It wouldn’t be the 4th of July without
Willie Nelson's moveable ‘picnic’
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[July 05, 2016]
By Jon Herskovitz
AUSTIN, Texas - It is an on again,
occasionally off again American tradition from the 1970s that has filled
football stadiums and sun-baked Texas ranches, with one constant -
country music legend Willie Nelson celebrating Independence Day with a
music-packed picnic.
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.
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.
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Singer Willie Nelson performs during a concert honoring him as the
recipient of the Library of Congress' Gershwin Prize for Popular
Song in Washington, U.S. on November 18, 2015. To match Feature
USA-INDEPENDENCEDAY/NELSON REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo
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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