Just when I think I’ve heard the craziest Willie Nelson story there is…
The country outlaw turned 90 years old last weekend, and of course, there was a massive and very well-deserved celebration in his honor.
Performers like George Strait, Chris Stapleton, Miranda Lambert, Shooter Jennings and Willie’s son Lukas, and of course Willie himself all graced the stage at the Hollywood Bowl performing his all-time classics, and it had me looking back on so many incredible stories about Willie’s life.
And one in particular I’ve never heard before came from Otis Gibbs, who has a Youtube channel where he tells awesome stories of country music legends and icons.
He’s also friends with Phil Kaufman, who’s one of the most well-known (even infamous) tour managers in history. Phil was actually the tour manager for Emmylou Harris back in the day, when she was opening for Willie many decades ago.
And one day, Willie Nelson’s long-time stage manager, and quite a colorful character himself, Poodie Locke, asked Phil if he could ride on their bus for a while.
When Phil questioned him about what was going on, Poodie told him that Willie and his band members had taken the Gideons Bibles from their hotel rooms, and were shooting the gun at the Bible and taking bets on which chapter the bullet would land in.
It sounds absolutely insane, and obviously pretty unsafe, but it’s true, and clearly, not very conducive to getting much rest if you have to listen to that all night…
“Well, Willie and the boys are back there. They got these bibles from the hotel, The Gideons Bible, and they’re taking bets.
They’ve got a gun, and they’re shooting the gun into the Bible and they’re taking bets on which particular chapter of the Bible the bullet will land in.
So you’ll hear somebody scream out, ‘Deuteronomy!’ and then ‘Bam!’ The gun goes off. There’s a pause and everybody starts cheering. And then you hear, ‘Proverbs!’ Bam! The gun goes off. Pause, somebody starts cheering…
So they’re taking bets and firing a gun into a Bible. And Poodie just wanted to have a little bit of quiet.”
That really beats just about all I’ve ever heard, honestly.
I know Willie’s a masterful poker player, and is pretty damn good when it comes to betting and things of that nature, but this is on a whole other level.
Really, it’s just another incredible Willie Nelson story that is just too damn good, and wild, to make up…
You can hear more about it in the video below:
I mean, hey, they don’t call him “Shotgun Willie” for nothin’…
How Willie Nelson Stopped An Alabama Parking Garage Police Shootout In The Late ’70s
The one and only Willie Nelson…
Country music icon, marijuana enthusiast, living legend… the vault of incredible Willie Nelson stories is as deep as it as wide. I’d just love to sit down with Shotgun Willie for a while and hear him tell these stories face to face… they’re just insane.
We’ve heard about the joint at the White House, the 9-hour sex marathon, the $16 MILLIOIN dollar tax bill that he paid via Taco Bell commercial, but perhaps one of the most interesting stories about the famed country star comes from a show he was playing in Birmingham, Alabama in the late ’70s.
Willie and the boys were loading up the bus after a show at the Birmingham Coliseum when they found themselves in the middle of a gun fight in a six-story parking garage.
The Parking Lot Gun Fight
Nelson’s long-time stage manager/bus driver Randy “Poodie” Locke recalled the wild moment very well in the singer’s autobiography, Willie: An Autobiography, beginning on page 289:
“We all carried two or three guns and plenty of ammo back then. Half the band was already on the Tube, Mickey was off chasing the monkey someplace. All of a sudden we hear ‘Kaboom! Kaboom! It’s the sound of a .357 magnum going off in the parking garage.
The echoes sound like howitzer shells exploding. It’s kind of semi-dark, and this guy comes blowing through this parking deck and jumps in the Franks Brothers’ Suburban. Now here comes this bitch with a fucking pistol. ‘Kaboom!’ She’s chasing this motherfucker. It sounds like a fucking war.
People are piling out of the show and they start scattering. Here come the cops from every direction. They’re flying out of their cars, hitting the parking deck, spread-eagling the whole crowd… ‘On the deck, motherfuckers!’… because the cops don’t know who is shooting at who.
We cut the lights and slip around the back of the bus. All you can see are police headlights in a big semi-circle and hundreds of people laying flat on the ground.. all these cops are squatting down in the doorjambs, turning people over, frisking them, aiming guns at everybody, just waiting for the next shot to be fired.
Absolute chaos…
Willie Nelson: Peacemaker
And here comes Willie.
He walks off the bus wearing cutoffs and tennis shoes, and he’s got two huge Colt .45 revolvers stuck in his waist. The barrels are so long they stick out the bottom of his cutoffs.
Two shining motherfucking pistols in plain sight of a bunch of cops nervous as shit.
Willie just walks over and says, ‘What’s the trouble?’ Well he’s got some kind of aura to him that just cools everything out. The cops put up their guns, the people climb off the concrete, and pretty soon Willie is signing autographs.”
There ya go, just like nothing ever happened.
The mythical Willie Nelson ladies and gentleman.
And while that’s not how he got the nickname Shotgun Willie, ain’t nobody wanna mess with a legend like that.
