Willie Nelson Cuts Salt Lake City Concert Short Due to Breathing Problems
Willie Nelson had to cut his Sunday night (8-13) concert at the USANA Amphitheatre in Salt Lake City short due to shortness of breath the country legend suffered during the performance. The 84-year-old was still in the early part of his set when he had to leave the stage and never returned. Willie was rushed to the Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, Utah in serious condition for treatment.
Though some reports said Willie did not even finish the first song at the concert, others insist it was during his fifth or sixth song when he began to suffer the breathing issues. Willie Nelson later personally addressed the issue via social media, saying, “This is Willie. I am sorry to have to cut the [Salt Lake City] show short tonight. The altitude got to me I am feeling better now & headed for lower ground.”
No word at the moment if concert goers will be refunded, partially refunded, or is a make up concert will be scheduled. Kacey Musgraves opened the show for Willie.
The news comes as Willie has suffered a rash of breathing issues affecting his performances at concerts. Willie Nelson canceled seven shows earlier this year due to what his publicist characterized as a bad cold. Then at a concert in New Braunfels, TX on April 22nd, Willie Nelson unexpectedly left the stage for roughly 20 minutes due to breathing issues.
Willie Nelson’s next scheduled concert is at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga, California on Tuesday, August 15th. At the moment the concert is still on.
Willie’s latest album God’s Problem Child will be released on April 28th. It includes the song “Still Not Dead” that makes light of the internet death hoaxes regularly swirling around Willie.
August 14, 2017 @ 8:57 am
probably all that smoking catching up with him.
Don’t do drugs, kids.
August 14, 2017 @ 9:58 am
He’s 84 years old.
August 14, 2017 @ 10:08 am
and my Grandpa is 78 or 79 and he walks every day 8 or nine miles into town to the same little breakfast joint goes home and grows his own garden and eats proper and he’s in fantastic shape and one of the reasons is he quit smoking coffin nails a long time ago.
August 14, 2017 @ 10:18 am
Is life a contest to see who can live the longest?
August 14, 2017 @ 10:27 am
no but it’s just practical to take care of yourself. part of the problem with millenials is they’re flippant attitude towards drugs. I quit a job once over a manager who did cocaine.
Willie Nelson is a legend, and weed is part of the mythos of the man.
But are we just going to pretend that any lung problems he has are totally unrelated?
I figure he’s made his decisions and I respect that.
let the man smoke all he wants.
but I’d rather he didn’t because if he kills himself a lot of people are out on some quality songwriting.
I’d rather he took better care of himself.
August 14, 2017 @ 10:37 am
I don’t disagree about millennials, and there is going to be a hell of a public health crisis in the next several decades as the grim harvest of the “weed is a harmless and beneficial miracle drug” line of thinking rolls in, but its difficult to apply this to Willie Nelson. Once a person passes 80, its difficult to say one thing or another was responsible for their death or continued life. If he were 55 years old right now, maybe you would have a point. One could argue that Willie’s lifestyle and low stress care-free attitude is what enabled him to live to 84.
August 14, 2017 @ 10:57 am
I think weed is probably, just like anything else in the world, good for certain things in moderation but not if overused. Willie Nelson is probably in pretty good shape for his age, and I feel like we’d need a whole bunch of 84 year old men in the same altitude to check their breathing to find common factors.
But comparing Willie Nelson to Colm Wilkinson, who never drinks coffee, rarely eats steak, “lives like a monk” or so he says, and always talks quietly to preserve his voice, Wilkinson can outsing Willie Nelson by at least two octaves, and has tremendous advantages in power, control, and length of holding a note.
and he’s only a few years younger.
also in regard to my above comment
“their” not they’re.
And I was almost an english major. I feel stupid.
August 14, 2017 @ 11:23 am
Willi Nelson is not a millenial. There was absolutely no need to throw an over-generalization about a whole generation in to your argument.
Why don’t we all just stick together and hope Willie gets better? There is no need to draw lines in the sand for an arbitrary reason such as what year a person was born. We all are on the same team here.
August 15, 2017 @ 3:53 am
Willie Nelson’s weed stereotypes are a part of what makes millenials millenials. A sort of pre-modern millenial, if you will.To be fair the man’s lifestyle choices probably cover a whole host of generation gaps so pidgeon-holing him as one more than the other is grossly unfair. but the idea that weed and millenial culture don’t go hand in hand is kind of a head-in-the-sand way of looking at things.
August 14, 2017 @ 9:35 am
Think the last paragraph needs to be changed to the past tense
August 14, 2017 @ 10:54 am
Saw Willie this past Friday in Portland. Put on one heck of a show.
August 14, 2017 @ 11:00 am
I saw him in 2012. the people cheered as he walked from his bus, they cheered when he walked onto the stage, and they didn’t quit cheering.
and he didn’t act like he cared. he didn’t bask in it or milk it.
he waved, grabbed Trigger, kicked off his show and just let them cheer all they wanted.
He seemed so modest.
August 15, 2017 @ 8:23 am
Why dont ypu start your own blog?
August 15, 2017 @ 11:09 am
I feel like Fuzzipedia wouldn’t be a hit… Also I don’t have time…
August 14, 2017 @ 12:17 pm
Kacey Musgraves opened the show for Willie.
The news comes as Willie has suffered a rash of breathing issues affecting his performances at concerts.
Kacey Musgraves has been piling on her signature come hither charm a little too strongly for Willie.
I realize that the opening acts for the headliner are supposed to get the lead all emotional, and give them extra power in their live performances, but his handlers ought to go with someone more subdued in the ways of womanly wiles. The thoughtlessness of these concert organizers, the altitude of SLC combined with the gasping for air performances of his touring troupe is enough to give anyone a heart attack.
