Classic Waylon…
The country icon has so many iconic songs, and stories, to his name, and recently, we got to hear some brand new Waylon music on the album Songbird, which is a tracklist full of archival songs that his son, Shooter Jennings, recently discovered, which were all recorded in the prime of Waylon’s career.
It’s the first of a three-part project, and of course, Shooter Jennings, Waylon’s son with Jessi Colter, produced it at Sunset Sound Studio 3, renamed by Jennings as “Snake Mountain,” where he produces all of the music he’s currently working on.
The album actually returned to the Billboard charts, as Waylon notched his first top 10 on Billboard’s Top Album Sales chart with Songbird, which came in at No. No. 6 on Top Album Sales chart, while also entering the top 10 on four more charts, upon the album’s release.
Shooter has been doing a ton of press to promote the incredible record, and this week, former members of his band, and people he worked with over the years, stopped by for a fascinating conversation on the Drifting Cowboy Podcast, where the revealed tons of amazing stories and tales about life with Waylon.
And one of them just so happened to be about how Waylon caught Big Bird on fire…
He appeared in the 1985 film Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird, where he played a turkey farmer who gives Big Bird a ride in his truck and sings a duet with him called “Ain’t No Road Too Long.”
But the filming of his scene didn’t exactly go off without a hitch, as Jerry Bridges, who was Waylon’s bassist for 23 years, described in the podcast. Waylon was still smoking at the time, and he was smoking in the truck next to Big Bird, and he accidentally flicked a few ashes onto Big Bird’s costume, which started smoking shortly thereafter:
“Waylon caught Big Bird on fire. We were in Canada, and Waylon was in that pickup thing with Big Bird, and that’s when Waylon was still smoking, and he’s smoking and talking to me and all that.
And he does one of these things, flipping the ashes, and I’m standing outside the truck looking in, and I said, ‘I’m not sure, but Big Bird’s smoking right now.’ Somebody needs to do something about this guy. So we put him out, and things are good.”
Luckily, it wasn’t any worse than that… I mean, imagine Waylon having to go home and tell Shooter, who was about six years old at the time, that he had set Big Bird on fire… not great.
I imagine he’s the only person on earth who can claim a story like this.
Check it out:
Looks like Big Bird was just fine by the time they actually filmed their scene…
