Editor’s Note: Decorated live event TV director-producer Don Mischer, a fifteen-time Emmy Award winner, has worked frequently with country legend Willie Nelson, who turns 90 today. The following is a chapter from Mischer’s forthcoming book,10 Seconds To Air: A Life in the Director’s Chair, written by him and Sara Lukinson.
On the Road With Willie Nelson: The Bus, The Rattlesnakes, Roadside Joints and Always The Music
Maybe it’s because we both came out of the same Texas soil, or maybe it’s because when I was in junior high school, I played a double-neck fender steel guitar with country bands and Willie was my idol and inspiration. But Willie Nelson has always had a special place in my heart.
Then, after my career got going and we started working together, I realized something else about him: he is always the same Willie, whether we are traveling around the back roads of Texas or at Carnegie Hall, an Olympic Stadium, a national park, or the White House. Unpretentious, courteous, honest, and never deceptive, unless he is playing cards or dominos in a truck stop along I-35.
Willie is easy going, never pushes his weight around, or puffs up his importance. Yet he is a prolific songwriter, and one of the most naturally gifted artists I’ve ever known. He once said to me, “Good or bad, I just have to keep writing songs.” He’s written 337 of them and 25 were number one hits. He could sing on any stage and with anyone. He never made a fuss, as long as he had his bus, the Honeysuckle Rose, his weed, and his music.
Willie and I did dozens of shows together, but I had the chance to really get to know him when we did a special called Willie Nelson: Texas Style for CBS in the mid-1980s. Willie and I decided to build the show around visiting his favorite places in the Lonestar State and letting the audience see Texas through his eyes. We filmed him drifting down the Rio Grande singing “Down Mexico Way” with jazz guitarist Jackie King. He sang with Ray Charles at a club on Austin’s famous 6th Street, including I Can’t Stop Loving You and Georgia. He sang with Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel at Carl’s Corners, a truck stop on I-35 just south of Dallas. Carl’s Corners was an infamous truck stop between Dallas and Austin known for its raucous truckers. Carl himself had lost two fingers when he was accused of cheating in a card game and an unhappy gambler planted an ax into the card table.
Of all the places we filmed in Texas, Willie’s favorite was a town in the middle of nowhere near the big bend of the Rio Grande River, called Lajitas. A one street town not far from the Mexican border in a spectacular desert setting. I decided to fly there a day earlier with a production coordinator to survey locations. We chartered a tiny two engine prop plane and took off from Austin to get us to Lajitas. Mid-flight we found ourselves flying into violent Texas thunderstorms. Our plane was being whipped around like a ping pong ball in a wind tunnel. Of all my trips and adventures all over the world, planning and executing high profile events, this was the closest I ever came to feeling like I was going to die.
We finally broke through the storm clouds and turned south toward the Rio Grande, the Mexican Border and Lajitas. But I was still nervous when our pilot Bob, took a Texaco road map and without looking at me, threw it over his shoulder and said, “Don, open this road map up and see if we can find out where the hell we are.”
The runway at Lajitas was just a strip of graded gravel, with one windsock at the end of it. No terminal. No fuel tanks. No power. Not even a porta potty. The control tower where the pilot radioed to say we were landing was the reception desk at the town’s only hotel. As we approached the gravel runway, Bob radioed, “This is a flight coming in from Austin and we are about to land.” The desk clerk answered, “Ok! Good luck!” Willie, of course, arrived the next day, relaxed and happy, having taken the long trip on his bus, the Honeysuckle Rose.
We spent the remaining hours of daylight surveying locations, with co–producer David Goldberg and several of our crew, along country roads filled with armadillos, tarantulas, scorpions, and giant rattlesnakes. I grew up in Texas with these varmints, so no surprise for me. But David and the guys from Los Angeles were totally freaked out and very jumpy!
The shoot was magical. After we shot Willie and Jackie King drifting down the Rio Grande in a rusty old rowboat singing “Down Mexico Way,” Willie introduced me to the Lajitas Mayor – a goat who ate tin cans, who, like so many Texas politicians, does any stunt to stay in office. After our first day shooting, I sat with Willie in his bus and asked him why Lajitas attracted him so much. He loved the vast open space of West Texas, there were no fences, no billboards, no rest stops, and often it was 80 miles till the next gas station. He said, “I love the desert, I love the stars at night, I love the quietness. And I feel at peace and free down here.”
Several days later we were shooting a scene closer to Austin at one of Willie’s favorite hangouts on Lake Travis, Mona’s Yacht Club. But there were no yachts, no dock, just a rusty old rowboat with a hole in it, half underwater. We couldn’t even see the lake because of the surrounding brush. Willie loved hanging out at Mona’s playing dominos with his buddies, drinking Lone Star beer, and having an occasional greasy hamburger. After shooting Willie and his friends, we wrapped at Mona’s at about 10:30pm. Willie offered to drive David and me back to our Austin hotel in his Mercedes. I was riding shotgun and David was in the backseat when Willie suggested we stop off for one more drink, remembering a little bar up the road. He pulled his Mercedes in front of a wooden building, a single light hanging down and wide steps up to a double door entrance. We walked up the wooden steps, opened the unlocked door and strode in.
