I was honored to write a review of the much-anticipated Alison Krauss and Union Station tour with Willie Nelson and Family for Bluegrass Today. You can read the whole review here but I can say it was a night of great music and we were really excited to have it as a hometown show. The up and coming Devil Makes Three opened the show.

Before the show, it was fun to look around the audience and guess which band people were there to see. I asked the couple in front of us and they quickly replied they were there to see Willie.

I certainly picked the right folks to ask. Jesse Barr from Pulaski said he saw one of Willie Nelson’s very first shows at the Taft Hotel in New York City. He said it was in the early fifties, perhaps around 1954. “He looked like a Baptist preacher,” Barr said. “He wore a blue suit and a tie.”

He saw Nelson’s bus pulled over by police some years later, reportedly with Willie and Waylon aboard. Regardless of his look, Barr loves his music and sees him whenever he can.

Barr said he also enjoys bluegrass and was looking forward to hearing Alison Krauss and Union Station too.

Everyone seemed to have a good time but I can’t for the life of me understand why someone buys tickets to a show this good and then leaves halfway through Willie’s set, which was last, just to beat the traffic. Here’s what you missed people: Willie and Family, plus Alison Krauss and Union Station, with Jerry Douglas on dobro doing a short gospel set. Will the Circle Be Unbroken, I’ll Fly Away and I Saw the Light. Then Willie wrapped it all up with Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die. Totally worth the wait and still no real traffic afterwards.