Lukas Nelson: A Star Is Born

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin, You're gonna waste your house and home doing your money was so long? Good back to love you, Thank you, gambling woman, don't let your love run dry. Growing up with a family full of musicians, Lucas Nelson was basically raised on stage. Lucas started playing guitar and his dad, Willie Nelson's band when he was just eleven years old. In those early days, he spent all of his time practicing and made a point of earning his stripes instead of just coasting on his dad's success. Beautiful bis, I see your Hi don't make good colors. That hard works paid off. In two thousand and eight, Lucas formed his acclaimed band, Promise of the Real, who've also spent the last six years as Neil Young's touring band. In twenty seventeen, Lucas and the band were cast and a Star was born as Bradley Cooper's backing band. Cooper learned how to embody a rock star on stage through working with Lucas, who also wrote the opening riff for Shallow and co wrote some other songs on the soundtrack sung by Cooper and Lady Gaga. On today's episode, Lucas Nelson sings some songs from his latest album, A Few Stars Apart. He also talks to Bruce Headlam about the very relatable experience of quarantining with his parents and talks about how the first song he ever wrote saved him from getting evicted from an apartment after leaving college. This is broken record liner notes for the digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Bruce Headlam and Lucas Nelson. So thank you so much for doing this. You've got this new album, A Few Stars Apart with your band promise of the reel. Can you just start by telling me a bit about this album. Yes, the record was recorded at OURCA Studios in Nashville, Tennessee. It's a historic place. Elvis and my father and so many others have recorded there. You can feel that history when you go in the building. Dave Cobb was the producer on our record, and he has produced many fantastic artists including Chris Stapleton, Brandy Carlyle. And he's just a really cool guy and was really happy to work with him because he tends to work the way we like to work, which is sort of analog, live in the studio, a little bit old school. You might say, but he can produce a fresh sound with that process. You know, we were really happy to be with him. Was this record? Was it written while you were in lockdown for COVID? Yeah, I mean we looked. We looked through a bunch of the songs that I had written in the last few years, and a good portion of the songs we picked to be on this record were written during quarantine. Okay, Now, you're from a great musical family. Your father, Willie or your aunt has been his piano player for a long time. Got other musicians in your family. Were you able to see them at all during quarantine? I was with my mother and father during the beginning the first six months of quarantine, which was great. It was It was really nice to be able to be with them. One of the greatest pains in my life before the pandemic was the fact that we my father and I had separate schedules, and so, you know, him being in his later years, I want to spend as much time with him as I can, and my work was taking me away from him, which, even though I knew that he was proud and happy that I'm out doing my own thing and on the road, I felt pained not to be with him as much as possible, and so when when the pandemic hit, we just happened to be in the same place and I couldn't leave anywhere anyway, So we got quarantined together, and it was the greatest five or six months I'd ever spent with them. Now, I mean most people I've been away from my family. Your father, as you mentioned, is he's I think eighty eight. Now, you did a very lovely version online of Hello in there when John Prime first got sick, and of course very sadly he died of COVID. Yeah, was your family okay through all this? Well? Yes, I mean we were. We were relatively fine. Absolutely. I think that you know, when you look at how many people were suffering, I mean we were just sitting up on a hill in Austin, you know, with horses and eating food together and having family dinners and you know, things that we hadn't done in years, and so I suppose we were very grateful. I mean there were challenges, especially challenges and in living together after so long, you know, some childhood things came up, and you know, there's a funny there's a famous quote, and I can't remember who said it? Could have been Ramdas or or or Rinpoche, one of these these famous Buddhist monks. They say, if you think you're enlightened, spend a week with your parents. And I, you know, I can't stress enough. A lot of us, I was having a conversation the other day, a lot of us really feel like as adults, we've sort of become well, hopefully those of us that feel this way feel that we've become the most peaceful version of ourselves, and you know, our ability to let things slide, you know, at least for me, I feel like in my entire life, the most challenging experiences have been when I've been forced to spend them all that time with the people who've been able to trigger the darkest