Willie Nelson and Family LIVE in Concert in Phoenix

Willie Nelson and Family LIVE in Concert

Club Doors: 5:30 PM
Theatre Doors: 6:30 PM
Showtime: 7:30 PM


One aspect of Willie Nelson’s legacy is playing onstage with his kids. Long ago, Nelson titled his touring band the Family, an outfit that still includes his sister, Bobbie Nelson, 80, on piano. These days, a new generation of Nelsons is regularly sitting in with the Family and writing, recording and performing their own music. On “Heroes” — a studio album that hit stores May 15th — son Lukas Nelson, 23, is prominently featured on 9 of the set’s 14 tracks. The pair play together on the record’s first radio single, a cover of Pearl Jam’s “Just Breathe.”
The 79-year-old singer-songwriter, author, poet, actor and activist reached his greatest fame during the outlaw country movement of the 1970s, but remains iconic, especially in American popular culture. In the ‘60s, Nelson himself penned more than a few tunes that have arguably become American classics including “Crazy,” “Night Life” and the sublime “Funny How Time Slips Away.” But that was just the prologue for the iconoclastic artist, who would redraw the borders of country music in the ‘70s. Along with fellow traveler Waylon Jennings, Nelson was labeled the outlaw of the genre, but he was more visionary than rebel, especially with the way he attracted rock fans to take a closer look at country. He was celebrated for his work with buddies like Jennings, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson, but scaled even greater chart heights by singing, improbably enough, with Julio Iglesias (“To All the Girls I Loved Before”). Nelson’s interpretation of the Elvis Presley hit “You Were Always On My Mind” went #1 on the country chart and Top Five on the pop chart in the early ‘80s.
Nelson's musical legacy is an impressive one with more than 60 studio albums, hundreds of collections and seven Grammy Awards to his credit. The veteran of such films as "Honeysuckle Rose," "The Electric Horseman" and several others, Nelson is giving the big screen another whirl this year with a role in the film adaptation of Turk Pipkin's holiday story "When Angels Sing." The film also stars fellow singers Harry Connick Jr. and Kristofferson

Categories: Nightlife & Singles | Performing Arts