DAVE'S DIARY - 2/1/2024 - LUKAS NELSON INTERVIEW
LUKAS NELSON HOME ON A STRANGER'S RANGE
“I'm so happy, just got home/ smell your cooking on the stove/ I'm so glad I made it back/ wait a second, who is that/ wrong house, wrong home/ may I kindly use the phone/ I did mushrooms late one morn/ afternoon I was reborn/ ol' placenta 'round my brain/ tired but I can't complain.” - Wrong House - Lukas Nelson.
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Before Lukas Nelson next tours Australia he plans to earn his air pilot's license so he can revisit outback locales like Uluru.
But the prolific singer-songwriter won't be hallucinating like the time he woke in a stranger's home that inspired his Wrong House song on his 12th album Sticks & Stones.
So how many times has Lukas found himself naked in a stranger's home?
“Not enough so it's not a problem anymore,” Lukas quipped, “if it happens once that's probably too many times. Yes, it did inspire a great song and cheers to all those lucky people who get out of that situation unscathed.”
And Lukas revealed he won't be having more liquid lunches that were the source of other new songs Alcohallelujah and Every Time I Drink ?
“They were a reflection of my past, harrowing stories of my past,” Lukas confessed.
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Instead Lukas, who celebrated his 35th birthday on Christmas Day, keeps fit each day by revisiting his childhood love of swimming and riding his skateboards.
“We're hoping to get back to Australia next year,” Lukas told Nu Country TV and Tamworth Country Music Capital News in an interview last year from a tour stop in Boise , Idaho.
“But we won't be swimming across the ocean to get there. Do you want me to swim to get there? I have been jumping in every river I can find here in the mountains on this tour. We go from here to Wyoming and Colorado.”
Lukas was joking after my question about his ambition, aged just 10, to be an Olympic swimmer - the year he built a skate ramp in his backyard.
“I still do some skateboarding but not as much as I used to,” Lukas explained.
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Lukas and brother Micah lived with their father Willie, just 90 and on the road again, and mother Annie, in Texas and Hawaii during their childhood.
The brothers returned to live with their parents during the pandemic and staged on-line concerts and festivals to keep the home fires burning.
Lukas was only 11 when he wrote his first song You Were It that was on his dad's 2004 album It Always Will Be.
“I was on a school bus when I wrote it,” Lukas revealed, “when I got home I played it to my parents who really liked it. I was in Hawaii then. I go back and forth quite a bit from Texas to Hawaii.”
Now, 24 years later, Lukas was one of a vast cast of artists who celebrated Willie at his Long Story Short 90 th birthday concert at Hollywood Bowl on April 29 and 30.
The concert featured artists diverse as Allison Russell, Beck, Billy Strings, Bobby Weir, Booker T. Jones, Buddy Cannon, Charley Crockett, Charlie Sexton, Chris Stapleton, Daniel Lanois, Dave Matthews, Dwight Yoakam, Edie Brickell, Emmylou Harris, Gary Clark Jr., George Strait, Jack Johnson, Keith Richards, Kris Kristofferson, Leon Bridges, Lily Meola, Lyle Lovett, Margo Price, Miranda Lambert, Nathaniel Rateliff, Neil Young, Norah Jones, Orville Peck, Particle Kid, Rodney Crowell, Rosanne Cash, Sheryl Crow, Shooter Jennings, Snoop Dogg, Stephen Stills, Sturgill Simpson, Avett Brothers, The Chicks , The Lumineers , Tom Jones, Tyler Childers, Warren Haynes, Waylon Payne, and Ziggy Marley.
“It was really nice to see all these people coming together to celebrate dad it was really cool,” Lukas recalled.
One of those artists CMA and Academy Of Country Music award winning singer Lainey Wilson joined Lukas on his single and video for More Than Friends on Sticks & Stones.
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“Oh man, the best memory was laughing up there with Lainey goofing off while we did the scene where she bonked me sideways.”
So how did Lainey bonk Lucas sideways?
“Only God knows how that really worked,” Lukas told me, “but I tell you what I liked the way it turned out. We had a great fun time together. I'm very grateful to be in her life.”
Lukas also co-produced music for 2018 A Star Is Born film, appeared in it and won BAFTA Award Best Original Music and Grammy for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media.
“It sure was a surprise to win those awards, it was very humbling for me,” Lukas conceded, “I'm very grateful to be a part of it to Bradley Cooper and Lady GaGa for letting me join them.”
ICARUS FAMILY CELEBRATION
“My mama said, everybody thinks they're wiser than Icarus/ flirting with the big old sun, go and find someone/ why don't you settle down, baby/ yeah, you had your fun/ my mama said she wants grand-babies/ my daddy said he wouldn't mind a few grandchildren too/ but I just lost my baby/ cause I'm too hard living/ I've got too much to do.” - Icarus - Lukas Nelson.
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Lukas praised his band Promise Of The Real who have been with him for 15 years.
“I'm very proud of this new record that we put out,” Lukas added, “it's reflective of who I am right now. It's the most fun I have had recording and producing a record. It's the proudest I have ever been in an album in its entirety.”
The disc also includes two new songs inspired by his dad and mum - Icarus and If I Didn't Love You.
“They sure did, that was the result of many hilarious conversations over the dinner table,” Lukas explained.
Equally evocative was the Biblical rainbow that fuelled another new tune Overpass.
“The fleeting rainbow - riding high in April, shot down in May,” Lukas revealed of the imagery, “the idea of the permanence of all things. The idea not to hang onto one high or one low too long.”
Lukas admitted he hadn't heard another song inspired by his dad - I'd Love To Have A Joint With Willie - the pre-concert public address theme song for Willie's 1981 Australasian tour.
The Dead Livers song - a parody of Slim Dusty hit I'd Love To Have A Drink With Duncan - was penned by Nu Country TV producer David Dawson and the band.
“I wasn't even born back then,” Lukas quipped, “I'll have to ask dad about that.”
But Nelson has a different high he would like to revisit on his next Australian tour.
“I went to Uluru a couple of times on my tours, that was really great,” Lukas revealed, “I'd like to go back there. I was a child when I went there last, just eight or nine. I'm in the process of getting my private pilot's license. I'd like to go out with some bush pilots in Australia and go all around and explore the outback. I'd also like to do a little fishing and surfing in Australia .”
Lukas won't be the first country singer to explore from his own cockpit.
Recent Australian tourists Randy Houser, Dierks Bentley, Jamey Johnson, Chris Janson and actors Edward Norton and Tom Cruise all fly their own planes to concerts and in movies.
Lukas's album Sticks & Stones was released in Australia on July 14 via 6ACE Records/ Thirty Tigers.
The lead single More Than Friends featuring Lainey Wilson, debuted in the Top 5 at Americana Radio and top 25 at Texas Radio.
It followed Lukas buying a house in a community called Haiku on the north shore of the Hawaiian island of Maui.
Lukas headlined a major star-studded benefit concert for Maui residents in December after cyclones, typhoons and wildfires left many of them homeless and broke.