August 14, 2017 @ 12:22 pm
Wut?
August 14, 2017 @ 3:09 pm
Oh now I know I’m not the first one to mention the “unspoken requirement” of women to play live or get time on the radio. Maybe that is why it’s “unspoken”… but anyway, you must’ve heard somewhere about the “cold shoulder treatment” if you don’t “put out”, and then blame their own LGBTQQness choices on women. Are women not invited to the party, because the men are gay? It’s ok, it’s just background music anyway. Or maybe they are rowdy and dramatic while pulling beards and braids and sticking gum in it. If Willie is out of breath at having to spend time with a woman, yet men troubadour groups do nothing for his heart rate, maybe you should focus on your nature and don’t blame us for the derth of options for vikings in 2017. Vikings have pride too. Write your senator, put it in the complaint box. Country Viking Rappers “and all that they do” in the Pride Parade. Willie would want it this way. Peace.
August 14, 2017 @ 3:30 pm
Don’t do acid, kids!
August 14, 2017 @ 5:05 pm
Covering your trax would be a little recommended here. Radio isn’t going to be the same without you. We need more disco country for the downtown after hours bars, buddylou.
August 14, 2017 @ 6:32 pm
I think I’m in wuv. gingé, I feel xe. how could someone with a name like “willie” be anything but a phallic vassal deferens of thecisnormative sieg heil oppressor party? even to accept an “opening” position in the imperial willie project, kacey must’ve herself “wanted” in some interpellated Althusserian way to fluff “willie” while avoiding being labialed by disruptively queer term that might’ve frightened willie’s beer-soaked hosses. but by all means, generalize the reductive form and make it normative so that KC and the Sunshine can turn the world into a mossy grave just so long as the walking dead can boogie in the fading moonlight.
August 14, 2017 @ 6:33 pm
but I get the drift, believe me
August 15, 2017 @ 7:41 pm
I’m sorry sweet Corncaster,
By no means did I intend to reduce your experience to the normative. Radio technology has given us a way to keep the walking dead from eating us. Music soothes the zombie beasts. (Familiar songs and voices calms them down, feels like the family they’ll never have.) The singers/”artists” are confusing. Finally given everything they ever wanted in droves, they won. At least that’s the way you think it would be. But now I’m learning that country troubadours, getting what they “want” in life isn’t the “good country life” they claimed they wanted to live. Still weird. Don’t fall in wuv. Don’t trust your feelings. This is just a blog. I’m too busy falling in love with music to worry about breaking your tender heart.
August 14, 2017 @ 12:31 pm
hahahahahahahaha I always knew Kacey Musgraves was a threat to Country Music!
August 14, 2017 @ 1:27 pm
huh?
August 14, 2017 @ 3:54 pm
I would find it incredibly hard to breathe around Kacey as well.
August 14, 2017 @ 12:21 pm
For as much tar as this guy has put into his lungs over the years, it’s a miracle he’s still alive. Of course his lung capacity has been reduced, and of course this would affect his ability to get enough oxygen in Salt Lake. Willie must have the gene my own old aunts had: they smoked all their adult lives and died (of smoking related complications) well into their 90s. Personally, it’s not something I want to test myself until I retire. Then: corncob pipe, weed, and whisky till the end.
August 14, 2017 @ 12:33 pm
I watched him play a couple of weekends ago in Canada and same thing. He looked like he couldn’t catch his breath at all.
August 14, 2017 @ 1:01 pm
Uh-oh!
I have tickets for 3 shows in September- Hershey 10th, Cleveland 15th, Farm Aid 16th.
(I skipped Stapleton and Lee Bains this month for those shows).
August 14, 2017 @ 3:36 pm
Willie is from a high humidity, high temperature, comparatively low altitude environment. High altitude and low humidity will have an adverse effect on a lot of people, especially older people not fully acclimated before pushing an envelope.
August 14, 2017 @ 10:57 pm
All’s I know is this board, Hell- this world, needs more comments from Ginger (see her brilliance above)!
Trigger, we demand more Ginger comments!
August 15, 2017 @ 6:30 am
I’ve always preferred Maryann.
August 15, 2017 @ 6:53 am
You and Hoptowntiger got me cracking up this morning
August 15, 2017 @ 5:18 am
I was a little disapoined Sunday Night in Utah. You should cancel the rest of your Concerts. Go home and be with your fsmily and friends. And enjoy the rest of your life.I love you my friend. Hope and pray you are feeling better.God Bless You. Roberta Hatch,Sandy,Utah
August 15, 2017 @ 5:24 am
Take care.
August 15, 2017 @ 5:42 am
What time does everyone start hitting the bottle in comments section?!
August 15, 2017 @ 5:55 am
Post of the day!
August 15, 2017 @ 5:57 am
Get well Willie. God bless. Love your music. Got the privilege to see you in Pendleton Oregon a few years back. It was great.
August 15, 2017 @ 8:03 am
No-one’s made a comment yet about him having to cancel the show because he was too high? Disapppointing
August 15, 2017 @ 10:46 am
I was at the Utah concert on Sunday and it was sad to see Willie struggling so much. He clearly was having trouble keeping up with the band. Glad he’s doing ok, but it might be time to quit touring.
This was my first time seeing Willie live and it was extremely disappointing that he couldn’t finish the show. Kacey Musgraves was excellent though. I wish she and her band could’ve came back out and played some more after Willie walked off.
I had tix to Turnpike Troubadours the previous week and they canceled. Then this happened with Willie.