One of my favorite sub-beats as a person who covers religion is writing about religion and music. I married a musician (and lived to tell the tale), played in bands myself for many years, and have spent most of my life steeped in music. Although I stopped playing years ago, writing about music as a spiritual or religious experience is an opportunity to fuse two of my biggest interests, so when the opportunity to do so comes along I will snap it up each time.
My latest for America magazine is an exploration of the music of Willie Nelson, who’s been part of the soundtrack of my life since I was in diapers. Here’s a snippet, and I hope you can find time to read — this one was a lot of fun to write. Willie will be 90 on April 29th of this year.
On that note, book #6 is in to my editor and I am EXHAUSTED. Writing one book in a pandemic was rough. Writing two was… I don’t recommend it. But I do look forward to seeing how people respond to this one when it comes out in a year or so. That’s the funny thing about the life cycle of a book. By the time you have to start promoting it you’ve almost forgotten you ever wrote the damn thing.
I’m seeing an uptick in the number of newsletters I get, both in terms of how often people send them out and how many people are starting them. Nonetheless, this still isn’t going to ever be more than an occasional thing for me; I just don’t have time to do it more than once a month at the very most. My day job in academia involves such an intense volume of constantly-arriving emails that subjecting people to what newsletters essentially are, which is even more email, feels hypocritical at best, a dirty deed at the worst. And it will remain free.
And no, I’m not doing Substack Notes, whatever they are. The world doesn’t need another app where writers blather away. Enough of that. My focus right now is on A. grading my students’ essays and B. trying to remember how to be a person. I hope you are finding lots of time to do the latter yourself. Maybe you can put on Shotgun Willie and bake something delicious. That feels pretty human to me.
In 2006, Willie Nelson—author of some of America’s most beloved songs, noted marijuana enthusiast and rebel icon to musicians and music fans around the world—did something unexpected. He bought a church. Nelson, who was born in 1933 in the tiny town of Abbott, Tex., had learned that Abbott’s Methodist church, built in 1899, was in danger of closing because of dwindling attendance. At the celebration of the church’s rescue, Nelson told the assembled congregants and media that “[My] sister Bobbie and I have been going to this church since we were born,” and in honor of their musical childhood years, the siblings played a set of gospel songs.
Willie Nelson might not be the first person who comes to mind when you think of a “Christian musician.” His trademark braids, beard and bandana, relics of his years as the co-founder of the Outlaw Country movement, aren’t a look you often see in church. His open defiance of the government on taxes and marijuana, and his idiosyncratic politics on everything from his support of L.G.B.T. priorities to the rights of American farmers, along with his four marriages, are also reasons why he does not fit neatly into country music’s often conformist environment. But Nelson, rebellious as he might be, has long talked about his admiration for the teachings of Jesus, and he continues to sing the gospel music of his childhood today. In fact, gospel music brought his family together during the Covid pandemic.