Hello, and welcome to the bookmark.

I'm Christine Brown, your host.

Today.

My guest is Dave Dalton Thomas, author of picnic.

Willie Nelson's 4th of July tradition.

Dave, thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you for having me.

Well, I would hope everybody listening and watching knows what Willie Nelson's picnic is.

But just in case I don't like to make assumptions.

Can you tell us what that is?

Long story.

In 1972, they had an event called the Dripping Springs Reunion, which was on March 17th and mid-March of 1972.

And it was in Dripping Springs.

And, well, it was not a Willie organized event.

but he liked, the feel of it.

And so the next year he decided, you know, on about early June to have a 4th of July picnic.

And, it was pretty chaotic, as you might imagine.

But he drew a bunch of, cowboys and hippies.

He had already, you know, done, the, show at the Armadillo World headquarters bringing the hippies and rednecks together.

And so he, did a show bringing those, folks on to this distant ranch outside of Austin, Texas.

for 12 hours.

And, they just had a big time, and it became a, pretty iconic Texas event.

And it has changed a lot over the years, and it hasn't been held every year.

And some days it's, some years it's been, some years it hasn't been held.

Some years they've had multiple picnics in the same year.

But it's something that has continued for half a century and longer.

It'll be in new Jersey this year.

So how did you come to the picnics.

How did you start covering them or being interested in them.

Well I was hanging out and looking at drinking beer.

I used to be, I was a young journalist and I was, fresh out of A&M and working for the San Angelo Standard-Times as a copy editor, and I had Monday and Tuesday off.

And what do you do in San Angelo on a Monday night or Tuesday afternoon?

Well, I, I went down to work and bike and I'd hang out with the old man and learn about what I didn't know.

And I was there one afternoon when Willie's people, had wrapped up the negotiations with the local park management to have the picnic, the 1995 picnic.

And looking back and, they started talking about media and some of the work and, but, advisor said, well, we got a journalist right here.

He's at the bar and so they called me over and I met with them.

And, I mean, I didn't know a thing about Willie's picnic, but they asked me if I wanted to get the news out.

And I said, heck yes.

And so at that point, I became pretty invested in it.

And I went that year, of course, and covered it for the standard times.

And, after that I was just hooked.

And you've been to almost everyone since, is that right?

Yes.

I in 2022 my kids brought Covid home from Colorado and just before the picnic and I missed it.

but other than that I have been to all the ones in Texas since 95.

Now.

Yeah.

So how did your kind of I guess your worked on it, but also it was like for the papers.

How did that turn into a book project?

How did you go from from stories to a book in 2007?

I was surprised when, they decided to hold the picnic at Washington State.

that was the first time, I guess, in a long time that they'd held it outside of Texas.

And people have short memories, and they were like, yeah, oh my gosh, it's the first time ever outside of Texas and and Texas Monthly, printed a little piece.

No, actually, the 1983 picnic was in new Jersey, and I was really annoyed that I had been studying the picnic for since 95, and I didn't know about new Jersey.

And so I decided right then, I mean, I was a copy editor by trade, so getting things right was really part of my the way I did things and I decided I was going to make a definitive timeline of the picnic, for the newspaper.

they didn't pay me extra for it or anything like that, but I decided I wanted to do it, and I spent my spare time digging up all the first person accounts.

And if I read accounts, well, so-and-so recalls that it was.

No, that didn't count.

It had to be a first person account.

And I made what turned out to be the definitive timeline of the picnic.

and that's where the the book, the idea of creating a book started.

you know, I realized that suddenly I was the caretaker of this history.

because a lot of other music journalists didn't want any part of it.

You know, to them, it was too hot.

It was too much effort.

Nobody wanted to stand out in the sun for 12 hours.

but I loved it.

And, once I kind of realized that, okay, this is sort of my my deal.

That's where the book came around, I think, for all those reasons, you just said it's this is why the book is so important.

Because Willie's picnic is, at least for me and for most people I know, it's kind of this, like, legendary thing.

It's got this myth.

It's got all these potentially not true things about its history.

But we need, you know, Texas history is full of tall tales.