parts of my personality. And so it really is a great, a great lesson and test in mastering oneself in order when you're spending time with people who know how to press your buttons and who you know how to press their buttons, and so to to not to not say the wrong thing that will set them off, you know, And I don't I don't know anybody who hasn't experienced that at this you know, even at very enlightened levels. You know, I think that we're all in that same boat together. Even the Dalai Lama probably gets annoyed at some point, you know, but then he's able to he's got the tools to not let that show or not let that affect how he responds. The difference between reacting to something and then responding is that one is sort of unconscious reaction and the other is conscious response. And so that that lesson has been great, and I think I've learned how to do that a lot better. These days. I have to ask, what would trigger your family? When you're at home? What would you do to trigger your family? Oh? My goodness, Oh, there's so many triggers that we have. Um, you know, I mean, we're we're all flawed human beings. You know, we've we've got we've got these cracks in us that but they remind me of the cracks in the bulls in Japan where they filled the cracks up with gold, you know, because there is no imperfection. Really, it's all perfect. But you know, we have tempers. I mean, the Nelson, the Nelson family has has never been accused of being impassionate. We are very passionate people. Uh, we we have strong opinions about things, and we have a difficulty not expressing those opinions. I'll commit the question one other way, and it reminds me. You're in Texas, where I guess trigger should be left for that should be the name of a horse, not something people do to each triggers the name of my dad's guitar. That's right. It is completely forgotten that, all right, I am wondering, and it can, especially if it was in a musical opinion. Oh no, you know, none of that. No, you guys don't argue about music, and we don't argue about music, and I don't really argue much. It's oftentimes small things like you know, when you're when you're stuck, you know, in a room together, and you know, maybe someone feels unappreciated for the work they've been doing or pulling their weight in the family, you know, and then you know, somebody says something and it triggers something else. But listen, all of these things are universal. They're not unique to my family. No, I know, because you're describing my family. Yeah, exactly. You know, we may have different views. You know. I don't like to watch the news. Then they they like to have that news on twenty four to seven. So I, you know, for me, I don't like to you know, walk into a room and I'm all, I'm just like boom right there, it's in my face all these headlines and you know, and for me, I just you know, I prefer to get my information very quickly. I get notifications on my phone, I see the general headlines, and I turn it off. But you know, for some reason, that generation, my father's generation, my parents' generation, they love to just have the news on. And I, you know, twenty four to seven, I wrote a song called turn off the News and build a Garden, and that was so you know, we have differences in there, and and that's okay. You know, you know, it's their house. At that point, I was staying at their house, so you know, I can't complain when I when it's you know, on every TV. Well, despite what you're describing, Yeah, there's a couple of things that struck me about this album. It's a very very full albums. Togetherness may have been tough at points, but it's very much an album about togetherness. Do you see it that way? Oh? I do? And after a couple months of rediscovering the tools to live with each other. You know, we've been gone, We've been we hadn't been with each other. We'd been sort of in and out of contact and talking all the time, but really spending time together. We hadn't done that a lot. And so once we did, once we sat down, once we started hanging and I've rediscovered these beautiful people that were my parents, I felt so grateful and hopeful, and it gave me a stronger sense of peace than I'd ever had a stronger sense of contentment, of being comfortable in my own skin, of security, because you know, the insecurities that you carry with you from the relationship with your parents throughout life are very strong, and if you're lucky enough to be able to sort of confront those insecurities firsthand with the tools that I mean, I had learned how to do meditation, and I'd learned the tools that you need in order to respond and not react. And so even though I failed many times, towards the end of that period of time where I was stuck with them, we were really getting along and we worked through a lot of stuff, and it was really a necessary time for all of us. Well, you're giving hope to an entire country that's coming out of COVID. I hope you know that. Well, listen, what better gift could one hope to give? Well? You are. One of the gifts on this album is will Be all Right, which is the first song. Was that written with anybody in