Here’s a story with some unique ingredients. A special story of American culture. Here are the moving parts:

Willie, the red headed stranger, 85.
Prolific Cannabis use.
The Honeysuckle Rose bus.
Stem Cell therapy.
Anti fascist liberal humanist politics,
and Trigger, the most valuable guitar in the world.
A man whose wife sewed him into a sheet and beat him with a broom. Saw one son die from suicide and still goes on stage to warn people about the evils of fascists and racists in the White House.

We will miss the red headed stranger when he is gone, with only Trigger left to remind us of his passing. Whatever happens to Trigger, and I say a room in the Smithsonian dedicated to American music culture is the right place, the custodians should ensure it is a cannabis legal scenario. I will bet Trigger is infused with enough cannabis smoke to make a DEA Bell ring.

Willie is 85 this year and thanks to stem cell assistance, still taking Trigger out to rally Democrat support, last night with pro cannabis Beto in Texas. He still sounds the same. Trigger that is. And Willie.

Keith Richards said of Willie, “he is the real thing. I have to wait ten minutes before lighting my first spliff of the day Willie is straight out of bed.”

Trigger is a Martin N-20 nylon-string classical acoustic guitar.

In 1969, the Baldwin company gave Nelson an amplifier and a three-cord pickup electric guitar. During a show in Helotes, Texas, Nelson left the guitar on the floor of the stage, and it was later stepped on by a drunk idiot. Willie sent it to for repair in Nashville by Shot Jackson, who told Nelson that the damage was too great. Jackson offered him a Martin N-20 Classical guitar, and, at Nelson’s request, moved the pickup to the Martin. Nelson purchased the guitar unseen for $750 and named it after Roy Rogers’ horse “Trigger”. The next year Nelson rescued the guitar from his burning ranch.

Constant strumming with a guitar pick over the decades has worn a large sweeping hole into the guitar’s body near the sound hole—the N-20 has no pick-guard since classical guitars are meant to be played fingerstyle instead of with picks.  Its soundboard has been signed by over a hundred of Nelson’s friends and associates, ranging from fellow musicians to lawyers and football coaches.  The first signature on the guitar was Leon Russell’s, who asked Nelson initially to sign his guitar. When Nelson was about to sign it with a marker, Russell requested him to scratch it instead, explaining that the guitar would be more valuable in the future. Interested in the concept, Nelson requested Russell to also sign his guitar.  In 1991, during his process with the IRS, Nelson was worried that Trigger could be auctioned off, stating: “When Trigger goes, I’ll quit”. He asked his daughter, Lana, to take the guitar from the studio before any IRS agent arrived there, and then deliver it to him in Maui.  Nelson then concealed the guitar in his manager’s house until his debt was paid off in 1993.

Willie Nelson has married four times and fathered seven children. His first marriage was to Martha Matthews; it lasted from 1952 to 1962. The couple had three children: Lana, Susie and Willie “Billy” Hugh, Jr. Billy died by suicide in 1991. The marriage was marked by violence, with Matthews assaulting Nelson several times,  including one incident when she sewed him up in a bed sheet and then beat him with a broomstick. Nelson’s next marriage was to Shirley Collie in 1963. The couple divorced in 1971, after Collie found a bill from the maternity ward of a Houston hospital charged to Nelson and Connie Koepke for the birth of Paula Carlene Nelson.Koepke and Nelson married the same year, then had another daughter, Amy Lee Nelson. Following a divorce in 1988, he married his current wife, Annie D’Angelo, in 1991. They have two sons, Lukas Autry and Jacob Micah. Nelson traces his genealogy to the American Revolutionary War, in which his ancestor John Nelson served as a major.

Nelson owns Luck, Texas, a ranch in Spicewood, Texas, and also lives in Maui, Hawaii with several celebrity neighbors, Kris Kristofferson, Woody Harrelson, and Owen Wilson.

While swimming in Hawaii in 1981, Nelson’s lung collapsed. He was taken to the Maui Memorial Hospital and his scheduled concerts were canceled.  Nelson temporarily stopped smoking cigarettes each time his lungs became congested, and resumed when the congestion ended.  He was then smoking between two and three packs per day. After suffering from pneumonia several times, he decided to quit either marijuana or tobacco. He chose to quit tobacco. 

In 2008 he started to smoke marijuana with a carbon-free system to avoid the effects of smoke. In 2004 Nelson underwent surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome, as he had damaged his wrists by continuously playing the guitar. On the recommendation of his doctor, he canceled his scheduled concerts and only wrote songs during his recovery.  In 2012 he canceled a fund-raising appearance in the Denver area. He suffered from breathing problems due to high altitude and emphysema and was taken to a local hospital. His publicist Elaine Schock confirmed soon after that Nelson’s health was good and that he was heading to his next scheduled concert in Dallas, Texas.  After repeated instances of pneumonia and emphysema through the years, Nelson underwent stem-cell therapy in 2015 to improve the state of his lungs.

During his childhood, Nelson grew interested in martial arts. He ordered self-defense manuals on jujitsu and judo that he saw advertised in Batman and Superman comic books. Nelson started to formally practice kung fu after he moved to Nashville, in the 1960s.  During the 1980s, Nelson began training in tae kwon do and now holds a second-degree black belt in that discipline.  During the 1990s, Nelson started to practice the Korean martial art GongKwon Yusul.  In 2014, after twenty years in the discipline, his Grand Master Sam Um presented him with a fifth-degree black belt in a ceremony held in Austin, Texas.  A 2014 Tae Kwon Do Times magazine interview revealed that Nelson had developed an unorthodox manner of training during the lengthy periods of time he was on tour. Nelson would conduct his martial arts training on his tour bus “The Honeysuckle Rose” and send videos to his supervising Master for review and critique

Willie  has a ranch in Texas and a residence in Hawaii, but the place that he calls home is a bus named Honeysuckle Rose.