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Willie, one’s for the band, and one’s for carrying all of the weed necessary to keep everybody on the road again. But that’s not why Willie smokes dope. He told me why once. He does it to keep down the rage.
    And be careful if you try to talk politics with Willie. He’s a conspiracy theorist of the first water. Once, just before the war with Iraq, I was arguing with him on the bus. I was very much in favor of the war. He was very much against it. He was also smoking a joint the size of a large kosher salami. In an attempt to reason with him, I said, “Look, Willie, the guy’s a tyrannical bully and we’ve got to take him out.” “No,” said Willie. “He’s our president and we’ve got to stand by him.”
    But the place you’re most likely to find Willie during the daylight hours (or possibly at night, wearing a miner’s helmet with a headlamp) is on the golf course.
    Willie owns his golf course, which makes it very convenient for him to play about forty-seven hours a day when he’s not performing or helping me solve the problems of the world from inside the bus. You can play golf on Willie’s course, and that, in fact, is a good way of running into him. Sometimes, however, this plan doesn’t work out so well. Willie told me a story about a woman who’d recently come off his course complaining she’d been stung by a bee. The golf pro asked her, “Where’d it sting you?” She said, “Between the first and second holes.” The pro said, “Well, I can tell you right now, your stance is too wide.”
    One of the things I love most about Willie is that, once you manage to locate him, he’ll take the time to stop what he’s doing (within reason) and talk to you like you’re the only person in the world. That’s why we call him the Hillbilly Dalai Lama. One of the most memorable things I’ve ever witnessed a star of any magnitude do was the time when, with the naked eye, I observed Willie Nelson standing outside his bus for three hours after a concert, signing autographs in the rain. It’s what we call “dancin’ with who brung you.”
    JERRY JEFF WALKER
    THE WANDERER
    With the possible exception of a few early serial killers, Jerry Jeff Walker was one of the first people in America to pioneer and popularize the three-word name. I’ve often maintained that if Susan Walker, Jerry Jeff’s wife/manager (emphasis on slash), had married me instead of him, I’d be the president of the United States and he would be sleeping under a bridge. While this may not be entirely true, it is accurate to say that Jerry Jeff would no doubt be very happy sleeping under a bridge. Especially if you let him have his guitar.
    Jerry Jeff is not only a Texas music icon, he’s something even more important to me: a friend. When I needed help in my 1986 campaign for justice of the peace in Kerrville, Jerry Jeff was there. When the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch held its first “bonefit,” in 1999, Jerry Jeff was our headliner. I’ve called upon Jerry Jeff so often, in fact, that Susan once asked him, “Doesn’t Kinky know any other celebrities?” I do, but few of them are as generous with their time. That’s why I was happy to comply several years ago when he asked me to give him a blurb for his autobiography,
Gypsy Songman.
Now that I’m writing this chapter on famous Austinites and digging deeper into Jerry Jeff’s life, I find myself in that most ironic of karmic circumstances: having to actually read a book I’ve given a blurb for. And you know something? It’s pretty damn good.
    Way back when doctors drove Buicks, Jerry Jeff rode his thumb out of his hometown in upstate New York, stopped by Key West long enough to invent Jimmy Buffett, then drifted over to New Orleans, where he sang for pennies on streetcorners. Perhaps he was curious to discover, in the