mind? That was written with everybody in mind, that was written with the whole world in mind. It's a pretty heavy song in some ways because it's you know, talks about empires falling and understanding that everything's impermanent, but you know through it all through the world. I write a lot about sort of the outside world collapsing and yet love being, love being what keeps us strong through that. I would say that I'm a classic liberal, classical liberal, uh not a not a neoliberal, but a classical liberal, in which I really believe in the strength of individuals, knowing that things around will be at times very very very difficult, and so giving people the tools. Instead of saying, you know, let's let's eradicate bullying from the world, maybe instead say let's learn how to not let bullying affect you. You know, let's learn how to take people's words and let them slide off and not really let them affect you, you know, spilled the strength from within so that we learned to be strong people instead of relying on or trying to just say, well, let's eradicate negativity or let's let's take this bad thing. And because you're never going to do that, there's always going to be a new thing that pops up. So rather than campaigns against the thing itself, maybe the thing should be learned how to deal with inside. And that's sort of a theme that I think recurs in a lot of my songs. You are the image of love encased in this moll moment, suspendedible, and we can hold on through struggle and strike despite all the darkness. We'll be all right. Solved as the river flows, bowl in water is silence delivers the goal. You can jump in any time. Just see you're ready, I'll say, your mind, and we will be all right. If we land on, our love will guide us where we belong. Oh, and empires will fall and everything don't work. Theyly we'll be all right. That's will be all right From Lucas Nelson and promise of the reels new album A few Stars apart, We'll be right back with more from Lucas Nelson. After a quick break, we're back with more from Lucas Nelson and Bruce Headler. Your father had a difficult relationship with Nashville when he was a songwriter there, Sure, and he returned to Texas. Some of you, some of your experiences remind me a bit of Rosanne Cash, whom we've interviewed, whose father also had a difficult time with Nashville, sure and didn't want to be there. What's it like for you to go to Nashville, which is not just a city, not just a place with great studios and great great musicians, but a kind of industry that represents a certain way of thinking about country music. I think Nashville has changed quite a lot since those times, especially in that there's a lot of quality music coming out of Nashville now, separate from what the radio stuff is, you know, separate from what the new country you know that comes out. There's really good stuff coming out of Nashville. But there's there's great stuff coming all over the place now because we have the Internet and we don't need to be in a specific spot really to you know, there is no hub but Nashville itself has an energy and going there it can help inspire I think good music to come. But and the level of musicianship that is condensed into Nashville is incredible. Some of the best musicians in the whole world. It's sort of one of the last places where people really appreciate musical talent in terms of proficiency at an instrument and not like proficiency at you know, programming. And speaking of which, you did this whole album on analog. You did it on tape, didn't you? We did, yes, yeah, did you edit it digitally but just recorded on tape or well, we didn't do much editing at all. It was all live for the most part. There were hardly any overdubs, I don't think. And it's funny because you know, people don't really know that, they don't notice that because everything has been edited that they listened to to the most part for the most part. So a lot of times people think that our music is really slick, when at the same time, it's just that, you know, this band is really really good. They're really good, and so they sound like it's been It sounds like it's been produced and edited or whatever, but it is. It isn't. It hasn't. And these guys are just good and they're good musicians, and so I'm proud of them for that. Yeah, there's not a lot of auto tune on your voice. I noticed. I wish I could sing better and tune, but you know, I try. I've heard that you don't like your own voice. Is that true. It's not that I don't like it, It's just that I'm it's a work in progress. I mean to say, I actually liked my voice. But I can hit any note. You know. I can hit high notes, I can hit low notes. It's just a different sound, a different timbre, and but it's getting more character to it as time goes by, as I go through more things in life, and it gets a little more weathered, and so you know, I'm I'm trying not to judge it yet. I think your mother said that she thought you'd found your voice on this record. Yeah, what do you think she meant? There's certain songs where I'm actually really happy with the sound of my voice. She said that specifically regarding