inside that hums wildly until a hand is laid across the bridge rendering it impractical to play, or, unless the bass EQ is rolled off the guitar channel entirely leaving the six-string trebly and turned way down.
This, it turns out, will be the sound guy's solution. The net effect is that when the full band plays, one can barely hear Willie. Even the harp fills drown the singer out.
"Dude," Harmonica John politely asks the sound guy. "Am I hearing myself through the monitors, or through the house mains?" The big house mains, it turns out.
But what a listener can hear of the singing is pure Willie Nelson magic. It's Red Headed Stranger, a Nelson tribute band and Willie, in this case played by Red Shepherd, and it is right on the Austin money. In spite of the Metallica sound the guy at the mixing table has put on the modern country quintet Shepherd punches through on "Whiskey River" with that unmistakably forlorn warble. He carries it right into the next song, an old Royal Bannon country classic in true Willie-style, meaning, without a word to the audience:
"Chasing a dream in a whiskey world / Down the neon avenue / I've never gone to bed with an ugly woman / But I sure woke up with a few."
Outside, it's a slow Saturday afternoon in the seaside community of Ocean Beach. The sky is low and gray and threatens to dump some rain. A few stragglers wander into the club.
Shepherd picks out one-note solos and makes his Martin sound as painfully limited as does the real Willie. Harmonica John, a fine blues harpist in his own right blows Mickey Raphael-style. Even the keyboardist who is new today and struggling to find level footing is adding the right fills and flourishes.
In spite of the sound, and the small audience, and the bad weather, Red Headed Stranger shines. As a band, it should. Drummer Dave Madden knows the tribute game having toured with world for 25 years with Wild Child, the Doors show.
"Red and I started this a little while ago," he says during a break. Madden, who bears more than a passing resemblance to '80s rock guitar god Pat Travers answered a Craigslist ad. Shepherd was looking to start something up.
"A big red flag," says Madden. "He didn't post a picture." He explains that in order to make it over as a tribute band the lead has to look and sound like the original. "You gotta be a dead ringer."
Red Shepherd, from Vista, a part-time rocker and country musician who looks like a Willie with no hair (in performance he wears a wig braided by his wife) approved of Madden's style.
"He called me. Everybody else wants to email all day long." The two forged a musical partnership.
"And then, we went though the 'looking-for-musicians' thing," Madden says.
"There's a lot of great musicians out there," says Shepherd, "but day jobs or wives wouldn't let them out to play with us."
And possibly for good reason: there are, after all, those infamous pictures of the real Willie in a tour bus addressing a king-size salad bowl full of weed. Nelson, 79 this year, is said to live in a dope-haze. He claims to have once smoked out on the roof of the White House.
Does Shepherd likewise indulge? He laughs.
"No dope." He works construction and he looks it -- craggy and weathered. "Hopefully," he nods toward Winston's stage, "this will be the last of my house building days."
Willie Nelson may have played the once-legendary Bostonia Ballroom in El Cajon. This would have been back during the 1960s or possibly even in the late 1950s - no one is certain. There is a photo of a clean-cut Nelson floating around posing with Bostonia owner Mickey Whalen with claims that it was made backstage at the East County tour stop, back when Johnny Cash and Lefty Frizzell and a host of country stars were gigging there.
Nelson is easily one of the most familiar artists in country music. First emerging on the scene as a song writer, Nelson came into the public view as a performer near the end of the 1960s as part of so-called outlaw country, a subgenre of country music that existed in protest of Nashville's ham and politics. Nelson has since acted in films, co-authored books, and has been involved in activism for the use of bio diesel (essentially, recycled cooking oil) and, the legalization of marijuana - possibly a self-serving move.
In 2011 he was charged with possession after Border Patrol searched his tour bus near the U.S.-Mexico border in November 2010. The matter could be settled for a song and a little money, a West Texas prosecutor said.
"You can bet your ass I'm not going to be mean to Willie Nelson," Hudspeth County Attorney C.R. Bramblett told a reporter. In fact, Bramblett famously said he would recommend a plea deal for Nelson: would Nelson sing "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" in the courtroom? That and a hundred bucks would seal the deal.
The judge was not amused.
"My court is not a jester court," Judge Becky Dean-Walker told CNN. "I understand that people are star stuck. I'm not one of them."
Neither, it turns out was the IRS. In 1990 they seized Nelson's assets, claiming he was behind by a whopping $32,000,000 in back taxes. It turns out that accountants had not paid Nelson's taxes for years. The next year Nelson released The IRS Tapes: Who'll Buy My Memories? the sales of which helped clear his debt by 1993.
Willie Nelson tours constantly, lives in Hawaii, and has released 60 studio albums. He is a country artist, but he sings what can only be described as unpredictable scatty jazz lines over the top of the plodding four-four or shuffle beats of country.
A student of all things Willie, Red Shepherd knows all too well of this musical eccentricity.
"Don't bother bringing charts or keeping time, Nelson tells new musicians. It's gonna trip you up. Just follow me. And if I start to fall off the edge," Shepherd says, "he tells them reel me back in."
"Country is not as easy as it sounds," says Madden. "A lot of people who are very good musicians try to play with us and think all of country is all just 2 -3 -1 [the basic country chord pattern] and they don't get it."
"Many of Willie's songs are really two songs rolled into one," Shepherd says. "A lot of people into the country experience find this hard."
"We've learned that less is more," says Madden, who lives near La Mesa in Casa de Oro. He says he's been busy plotting Red Headed Stranger tours through New Mexico and in Arizona. "There's certainly a lot of Willie tribute bands. That's for sure." (A web search turns up another Red Headed Stranger band, this one in Blair OK.) "But none of them both look and sound like him."
"My dad actually looks more like Willie than I do," Shepherd says. "He introduced me to country." Shepherd played in rock cover bands as a teen and in some original-music bands "that never went anywhere."
The tribute approach has been gravy for Madden, who played in one long before tribute bands were in vogue. He agrees that the genre has soared in popularity. "Especially the ones you can't see anymore." But even when founding members are still alive and working together a concert ticket price can be prohibitive. "A couple hundred bucks to see the originals? It's cheaper to see the next best thing [meaning, a tribute] and, they may even be better." He laughs.
San Diego is fertile ground for tribute bands. Consider Back 2 Black (AC/DC,) the Red Not Chili Peppers, King Kruk (Elvis,) Dwight Lightning (Dwight Yoakam,) OU812 (Hagar era Van Halen,) and more, all veterans of traditional and cover bands who decided that as a career move, the tribute dollar is the strongest. As rock and roll ages into the golden years of retirement and its fans and its founders become bona fide elders, all bets are off.
"Some of the vintage acts out there are really tribute bands," Shepherd says, "because they only have one original member."
For a schedule of coming area shows visit www.redheadedstranger.com
http://sandiegoreader.com/users/photos/2012/apr/02/22064/
http://sandiegoreader.com/users/photos/2012/apr/02/22065/