And there are certainly still things in here that are almost unbelievable.

But we know they really happened because you found newspaper accounts or first person interviews.

So I think it's wonderful that we have now a real record that we can look back on.

I think the mythology is important because it's I mean, you know, office workers can go out to Q2'S Soccer Stadium and, you know, in Austin on the 4th of July and, and sit out there and listen to Willie's picnic and are still kind of connected, you know, maybe only tangentially by that point to these wild days that happened in the 70s.

And I think that's pretty cool.

And it's such a it's such a great story of an evolution of an event.

I mean, you really you get a sense of how it was completely wild in, in which, you know, it makes sense for the time it was in to coming up through now where it's it's much more professional managed and kind of corporate and it's got sponsors and it's, it's a, it's a different event, but it happens gradually.

It's not like it just one day it turns around.

So reading the reading the every year, how it builds upon itself was, was interesting.

And it was important to me to cover the full history of the picnic.

I mean, a lot of other books would have covered those wild first era of picnics from 1973 through 1980 and then just said, oh, yeah, you know, it happened after that.

I mean, because that's where all the drugs and sex and nudity were, were in that first era, and the wild stories in the same way a lot of Willie biographers get up right through, you know, Willie's IRS troubles in the early 1990s.

And then there, like any kind of live happily ever after.

but since I came along in 95, I didn't want to do that.

I want to, you know, show how it evolved as it aged and as Willie aged.

Yes.

And, because it was so important as a reunion of his friends, how it changed as his friend started passing away.

Yes, I think it's I think there's value in continuing to show the light.

And one thing that I love about Willie and this book really highlighted it for me is how much he loves lifting up other artists.

And as you say, mostly it's his friends at the beginning.

But as he goes along, he's lifting up younger artists, introducing new people to the to the audience, kind of stamping them, saying, hey, I like this person.

You should hear what they have to say.

And there's there's value in remembering that that's who Willie is to.

Absolutely.

Willie wasn't trying to get other fans in by having these artists.

He was trying to educate his fans about who these artists were and saying, hey, they get the Willie stamp of approval and you know, in a lot of instances that was enough for the fans.

If they if Willie liked them, they liked him too.

So, so you you did a lot of, like archival research, I'm sure.

But you also had a lot of interviews to, to find people who were involved or plan in the planning and actually working on these early events.

What was that all the interview process like the interview process, was crucial, especially as it got towards the later picnics.

but also in some of the early picnics in 1976, there were tons and tons of newspaper records going up to the event itself.

And you, you know, read accounts later of how chaotic was.

But there wasn't many first person accounts from that.

A event.

And that's simply because a lot of the journalists didn't hang around.

It was so crazy.

I got out of there.

but the the interviews were pretty crucial.

I started off my research every, you know, every month I do, interviews for a month, and then I write for a month.

And that was a chapter.

And I'd start off the, you know, the month by find, you know, creating a list of everybody who played and everybody who showed up and the, the research and then seeing who who was still alive and who I could find.

And I ended up talking to 117 different people, some of whom passed as I was writing the book.

But generally and not to get too far off the subject, I think the fact that I started writing the book during Covid helped a lot, because a lot of the people that I talked to were in the entertainment industry, whether they were performers, whether they were helping set up the shows and had been in the public life all their public eye, all their life.

And now they were at home and they didn't have anybody to talk to.

So I think a lot of people were more open and, talked more because they just didn't have anything else to do.

Yeah, yeah.

And there's a, there's a wonderful kind of diversity of voices.

You've got performers, you've got family members of Willie, you've got promoters and people who are boots on the ground making these things happen.

It's such a great, you know, you get different perspectives from all angles of a picnic.

Yes.

I definitely try to get as many different angles as I could.

I would have liked to talk to more performers.

but yeah, it just was a matter of the publicity agents really is whether or not they were willing to give me a shot.

And, you know, a lot of people I was hoping to get, you know, they didn't get back to me or what have you, but the people that did were often very generous.

There's some great as you can imagine, there are some great stories, in this book.

So we touched on this a little bit.

