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 Nelson’s first blowout picnic in 1973 was a combination of
Woodstock hippy love and cowboy hoedown of more than 40,000
people in Dripping Springs outside of Austin that raised the ire
of police, who received complaints about noise, nudity and dazed
people wandering around.
As Nelson has aged, the event has mellowed. About 10,000 people
are expected at this year’s version, which will feature 20 acts,
including some Texas troubadours who appeared at the first
picnic, and will be held at a race track in Austin, which is the
only U.S. stop for global Formula One racing.
Nelson said he got the idea for the picnics from the 1969
Woodstock music festival and wanted to bring that feeling to the
Hill Country west of Austin.
"I was looking at (Woodstock) and was realizing the same thing
might happen in Texas if it were promoted right and had the
right talent," Nelson said in an interview with Reuters.
"It is a national holiday for national independence and I felt
like a lot of people would like to get together and celebrate.
It was a no-brainer,” said Nelson, 83.
The early affairs were raucous events, drawing crowds of over
80,000. They often lasted for days, often at places not prepared
for the onslaught.
“If we had arrested all the naked and drunk people I saw, we’d
have filled our jail and yours and all of the jails from here to
Dallas," a deputy in Williamson County, north of Austin, told
the Austin American-Statesman after the 1975 event, which
attracted about 70,000.
The 1976 picnic in Gonzales, Texas, was marred by reports of
rapes, stabbings, rampant drug use and snake bites.
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After a raft of troubles, Nelson moved the picnic in 1979 to his
country club in the Texas Hill Country, much to the annoyance of his
neighbors, who complained of the noise and clogged roads.
He has since taken the show on the road with stops in New York and
Atlanta, as well as a truck stop town between Dallas and Austin. The
picnic moved to the Circuit of the Americas race track in Austin
last year.
The facility, with ice-cooled "water monster" hydrating stations,
covered mist rooms, about two dozen restaurant and bar choices, and
a bevy of functioning toilets is a far cry from the early days where
the nearest shrub was often the closest thing to a rest room.
The acts this year include some who have been picnic staples,
including long-time country music notables Ray Wylie Hubbard, Johnny
Bush and Billy Joe Shaver. Some of the newer stars to take the stage
include Margo Price and Shakey Graves.
Nelson, with a six-decade career capped by numerous awards,
including the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in
2015, remembers the Fourth of July as a much simpler affair when he
was growing up in rural Texas.
"It meant a day off when I didn’t have to pick cotton. Like all the
other holidays, it was a day I didn’t have to do anything," he said.
"I would just hang out and do nothing. That is still my favorite
thing to do."
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