Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys

Willie Nelson used to tell a story about the time he came home from a night of carousing with his buddies and passed out on his bed. His wife at that time took this opportunity to fold over the sheet and sew Willie into a nice tight bag, then proceeded to beat the living tar out of him with a broom handle. I relate this tale because somehow, beyond odds like these, Willie Nelson has just celebrated his eightieth birthday.
He's lived the life of an outlaw, and taken on that epithet with his trademark grin. Come to think of it, he tends to take on most everything with that trademark grin. Perhaps this is because of fifty or sixty years of residual THC and what amounts to a lifetime subscription to the Cannabis of the Month Club. That might also be why Willie insists his birthday is April 29, while the state of Texas says that it is April 30. Confused, stoned, or just stubborn, it is the way you would expect a real outlaw to meet life.
And he plays music. Still. Riding around the country on his bus, he's still on the road two hundred days out of every year. Suddenly those Rolling Stones tours seem to pale a little by comparison. He's got ten years on Mick Jagger, and he's still packing them in at something less than one hundred and seventy dollars a ticket. Willie started out as a Nashville songwriter, and has evolved over the years into the elder statesman of country music. In a recent interview, he was asked what his younger self would think if he ran into his older alter ego: "He'd probably wonder what's that old man doing out there," Nelson said with a chuckle. "He's got a house. He's not homeless. Why don't he go home?"
It could be that his home is the road. Like the characters in his songs, he's living the life he knows. The life he imagined way back in the mid twentieth century. He'll be taking the night of the 29th off, but if you trust the folks down in Texas, he'll be playing on his birthday in Estero, Florida. :You can get seats for around eighty bucks. A steal of a deal for an outlaw.