But, you know, there are a lot of myths and legends.

How do you how do you unpack and untangle?

You know, if somebody says, oh, I remember it this way, and somebody else says, oh, I remember it this way.

How do you detangle what's real from what's on this remembrance?

Often the details can provide you know, somebody will remember something and the way they're describing it, you know, say, oh, you know, that was actually two years later at this venue.

And if you have enough, a broad enough understanding of the history of the event, sometimes once they start telling their stories, you can say, okay, that didn't happen then, it's still a viable story.

But, but I would definitely try to get people to confirm stories.

you know, some people told me some wild tales, and I just had no way of confirming that that happened, and I just had to leave it out.

yeah.

Because, you know, we're in the business of nonfiction here.

Day and and breaths that we have to make sure it's all verified.

I mean, they it's one thing for somebody to say, okay, this is what I remember.

And to.

Yeah publish that if it seems reasonable.

But if somebody is saying, okay, you know, they're making a wild claim about somebody else, well, you know, you got a, you got to get 2 or 3 sources to agree to that.

And in some cases I couldn't.

Sure.

So you've kind of already talked a little bit about that first picnic.

It it grew out of a separate event.

Right.

what was that?

Can you go into more like that first picnic?

Just kind of set the scene?

Yeah.

I think Johnny Bush, when he heard about the picnic from Willie, that it was going to be on this Rocky ranch in the 4th of July, he told Willie.

So there ain't no way in hell a bunch of cowboys can come out here and sit on these rocks to listen to us.

Picked our guitars, as it turns out.

Well, it wasn't just cowboys.

It was hippies and and counterculture folks and, old folks and young folks, and they, all came out, the ranch itself was outside of Dripping Springs, and I had one fellow was interviewing me.

He said, well, how did people know how to get there?

He was just amazed that people could get anywhere without GPS.

but they just put signs up and people follow the signs.

And when they got to this road, they had no idea how far away they were.

there was a kind of a parking, problem, and people started walking miles and miles to the picnic grounds.

And once they got there, there was, you know, it was just rocks and dirt as far as the crowd was considered.

I mean, there was no place to sit.

There's no stands or reason, no nothing.

they had medical facilities and some porta potties, and that was about it as far as, in front of the stage.

but the music was something that was brand new.

Having Willie Nelson and Leon Russell having Leon Russell and Kenneth Threadgill, having Charlie Rich out there and Waylon Jennings, that was kind of the beginning of an era, and people just loved it and stayed and stayed and stayed.

I wanted to talk to you about that beginning of an era, things I think part of maybe the magic of of the picnic and just Willie Nelson is he's at the center of this change in country music to what would become later outlaw country.

Like.

He kind of it's maybe the perfect storm of all these things coincided.

And like you say, the hippies and the rednecks, these different cultures are coming together because this music is kind of drawing people together, right?

You started off with the Cosmic Cowboy movement in Austin, which kind of yeah, Willie kind of joined.

He didn't necessarily create it, but then he took that whole movement and kind of, you know, took it on it in a different direction.

And, his friends came in and it definitely created a new scene in Texas.

And, and Willie became a superstar.

And it's it's important remember that, as early, you know, as late as 1972, he was not a superstar when they, did the press releases for the Dripping Springs reunion, his name wasn't mentioned on the press release.

He was, you know, may have been the very last time he was billed as.

And many more, you know, so.

Well, we have to I have to that was 73, which was the first one.

We have to jump ahead to 74, because we are a mere 15 minutes away by car from where the 7074 picnic happened at the former Texas Road Speedway.

which was kind of was a local legend here as well because of what happened to Robert Earl keen.

But can you just talk about the 74 picnic?

It was it, it the picnic grew by leaps and bounds in that.

And in that first year, the 74 picnic was a three day event, and it was held at the Texas World Speedway, which I understand is no more.

and again, it was very short on comforts for the fans.

There was no shade.

They were just there in the, what's the word for the entry?

Yeah, yeah, the interior of the track.

Yeah.

the infield.

Yeah.

they were just there in the infield.

just backing away.