A middle-aged man in his underwear was watching the evening news on his recliner, while his wife, in a bathrobe with rollers in her hair, was lounging on the couch. They stared at us in shock, but I could tell from their faces they knew who Willie was. Willie, never one to talk too much, said nothing, while I, always the first to say anything, apologized and said Willie had thought this was a bar. The man, without missing a beat said, “Well, it was, but now it’s our home.” Reaching behind his chair, the man in his undershorts pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniels, “You guys wanna drink?” We looked at one another and said to him, “That sounds great.”
Another one of my fondest memories of Willie involved a shoot we did at Grand Teton National Park. The Director of the National Parks Service in Washington asked us to create a four-minute theatrical short film using dozens of artists, singing in various parks, that would encourage Americans to get more invested in the national parks system. I jumped at this opportunity because I love our National Parks.
We decided to shoot the piece with the Woody Guthrie’s classic, “This Land is Your Land,” not in Woody’s folk style, but with much slower tempo, an anthem-like feel, with layers of rich harmonies. Willie loved the idea and suggested we shoot his part in Grand Teton National Park, with the stunning Teton peaks in the background. So, I contacted the Director of Grand Teton National Park and said, “We’d like to come out there at sunrise with the stunning Teton peaks in the background, and have Willie Nelson sing a part of “This Land”’” in your strikingly beautiful park.” There was a pause, and she replied, “I’m not sure about that. Willie is a drug addict, isn’t he?”
I couldn’t believe it. Shocked, I said, “Well, Willie has smoked a little marijuana, like the rest of us in Texas, but this man is an American icon, a friend of Presidents, invited by every administration to perform at the White House since LBJ. He’s a hero to farmers and workers and received The Kennedy Center Honors. How could you possibly turn away someone so significant to America?” I tried hard to hide my frustration. I waited.
Several weeks later, she said OK, and so we proceeded, knowing her sensitivity to the image of the America’s National Parks. I traveled with my crew to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, just inside Grand Teton National Park, early on a morning in early September. What a gorgeous western setting. We worked all day laying dolly track, building a long arm camera jib and setting the shot to be made at sunrise early the next morning. There was a window of about 15-20 mins where the light would make the shot magical.
Early the following morning we got Willie out there in his bus, in darkness, and rehearsed the shot in the dark using flashlights. We then returned to the bus. As the first rays of light appeared, I let Willie know that it was time to shoot. At that moment, three National Park service vehicles drove up and parked right next to Willie’s bus. I quickly realized that the Park Director was paying us a surprise visit, with five rangers in tow. They were all in their handsome dress uniforms— dark green flannel shirts, leather straps across their chests, the hats. They started walking towards the bus. All this was fine, until Willie, still in the bus with me, said, “Before we shoot, I just have one more thing I gotta do,” as he took out a joint and lit it. Jesus Christ, I suddenly thought, if we open the bus door now, they’re going to get a whiff. I had to do something…. Fast. “I’ll be right back,” I said to Willie. Willie’s bus driver was a crusty old Texan named Gator. As I ran out of the bus I yelled to Gator, “Open the door, let me out but close it behind me immediately.” I slipped out and he shut the door, just in the nick of time. “Hey, guys, welcome! Glad you’re here. Let’s get a picture of y’all with Willie before we shoot this thing,” I said to the rangers. I led them 30 yards away from the bus to a split rail fence with the mountains perfectly framed behind them. I went back to the bus, grabbed Willie, and we took some pictures. I felt that I had dodged a bullet.
Then while the rangers watched, we started shooting — a 35-foot jib moved across the grass with the Tetons looming in the background. Willie was elegantly sliding into frame as he sang the chorus. As we were getting ready for a second take – Willie was talking to the park rangers when Jake, my gaffer from Idaho, came up to me and said, “Hey Don, can you do me a favor?” Now remember the park rangers were just a couple of feet away, and that they were worried that Willie was a “drug addict.” Jake pulled out a magazine from his back pocket and asked: “You think you could get Willie to sign this for me?” What Jake pulled out of his back pocket was a magazine — High Times. The cover featured a close-up of Willie and the issue was entitled “WILLIE’S WEED.” I told Jake to put that goddamn magazine back in his pocket and “Don’t take it out until you get back to Idaho. I may have yelled. Never a dull moment.
I had learned so much from Willie through the years, about the inner honesty of a true artist, the high marks of a professional and the lack of pretention. I also saw how you can never mistake an artist’s reserve for a lack of determination. Willie’s real interest and curiosity about folks, is what makes him able to connect so easily with everyone and share his love of music. All the music that was part of him, that he had listened to growing up a poor kid in the small town of Abbott, on the plains of central Texas, when the radio brought him the world and its music – country, gospel, jazz, blues and the voice of Frank Sinatra, who he loves above all other singers, and feels has influenced him more than any other.
Willie believes that music breaks through all the divides between folks in the country and the city, between Blue States and Red States, Presidents and waitresses, audiences at the Hollywood Bowl and Mona’s Yacht club. Singing and writing songs is his way to talk to everyone and comes as naturally to him as eating Texas barbecue. I always hoped that through the shows I produced and directed, that we could touch people emotionally and bring people together, in a shared moment they could take with them. I will always be grateful to Willie, for being my friend, for lighting up so many of my shows, and helping me, another kid from Texas, remember how music can make us feel at home anywhere, and with everyone.