Willie Nelson turned 93 on Wednesday, but he’s still not slowing down. Just three days later, on Saturday, May 2, the Red Headed Stranger will headline a concert at the Whitewater Amphitheatre in New Braunfels, Texas. Then he’s off to a string of shows in the southeast before kicking off the 2026 installment of the Outlaw Music Festival Tour on July 3.
Nelson will play these gigs despite suffering a string of losses to his road band — the Family Band — over the last few years. Guitarist Jody Payne died in 2008, bassist Bee Spears in 2011, and Nelson’s longtime drummer and foil, Paul English, passed in 2020. And then there was “Sister Bobbie”: Nelson’s piano-playing older sibling Bobbie Nelson left a gaping hole in the Willie ecosystem when she died in 2022.
John Spong, host of the One by Willie podcast and a contributor to Texas Monthly, has his theory for how Nelson carries on through the loss. In a new interview on Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now podcast, Spong says Nelson’s perseverance is a “spiritual” endeavor, especially when it pertains to Bobbie.
“I cannot imagine how much he misses her, but I also can’t imagine that he doesn’t feel her with him when he’s doing it,” Spong says.
Spong, a Willie scholar who’s interviewed the country music legend countless times and has helped rank his albums for Texas Monthly, gets emotional when he thinks about the fallen Family band members.
“I don’t want to get too goofy about it, but I don’t think [Willie’s] doing it for them. I think in a real way he’s doing it with them,” he says. “Still.”
Spong’s appearance is part a special crossover episode between One by Willie and Nashville Now that looks at Nelson’s albums and song catalog, and also zeroes in on “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys,” Nelson’s fifth Number One song and the theme to the 1979 Robert Redford film The Electric Horseman. Watch the full episode below.
Download and subscribe to Rolling Stone’s weekly country-music podcast, Nashville Now, hosted by senior music editor Joseph Hudak, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts). New episodes drop every Wednesday and feature interviews with artists and personalities like Vince Gill, Lainey Wilson, Hardy, Charley Crockett, Kings of Leon, the Black Crowes, Carly Pearce, Brandon Lake, Breland, Bryan Andrews, Noeline Hofmann, Devon Gilfillian, Gavin Adcock, Amanda Shires, Shooter Jennings, Margo Price, Ink, Ne-Yo, Rival Sons’ Jay Buchanan, Halestorm, Dusty Slay, Lukas Nelson, Ashley Monroe, Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor, Clever, and authors Marissa R. Moss, Josh Crutchmer, Mark Gray, and Jonathan Bernstein.
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Cheery Viruet*
Cheery Viruet
