Review: Willie Nelson's Outlaw Music Festival keeps country music reputable in Tampa

Considering how a number of modern country music artists have been making headlines for all the wrong reasons, it's completely valid to feel like the subgenre of outlaw country music and its classically anti-establishment morals are on life support.

While most of that style’s biggest names have either died or retired, there are a few who have caved into certain Neo-nationalistic ideas, and will probably cry if you say anything bad about the police or America.

Then there’s Willie Nelson.

In case you’re just now waking up from your coma, the Redheaded Stranger turned 90 years old last April, and after a few years of taking his all-star Outlaw Music Festival across primarily the East Coast—with a few California exceptions—he’s finally been spreading it into Florida.

John Fogerty, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, and the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir—just to name a few—have all taken part this year, and though no one aforementioned was present at Midflorida Credit Union Amphitheatre last Saturday night, it’s pretty hard to complain about which Americana avengers did end up assembling.

Along with Nelson’s headlining set, The Avett Brothers—a.k.a. folk-rock’s most harmonious band currently active—and Warren Haynes’ post-Allman Brothers jam band, Gov’t Mule, were on deck this time around.

But first, in place of Particle Kid (Nelson’s guitarist son Micah, recovering from vertigo), singer-songwriter Waylon Payne opened the show almost unannounced, with originals (“Her,” “Sunday”) and country covers (“Ring of Fire,” “All The Trouble”). “How many of you have no clue who the hell I am?” He asked a few songs in, making whatever amount of audience members present explode in cheers. “Never gets old,” he jabbed.

Not only did the 51-year-old play Jerry Lee Lewis in 2005’s Johnny Cash biopic “Walk The Line," but Payne’s parents were both well-known in the country music world during the latter half of the 20th century. His mamma was singer Sammi Smith and his daddy was guitarist Jody Payne—who played with Willie Nelson and Family for 36 years—so the younger Payne admitted that these shows felt like a homecoming of sorts.

Up next was Florida girl Elizabeth Cook and her four-piece band Gravy, with a 40-minute set loaded with new songs about dropping her boyfriend off at jail, and middle fingers to higher-ups in the music industry (“Sometimes It Takes Balls to Be a Woman”). For the first portion of the set, Cook was wielding an autographed acoustic guitar, which makes me wonder if she’s trying to create her own version of Nelson’s fabled acoustic guitar, Trigger.

Also thrown in was “Broke Down in London on the M25,” which Cook wrote while actually broken down on the side of a highway, and an “El Cerrito Place” tribute to its recently deceased songwriter, Charlie Robison, with a little help from Waylon Payne on backing vocals.

Warren Haynes and Gov’t Mule hit the stage just after 6 p.m., and while wielding a blonde Gibson ES-335, Haynes kicked things off with “Traveling Tune.” He’d switch to a Les Paul for “Wake Up Dead,” the only type of axe he would wield for the rest of the show, excluding on “Slackjaw Jezebel,” on which he made a smattering of notes played on his Gibson Firebird III sound like a synthesizer.

After a highly-regarded tenure with the Allman Brothers, and being able to associate himself with a plethora of modern Americana’s finest names, you can’t be too shocked that Haynes’ masterful shred skills easily made him the most musically gifted name to take the stage last Saturday night. As usual, the 63-year-old—along with drummer Matt Abts, organist Danny Louis, and new, bearded bassist Kevin Scott—ripped through hefty instrumental jam sessions in between each track on the short yet cryptic-as-always setlist. On “Snatch It Back and Hold It”—a Junior Wells cover—Louis left his rig and strummed a green Buddy Blaze guitar for a few verses before heading back up, and before closing the set with “Soulshine”—naturally—Haynes even teased “Shakedown Street” mid-jam.

Seth and Scott Avett—with their five-piece band, including violinist Tania Elizabeth and beast-of-a-cellist Joe Kwon—began their set with “Laundry Room,” which would end with an extended hoedown featuring Scott’s banjo and Tania’s violin going up against each other. He held the banjo for most of the 90-minute set, but would sometimes hop over to a visually battered classroom piano on stage right; an unautographed, piano incarnation of Trigger, if you will. While his brother shared vocals with bassist Bob Crawford, he started “Left On Laura, Left On Lucy” on his banjo, and was already pounding the ivories when the segue into “Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise” came in.

On “High Steppin’,” Seth gave the same speech about how “it’s warfare out there, folks,” and how we’re so blinded by life’s adversities that it can be hard to remember how—in his eyes, anyway—there’s still hope out there. Most of the crowd must have been on the same page because the ol’ Gary erupted when Seth asked how many people thought that “there’s hope for sure.”

Before Mickey Raphael—Nelson’s harmonica player, and the last remaining original member of The Family still in the band—came out to play on a handful of tracks (“Go To Sleep,” “Who Will I Hold”), Scott put the banjo down one more time for a completely solo rendition of the devastating “Murder in the City” on his acoustic guitar. While wondering which son his father valued more, Scott knew that it didn’t matter all that much. “Make sure my sister knows I loved her/Make sure my mother knows the same/Always remember there was nothing worth sharing/Like the love that let us share our name,” he sang.

At 9:47 on the dot—when most other 90-year-olds are already in bed—Willie Nelson, rocking a signed, blonde cowboy hat, a black Paia t-shirt (a spot in Maui where he owns a home) and his unmistakable red bandana, came out, threw on his red, white, and blue cords, and grabbed the strapless Trigger. He sat down in the center, right next to Waylon Payne—as promised—and after a quick “How’s it going?,” launched into “Whiskey River,” and “Stay All Night (Stay A Little Longer).”

In front of a massive American flag, where a banner with the festival name once hung, Shotgun Willie and the four-piece Family (which, for one of the first times in history, didn't actually feature any of his blood relatives) got through 22 songs in an hour, many of which included decrepit but lovable guitar work from the Highwayman and his beloved Trigger. He let the crowd sing the title line of “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” and gave Payne lead vocals on most of the Kris Kristofferson cuts (“Me and Bobby McGee,” “Help Me Make It Through the Night”). Nelson also flipped off record label executives on “Write Your Own Songs,” and took on a song that’s only three years older than him, “Georgia On My Mind.”

And, while “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die” didn’t feature guest spots from Snoop Dogg or Kristofferson, every performer from the preceding five or so hours hit the stage for Nelson's usual finale of “I’ll Fly Away” and Mac Davis’ “Hard To Be Humble,” both of which featured Warren Haynes providing electric guitar parts that weren’t provided in the Family.

The gathering felt like some of that hope the Avett Brothers were talking about in action. Because in a world of Jason Aldeans, outlaw country still must be a hell of a man.