New Beginnings

Photo by Neil Thomson

Larry Jon Wilson is the first person you see when you watch Heartworn Highways, the definitive documentary of the outlaw country movement of the mid-70s led by heroes like Townes Van Zandt and Steve Earle. I met him last month after an incredibly beautiful show at the 12 Bar where he’d been booked to play by James and Raf from 1965 Records who just put out his first record in 28 years. After the show I got a chance to talk to the 68-year-old, six-foot-tall outlaw with a voice like sweet thunder or an earthquake of molasses or something like that. Vice: So you weren’t a musician when you met Townes Van Zandt, right? No, I was a writer at a little publishing house. Townes used to play a coffee house called the Last Resort at the University of Georgia. We were pretty good friends, right till the end. I went to hear him play and we talked. I guess we had common ground talking. What was the common ground you guys shared apart from music? Was it drinking? Haha. Well, drinking was a common ground I could have had with just about anybody back then. I was never was a subscriber to the tragic poet thing and I don’t necessarily think that anybody else was, but it would sure seem like that when you read articles about us. It would seem that was part of the ammunition you needed (to be an “Outlaw Country” guy). When reviewers talked about us being “eclectic” or “esoteric” I think they just meant “anaesthetised”, hahaha. Steve Earle likes to party, I guess. Steve and me, we ran the streets together. But generally, I think that it’s none of anybody’s business the things me and Steve and Townes did in private. Sure, we may have had some white liquor to chase down our beers or we may have had green beans to go with our white potatoes but that doesn’t have much to do with Townes writing “If I Needed You”. Did you self-consciously form some kind of “outlaw” movement away from the mainstream or was it a natural thing? I think we would have had to have believed our own press if the “rebel outlaw” thing was a conscious decision by us. Actually, the first night I got to Nashville, I was with Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson doing a vocal for the soundtrack of a Roy Rogers catalogue book. Haha. Which wasn’t exactly planting a bomb under the White House. No, the mainstream thing, rebelling against it, may have been not conscious. It was more that some of us weren’t being accepted by Nashville. For example, Willie Nelson had such horrible luck in Nashville, what with his house burning up. But even if you had never heard of Willie he would have always had a very successful, busy career simply by touring Texas. So how’s this 28-years-in-the-making comeback working out for you? It’s been great. I’ve been playing in all sorts of festivals. On one of the catalogues for one festival it said Larry Jon Wilson on one page and on the next it said Holy Fuck. Hahaha. That’s something I’ve got to keep for scrapbooking. But I suppose playing with bands like that you’re kind of doing what you’ve always been doing which is playing very much outside of a mainstream? Well, yes. The industry required that you be pigeonholed but I didn’t have a pigeonhole. I wasn’t country and I wasn’t rock and I wasn’t country rock and I wasn’t swamp, rap or anyhing, so I had to be the only Larry Jon Wilson out there. And I usually sold both copies of my record. Ha. Does that ever bother you? No, no. I’ve never had an unhappy day. If I was going to worship money I would have stayed working in an office. Larry Jon Wilson is out now on 1965.