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Willie Nelson's timing

#45
We did a benefit gig for a well-known celeb's charity organization and one of his friends showed up with a beat up acoustic guitar. No nylon strings but when he started calling out "normal" tunes and a couple of his originals for us to back him up on.....it was 100% obvious that he learned "timing" from listening to and playing Willie Nelson tunes. Our drummer has jazz drummer training so he was on top of it with me standing directly next to him.
 
#49
Willies phrasing and chord progression's always frustrated me and some bands I were in who covered his songs. He is one of a kind and I love his music. I saw him live a couple of times. Sadly I read today his time with us appears not for long . He is suffering pretty bad from pneumonia and emphysema :sorry:
 
#50
SAlcott said:
Willie knows exactly what he's doing and where the time & changes are. He's a musician who sings. The band doesn't have to change anything, just play the tune. Singers and horn players backphrase all the time.
Click to expand...

Steve: Willie's former bass player Bee Spears,who died last year, talks about this in an interview that is (or was) on YouTube.
He concluded that Willie plays around with the timing because he can't count!
 
#51
I have no doubt Bee said that. Based on my limited (45 years give or take) experience with singers who phrased every kind of way, I'm sure Willie wouldn't be able to sing the way he does if he didn't know exactly where he was. I think if there was a counting issue, it wasn't Willie.
 
#52
SAlcott said:
I have no doubt Bee said that. Based on my limited (45 years give or take) experience with singers who phrased every kind of way, I'm sure Willie wouldn't be able to sing the way he does if he didn't know exactly where he was. I think if there was a counting issue, it wasn't Willie.
Click to expand...

Steve: I understand what Bee Spears was saying. It makes sense but I have my own take on the way Willie plays and sings. I think Willie has been doing it for so long that he is able to recover very quickly and make it back to the one when he finds himself out in left field. Also I have never heard his band (or any others who play for him) lose time. If they did I think Willie would be completely lost! :D
I think the wonderful "Hutch" Hutchinson would be someone who could give a first hand account of his bass -playing experiences with Willie. He played for him as part of the house band on an "Outlaws and Angels" TV special at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles back in 2004. His duet with Carole King showed signs of going off the rails at one point but she and the band hung right in.
However...Willie just does things his own way. Thank goodness.
 
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#53
That's my point-anybody who says Willie can't count, has bad time, or can't keep track of his place in the form of the song is simply mistaken. Check out his phrasing in this clip-he floats over the band just like a horn player, and just when you think he's off the rails, he hits a word in a spot that shows he knows exactly where he is. It boils down to musicianship and trust-the singer/soloist trusts the band, and the band trusts the singer. ET's Troubadours were state of the art in their field.

 
#54
SAlcott said:
That's my point-anybody who says Willie can't count, has bad time, or can't keep track of his place in the form of the song is simply mistaken. Check out his phrasing in this clip-he floats over the band just like a horn player, and just when you think he's off the rails, he hits a word in a spot that shows he knows exactly where he is. It boils down to musicianship and trust-the singer/soloist trusts the band, and the band trusts the singer. ET's Troubadours were state of the art in their field.

Click to expand...


Steve: All we can do as observers is offer thoughts.
Bee Spears played with Willie for decades. Unfortunately he is no longer with us. I respect his conclusion and would not want to say he is mistaken unless I also played for Willie and figured it out for myself. Maybe Willie will let us all in to his approach one of these days.
 
#55
"Saw him a couple years ago. Allison Krause's incredibly tight band opened. Halfway through Willie's set my wife commented that they were not very tight. I explained that Willie had his own timing and everyone else was trying to follow."

Therein lies the issue; they were "following" rather than trusting themselves and Willie. The band plays the song, the singer sings. If both are secure in their internal time and form, it all goes smoothly.
 
#58
Hi,

Oddly said:
Reviving my own thread here...

@BassCliff , I know you're playing in that True Wilie band.
How've you found it, in relation to the 'unique' timing and phrasing that I assume is part of the show?
Click to expand...

Yes, live he was all over the place. I've heard stories of Willie and Merle from some of Merle's old bandmates. Sometimes Willie would sing the whole stanza, four measures worth of lyrics, in one measure. The band would look at each other wondering what was coming next. They would try to finish the stanza, unless Willie started the next stanza early. Sometimes he would, sometimes he wouldn't. It was the same thing with Merle.

Willie was much more measured in the studio. We try to stick more closely to the studio versions. But sometimes T-Willie will play around with the lyric timing, not enough to mess up the meter, usually. ;) Just enough to be a bit authentic.

Thank you for your indulgence,

BassCliff
 
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#60
When I was an undergrad at Berklee a bazillion years ago professor Robert Rose was giving a clinic on arranging for studio band or some such nonsense, and one of the points he made was that musicians need to realize that sometimes you just have to Go With The Flow; you can't rely on your technical skills to try and hyper-analyze some situations, you have to go in the other direction and forget everything you know, try to approach music as a neophyte and just feel what works. And he gave the example of backing Willie Nelson.

He pointed out that if you get hired to play with, say, Chick Corea or Frank Zappa the musical requirements can be astronomically difficult...but all you need to do is 1) understand how the music is constructed, and 2) practice the hell out of that. iow, do what we're taught to do as academically-involved musicians. But with Willie Nelson's music, there's none of that; no amount of subdividing or metric comprhension can explain why or where he'll place a rhythmic emphasis, and so there is no practicing to be done...except practicing Being In The Moment and feeling where things are going. And musicians aren't really taught how to do that.
 
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