And you had the same sort of crowd that came to Dripping Springs.

You had the hippies and the rednecks, and, you know, many of them started one around neck and you had, drugs.

And as I understand it, the city of College Station was a lot of people were very highly opposed to it.

There was quite a bit of opposition.

And, Willie had has a way of, of getting his way and, that it went on and, you know, the music was fantastic.

The, the lineup for that year was, was, was pretty powerful, even if you had, I think, Captain Benoit's show was there trying to get, footage of Waylon Jennings.

They kept bringing him on stage and kicking other people off.

But, You had folks like, Jimmy Buffet was there, and, who was the Bill Monroe?

The bluegrass legend?

it was a pretty incredible, deal.

And, of course, the legend was the fire in the parking lot.

And, you know, Robert Earl Kane tells that story, on a CD or album number two, I have dinner, and, I had run across a different interview or somebody had asked him about it, and he pretty much told that interviewer the same story.

So when I got a chance to ask Robert Kane what happened, I said, you know, was was that just poetic license or, and, you know, making up these details?

And he said, no, really.

It just kind of happened just like that, you know, the Greek gods and the burnt car and, you know, the girl wandering off and everything.

And I asked him, well, how did you get home?

And he said he had to hitchhike back to Houston.

So.

Well.

And then full circle, many years later, he plays at a picnic.

Yes.

His first picnic that he performed at was in 1995.

And looking back and, he had, just, worked out a new version, a revved up version of The Road Goes On Forever.

There were a lot of Aggies there waiting to hear him play.

He was he had really sort of, reached a new height, from just playing these dance halls in places like the Stanford Opera House.

And, and now he was really kind of, at a different level.

And when he played that song, I mean, he only got like three songs.

when he played that song, the crowd just went crazy and they started throwing their beer cans up in the air.

and it was wild.

It really was.

Let's talk about the 95, because there's a lot of between that.

I hope people read the book to learn about great stories.

The 76.

Gonzalez only had time to cover that.

That was kind of an infamous one, too.

But 95, they'd been on a we'd been on a break for a few years because of his IRAs, IRS tax problems that we all know about.

And you mentioned.

But 95 was kind of the comeback.

And it's in Luke and Bach, which is also kind of a piece of Willie lore because it's mentioned and in that, in that Wayland song, what what can you talk about that 95 picnic and what made it so special, the 1995 picnic at really kind of Work and Backwards was reinventing itself at that time.

And Texas music was kind of reinventing itself at that time.

And along came Willie's Picnic, and it's kind of reinventing itself at that time.

You know, they're no longer having these shows where they're getting 40,000 people.

and so they kind of tighten it down and put it in a limited venue like Luke and Black, which could only hold, you know, 12 or 14,000 people.

And even that was pushing it.

they put it in a smaller venue and, it was just like the perfect storm of this is kind of a new era there.

There's that word again, era.

This is a kind of new era in Texas music and a new era of the picnic.

The picnic was very much reborn, that that year.

And I was lucky to be there, to see it happen just by accident.

And then that wasn't that year.

But the following year, people got a real treat because they got to see Waylon and Willie in Luckenbach, which I think the only time that happened.

Right?

Yes.

That's absolutely the only time it happened.

Waylon had famously said for years that he did not like that Luke and Bob, Texas song, which he had made famous.

he hadn't been looking back, the songwriters chips moment and Bobby Emmons had not been awake back.

They were just going off a description from Guy Clark.

but Lukin Bock really wanted to get whale in there, and he was spoken for the first year already.

so the next year since the, you know, picnic was over 95, they started working to get whale in there, and Waylon was grumpy about it.

But he did play in Texas with Willie.

And, it was a historic moment.

You were there for that one, I was there, yeah.

I'm jealous.

That must have been something to see.

It was.

It must have been really cool.

well, let's jump ahead a little bit, too, because I want to talk about, in the 2000, they moved to, next to Billy Bob's, which is kind of the first time that it's in a big city.

Not right.

College station wasn't a big city in 76, 74, for sure, but maybe that was the largest town that it had held it.

but Fort Worth is certainly a large place to to have a picnic.

