Sitting in the van for hours, as we occasionally do on those LONG drives in between shows, one can’t help but get a little restless. We need a little stimulation! And hopefully something a bit more interesting than gas stations, rest stops and traffic jams.

Lately, when I’m not sleeping, reading, thinking up little hilarious videos to make with Tom, or tweeting the bizarre things we hear and say (#tourquotes), I am usually watching a variety of TED talks. Much like the Radiolab and other podcasts we love (there are so many!), these are short videos of people speaking about their ideas at various TED conferences around the globe. If you haven’t heard about TED yet, TED is quite beautifully a celebration of ideas. People might speak about their life’s work, some incredible research they’ve done, or about their attempts to revolutionize their field. Musicians might talk about their creative process, artists might talk about their use of technology . . . anything that merits a good listen really. It’s great, especially when you hit that fourth hour of driving and need a hefty dose of inspiration; listening to passionate people share their experiences and ideas is just perfect.

This is an older one but absolutely one of my favorites. Benjamin Zander is a brilliant composer and phenomenal speaker. In this short, he talks about our untapped love for classical music and uses that example to talk about leadership, how we project ourselves into the world and the power of music itself. So many little gems from this twenty minutes—it’s kept me going for many miles . . . hope you enjoy it!

photo (c) 2011 Chad Anderson

If rock and roll plays a big enough part of your life to be visiting this page in the first place, you’re probably already aware of the truly great loss the musical community recently endured with the passing of Mark Lavon “Levon” Helm. Mr. Helm’s swaggering drumming, expressive, soulful voice, and personal resolve in the face of hardship (diagnosed with throat cancer in the late ’90s, Levon went on to recover and record three Grammy-winning solo albums) were a source of inspiration for generations of musicians I look up to, so many of my contemporaries, and myself.

Levon carried in his playing a powerful sense of self and honesty. If the true aim of technique is to provide a conduit between the interior life and intent of the artist and the experience of the listener, Levon was a technician of the highest order. You don’t need a terribly “trained” ear to understand the depth and power of his drumming: that earthy, flowing, joyful, dancing pulse, singing and weeping, sparring with and supporting the words and melodies around him.

What might touch me most about his playing, though, on every album, every track he ever did, is this sense of… person. A presence, a uniqueness, a touch that came through no matter who he was, no matter what the tune was about. To me, to play so many songs in so many subtle styles, over so many years through all he experienced, while perpetually having such a concrete and yet elusive individual fingerprint is a sign of something very clear. To hear both the song and Levon in such simultaneous, searing clarity means that he was, in that moment, totally in the moment, and on a very profound level. He was open to the music and desirous to share that elation, that sadness, that story, that little bit of the human experience, with whomever was listening. And Levon did so with an infectious sense of joy that was impossible to deny.

As a musician, music lover, and plain old regular human being, I’m truly grateful for that. Thanks for sharing, Levon.

-Aaron

It’s tempting to want to tell you all about the Man Himself, the lonesome legendary cowboy, the moment he smiled at each of us, shook our hand, made a joke to an empty soundchecking theater. But the truth is last night seemed to be even more about Willie’s family than about the man himself, and I guess that’s what set the tone for all of us, before we’d even reached New Haven. Family and friends and loved ones came from a long way away, with Willie and with us. In-laws, moms, best buds from college, our very first Connecticut dive bar hosts, our favorite musicmaking peers from north and south along the coast — they all showed up, and many hands made a beautiful night.

Even the family that wasn’t there was there. Tom’s parents who’d given us the space and time and love (and food!) to pull our set together, friends of friends offering to put us up and loan us guitars, never having met us, texts and emails from all around the country offering support and tips for making it off Willie’s bus alive. At one point, I found myself swapping motorcycle-dad stories urinating next to a massive burly Hell’s Angel named… well, I’ll keep that name (read: myself) protected. We shared a hug

before we even left the restroom. We shared an awkward manly pat on the shoulder immediately following that. I know our dads would’ve done the same.

The whole night through, it seemed that the “and Family” part of the band name was even more important than the two famous proper nouns preceding it. Willie’s sister Bobbie on the keys, daughter Amy on gorgeous gospel backup, longtime drummer Paul English on the snare, and of course Paul’s son Billy stepping in for dad. Our own new musical soulmate Bryan Minto hung with his harmonica hero Mickey Raphael while newest Family band member Kevin Smith and I shared vinyl and memories of Austin. Don’t get me wrong, it all very much revolved around Willie. But not the way it revolves around a rock star. More the way that an ever-extending family aligns around the generous warmth of a winking grandfather.

Willie’s spreads the love, and he inspires those who look into his eyes to follow suit. So here’s a thought from another great songwriter, someone who also opened my eyes to the important things in life early on. “I’m a lucky man / to count on both hands / the ones I love.”

