Conor Oberst Recalls the Long, Hot Omaha Summer When He Discovered Willie Nelson’s Demos

When boutique bluegrass and Americana record label Sugar Hill released Crazy: The Demo Sessions, a sixteen-song compilation of Willie’s famous Pamper demos, in 2003, cool kids around the country took note. Some were musicians in bands, others just big CD and vinyl collectors. Many had likely come to Willie through their parents or older siblings, who would have passed down his old outlaw-country records from the seventies; his bigger, poppier efforts of the eighties; or his genre-ignoring explorations of the nineties. But the Sugar Hill collection was something different. Some of the tracks featured Willie in a small-group honky-tonk setting, others with just his voice and guitar, sitting at his kitchen table. You could hear his chair creaking. It was Willie at his essence.(Read a…

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