It was a very it was the most fan friendly picnic in that you could get a hotel, basically across the street.

You could walk over there, they let you go in and out.

So if you wanted to go change clothes, if you got sweaty, if you wanted to go take a nap, you know, if you wanted to go see Ray Wylie Hubbard and then go get a cold beer in the air conditioning, you could do that.

They had an in and out policy and, the access was really easy.

And they had two stages, on the north side of the field and the south side of field.

So instead of waiting for Leon Russell to tune his piano for 30 minutes, and having a comedian tell you, you know, fart jokes that may or may not be funny, as soon as one set ended, the next set began, and it was and it the whole thing ran like clockwork.

So I got to give respect to Fort Worth because they, They definitely made it happen.

Well, Billy Bob's is a place that, I mean, on a much smaller scale, but they they hope they host plenty of concerts inside.

So I imagine just kind of scaling it out was.

Yeah, they they had the experience to pull that off and it showed.

Well, I love Billy Bob.

So that's got a little it's got a special place in my heart.

I also want to talk to, this year, as you kind of mentioned, it's out of state.

It's in new Jersey.

And, yeah, we had short memories again, because I remember when the news broke, everybody said, oh, well, he's never been out.

This isn't even the first time he's been in new Jersey before.

I mean, he's certainly been out of state plenty of times now.

The picnic has been out of state, starting in 77.

And Tulsa, when he was kind of on the run, so to speak, from the Gonzalez picnic.

so it has been out of state, and, it happens it happened a few times in the late 70s and early 80s, and then it didn't happen again for a long time, and people just kind of forgot, I'm sure.

Well, I don't I mean, he's getting older.

I don't know if I would want to be standing in the sun in Texas on July 4th.

So I don't know that I blame him.

Maybe finding a cooler right.

kind of a punchline to that is that.

Yeah.

When they went up to Washington State, everybody was like, oh, it's going to be so much cooler up there.

And it wasn't.

It was like a over 100 degrees, right there, at the Gorge Amphitheater.

So.

Well, unfortunately, we're running low on time.

There's so many there's 50 years of picnics to talk about.

We can't talk about them all.

So I would encourage people to read the book because there's so many great stories, great performers, great, great information in here.

But in our final, like, three minutes.

What do you hope people take away from this book?

the most important thing, to me, is that people kind of get a feeling of, you know, the history of it and how it applied to the people, not just how it applied to Willie, but how it applied to everybody that he was connected with over those years.

And, that's why I included a lot of the hangers on, a lot of the crew, a lot of the promoters, even even fans in the book, because it made a big impact on a lot of folks.

And I want people just to, I hope they come away with a sense of, wow, this this is what it's like.

and, I want people that were there, hopefully come away with an idea of like, wow, they've got it.

Right.

So that's that's important to me.

Well I just like like we talked about before preserving that history, getting it right, getting it on, you know, right.

There aren't going to be bullies.

Well maybe they will.

Maybe they'll continue I don't know.

But Willie won't have picnics forever.

So we need to preserve that history accurately.

Yes.

Because for better or worse, I think like what I've noticed is the culture he created is, is one of joy and celebration and inclusivity and, it's all about like, you know, I think at the end, his, his granddaughter talked about how it's about freedom, it's about expression, and it's about, you know, just kind of being who we are.

And that's maybe why it's on the fourth.

And if you really get the sense that through the messy years and the good years and the corporate years, that's what it's all about.

It's the the key thing through all of them and all the change that's happened is Will is very much still the same.

And he's very much that generous spirit.

And whether or not he's, promoting, Ray Wylie Hubbard or whether he's promoting Mavis Staples, the the idea is the same with Willie.

This is good music.

Listen to it.

I like these people, and, you should like it, too.

Well, that's let's end it there, because I can't think of any other way to sum it up.

Thank you so much for being here and talking about this thing.

Oh you're welcome.

Thank you.

Well, that's all the time we have for today.

The book again, is Picnic Willie Nelson's 4th of July tradition.

Thank you so much for joining us, and I will see you again soon.