These Unites States’ first show for the new album—released 2 days ago!—is tonight in Philadelphia.  The Swollen Fox Presents TUS w/Juston Stens and the Get Real Gang at Johnny Brenda’s:

And here’s the new album ROLL CALL!  Like em, friend em, listen to their musics, take em out to dinner—these folks worked HARD to make “These United States” with us (These United States): Backwords, Cotton Jones, The Mynabirds, Phosphorescent, Deer Tick, frontier ruckus, Revival, Langhorne Slim, Ben Sollee, Jukebox the Ghost!!  Wish we could bring em all out on the road with us, too!

Jesse reflects on hearing the news about the upcoming show on June 18 at the Shubert Theater in New Haven, CT

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Sy6sNrSStA&w=420&h=315]

It’s hard to put down in words how it felt when we heard we’d be opening a show for Willie Nelson in a couple of weeks. Shock and disbelief, humility bordering on self-loathing, spasms of uncontrollable cartwheels. Mostly, though, it just felt right. Like home. Willie’s been a presence throughout the whole of all our lives—deeply, personally, musically, mythically. He seems to be everything that’s right about music, and living, and somehow making a living making music. He’s rooted, but he’s not afraid to fly the coop. He’s beloved, but he’ll tell you that you’re full of shit. Because he loves you, too. He takes care of his own—which is everyone.

Willie has cropped up time and again in my life, always in the most winking ways. When Grandma Bonnie passed away this spring, I was tasked with sorting out her music collection. Not a very big one, just her absolute favorites from nearly 90 years on Planet Earth: Glenn Miller and Hoagy Carmichael on vinyl; Garrison Keillor and Mark Twain audiobooks; her own bootleg cassette tapes of her favorite church services (one on tolerance and sexuality and unconditional love for humans of every persuasion… dated 1975, Fort Wayne, Indiana)… and of course that most magical combination of all the above, Willie’s “Stardust.” Grandma always got deep cosmic twinkles in her eyes listening to that one. I mean, who could keep themselves OUT of love with a man of such fine upstanding sensitive rapscallion American swagger as Willie Nelson? Not I, thank you very much, FortWayneIndiana1975.

But Willie gives more than just the swoons—he gives the shivers, too. Gave Patsy one of the greatest gifts in music history. Gave aid to the world’s farmers. Gave the IRS a worthy adversary (I experienced this strange exchange myself this spring—nothing like an audit for taking stock of what matters and what doesn’t!). Gave it his musical all with everyone from Wynton to Leon to Snoop. Gives us all biofuel for thought with just about anything he writes or says or works on. He gave me and my own longstanding partners in crime, Tom and Robby and Justin and Duane, one of the greatest communal entryways into lasting musical friendship, the mighty Teatro, he and Lanois just existing together in a moment. That kind of camaraderie, those relationships and roads we travel together and diverge and rejoin—it brings me back again for the thousandth time to “Me & Paul,” a song so damn perfect I really did believe it was Prine’s. Wrong. Willie heard it before anyone.

At some point, I started hearing things, too, branching off from some of these same ancient pathways. Take, for one example, the music of Phosphorescent. Hit me just perfect between the ribs, knew from the start that I would always love it. But I didn’t know WHY I loved it until Matthew Houck put out an album called—you guessed it—”To Willie.” Ah, yeah, damn, of course!—I thought—makes complete sense! He’s got that same Red Headed blood in him. I’m gonna have to give that guy a song of ours to wrangle someday, I decided. And I did. And it was good. And I’d experienced another Willie-wakening. Stepping back, I saw a tapestry woven through people and time by a hero for the ages and the ageless.

It’s not that all roads lead to Willie. I dont think he’d put up with that kind of nonsense. It’s that most roads lead to love and life and laughter and beauty and creation, and Willie is just one of those tricksters wise and worn enough to point the way, whatever the surrounding bullshit and muck and mire and war and pettiness and human frailty, onward to that distant glowing horizon. He keeps it light, keeps it heavy, keeps his head up and his heart clear, hazy as the eyes must occasionally get for that. He keeps the glasses full for his men AND his horses, his partners, his friends, his family… but I’m rambling now. A smarter man than I would’ve left the rambling to his legs and just summed it up all sharp and Tao-like in a few

immaculate sentences…

“Whether we’ve been eye to eye, or you’ve just heard me singing my songs, I’d like to think that we’re old friends, new friends, or just friends in the making. The Texas golf master Harvey Penick said ‘If you play golf, you are my friend.’ So what I say is, ‘If you make music, you are my friend.’ ” —Willie Hugh Nelson, 2006