Mama, don't let them babies grow up to be president.
People wrote in your name for president.
Oh right.
Any use for politics?
You'll have to delete this but, they was talking to me about running for president I said OK
and the first thing I'm going when I get elected is make “bleep” one word.
Willie Nelson has made me smile for as long as I can remember.
I grew up singing his songs with my parents and I worked on a farm in Alaska playing his
music over the truck stereo.
I cover politics for a living and boy do I need to hear from America’s song writer
now more than ever.
So as you look at the country right now what do we do to make people come together?
Well, there's a few people out there that really don't get it.
You know are hung up somewhere.
I don't know how you ever communicate with everybody and get everybody to say hey things
ain't right.
But the majority of the people I talk to already realize that.
Whatever's going on now right ain't, right, there's something wrong.
In the tone?
In the way we talk to each other?
That and of course in the way we vote.
There's a divide out there between these thinkers and these thinkers.
Everyone thinks they're right and we're not all right.
So know you're 84 years old you've seen a lot in this country.
Can you compare this time to other periods in terms of politics and also the role of
music and coming together.
Well I remember I've been through several presidents as you say over the years.
There's always been similar fights between Democrats Republicans, independents.
I think it's a little more bitter now.
I think.
People who chose the up sides are just kind of ready to stand there and fight until the
end for whatever they believe and God bless the most what they ought to do.
How do you do that?
For whatever you believe in you, you fight for it.
If there's something you can do, You have to ask yourself what can I do.
How can I change it.
Well, you can vote.
We all can do it.
If that's a problem it can be fixed in the voting voting booth, well, no problem.
I wrote a song called Delete and Fast Forward and I think that's what we're at now.
We have to just kind of forget it.
You can't do anything about what happened over here.
You can't do anything about what's going to happen tomorrow.
The only way we can do anything about it right now.
And so if we live that way we will do something.
I've got to ask you about this right here.
Oh yeah, what do you want to know.
OK so Willie's Reserve.
Tell us about it.
Well you know this is Willie Reserve and it's available in Colorado just noticing this is
Jack Hare.
Do you remember him?
He was a writer.
He wrote The Emperor Wore No Clothes.
And then what's this.
Blackberry headband.
Stone age gardens.
That's pretty funny.
The direction the country seems to be liberalizing towards marijuana and yet we have an administration
that's trying to crack down, the attorney general has compared it to heroin.
Yeah that's what I hear kind of sending my message to to try heroin and then try marijuana
and then call me and let me know if he still thinks it's the same thing or one is as bad
as the other.
It's just a matter of education.
He doesn't know.
OK.
So are you one of your songs on your new album talks about still not being dead yet, basically.
Oh I woke up still not dead again today.
Willie Nelson!
I mean, I google your name and Willie Nelson dead is one of the things that comes up.
What is this??
Well they're also glad to see me when I show up.
Is something that you feel like you're fighting against.
I mean are you one of the the last living outlaws?
Back when I wrote "On the road again" What a hundred years ago.
You'd hear these stories, "did you hear about Willie, he was out singing on the road again
and a truck hit him."
So you know so that's been going on so long, I've been reading about where I died here,
and I died over there.
And it all got kind of funny.
Our newspaper now has this new thing we do.
I hear you guys get the Washington Post on line sometimes.
Democracy dies in darkness" is our new logo.
This is what we put on every single newspaper, every single news story.
You might need a magnifying glass to see it.
All right.
What do you think.
Democracy Dies in Darkness.
That's great.
That'd be a good song.
Democracy dies in the darkness.
You got have a light so you can see.
All the things going on around you.
But dark...
democracy dies in darkness, don't you see.
I'll come up with a better word, a better line than that.
Come back and see me again.
All right I'm going to take you up on that.
Thank you so much Willie Nelson.
Well you're welcome.
It's been fun talking to you.