Beginning on September 8th when Willie Nelson & Family played in Raleigh, North Carolina as part of this year’s traveling Outlaw Music Festival, Waylon Payne joined Willie Nelson’s band filling the shoes of his father.
Willie Nelson may have turned 90 last month, but he remains one of the most active and prolific artists in country music.
She was known as “Sister Bobbie” in the Willie Nelson universe, and Willie always referred to her affectionately as “Little” Sister Bobbie, even though she was two years her senior. For nearly half a century, she accompanied her little brother on piano as part of Willie Nelson’s Family Band, and played on countless of his […]
For 27 years, if you saw country music modern Outlaw Dallas Moore perform, you very likely saw guitarist Chuck Morpurgo along with him. Even when Dallas Moore went on solo acoustic tours or played one-off shows, Chuck Morpurgo tagged along as accompaniment.
Waylon Payne is the name you turn to when you need a ringer of a song to really anchor a record, and that is what names like Miranda Lambert, Lee Ann Womack, Wade Bowen, Charlie Robison, Pam Tillis, and many more have been doing for a while. But those who know Waylon Payne know he’s just as fit to be a performer.
Country music isn’t just a genre of music, it is a musical religion, a way of life, a cultural lineage passed down from generation to generation and preserved through the blood and bond of its performers and fans. That’s why it seems country music performers so very often tend to turn out to be the parents of country music performers themselves.
It is sometimes easy to get swept up in moments and convince yourself that it has never been as bad as it is now. But one thing is hard to argue: the amount of loss that occurred in country music in 2013 was to a degree the genre has rarely, or never experienced before. 2013 seemed to be a year of suffering through one unfortunate news story after another.
James L. Payne, aka Jody Payne, electric guitarist for Willie Nelson for 35 years, has passed away. He died this morning (8-10) in Stapleton, AL due to cardiac arrest according to his wife Vicki. Payne had been suffering from heart problems for years prior. Throughout the 60’s Payne played bass for Ray Price, and also played with Merle Haggard among others before eventually joining Willie in 1973.