a song called Throwing Away Your Love, which is sort of a more conversational sort of tam or as a lower register of my voice, and I like that lower register that a higher register. You know, I couldn't sing that lower when I was when I was younger, but I'm able to sing it now. You know, get a little lower down there. Do you want to play a song for us? And we'll keep talking after sure? Time wasted again and again, criminal intentions. I sense a deeply rooted network of confusion in my brain. My pain is so very elementary. I think the child and me is banging on the wall that separates me from the light on the other side. And I'm trying to remember why I might have left your love behind. Oh, and I like to testify me half of my word mine for the crime of throwing away your love, throwing away your love, throwing away your love, throwing away your love. Exhibb it ain't, mama. I've got proof. I have a lot of pretty memories I can show you. Dust them off, fancy that you're the perfect girl for me. But somehow he slipped away for reasons I can't see. I'd like to boy ahead plead insanity. My mind is not my friend. I think it wants me to be lonely, and I'm trying to remember why I might have left your love behind. Oh, and I'd like to testify on the half of my mind for the crime of throwing away your love, throwing away your love, throwing away your love, throwing away your love in my life. Oh, the sit you vision is beyond my control of you gone me too, hundred thousable. I'd like to testify be have of my word mind for the crime of throwing away lowe away, throwing away your lie. That was fantastic. Thank you so much. I'm gonna tell all our listeners now to run out and listen to the album version because it's got a very full it almost sounds like the band. Yeah, band like that descending bass, and it feels like Rick Danko singing it. And that's just such a different, wonderful version. Thank you, Oh, thank you. Can you tell me about writing that one? Yeah, that was one of the ones that I wrote a while ago, and I just I can't help but just feel like it was sort of written like a band song. It's very like, you know, I wanted to write a song it was that was groovy but mellow and and and it is sort of I think it's one of the more fun lyrical songs I've written. I was having fun playing with words on that song. You know. It just felt like I was tangled up in my emotions, you know, and I was sort of like trying to write about leaving this girl behind. And maybe I was watching some law and order show or something, or I felt like, you know, I was using a bunch of legal terms. Yeah, and this album is more for people who have followed you. It's a more country album. You and your band are. You're a kind of very heavy guitar driven California style band, but this one feels a little more Austin to me. Yeah. I don't know where that California style got thrown into all those articles. I mean, you know, we we we did. The first record was in Austin. We've actually only recorded one record in California, or two records in California. But most of the time I grew up listening to Austin, Texas musicians and Seattle musicians. There's no there's no bands that I was influenced really from California, unless you include like Buck Owens or or you know, the sort of the Bakersfield sound, Merle Haggard, that kind of thing, or in Neil Neil Young. I guess supposedly, you know, made his real sound down there in California. But we called ourselves cowboy hippie surf rock when we started out, so maybe California was just sort of grandfathered in. At that point I mentioned you're from this storied musical family. Not only you grew up in your musical family, you joined the family band pretty early, didn't you. Yeah, I started playing when I was thirteen fourteen in the band. How long have you been playing? By that point a few years. I really got proficient, at least good enough to hang By the third year I was playing. Because I spent hours and hours and hours and hours and hours playing, I didn't stop. I wanted to be an Olympic athlete when I was a young kid. I wanted to be a swimmer, and I knew what it took, and I wanted to give that same amount of focus and attention and practice to music. To stand out as someone who definitely made their life about music, to stand out as someone who loves music and embodies music and isn't just writing on coat tails or something, you know. I feel like I had a little something extra to proof and to myself as well as to others, but mostly did myself that I was okay on my own and that if my father hadn't been famous, I would still be capable of putting in the effort required and working hard enough to stand and be heard. No matter what what happened to Swimming Well, I got distracted by music. At a certain point. I started putting more into music than I did to swimming. Music has taken me all over the world. Music has taken me to loves in my life. It's given me confidence, It's given me strength. If there is a God, I think God is music, you know. So when did the songwriting start for you? When I was eleven years old, I wrote a song called You Were It, and my dad liked it so much he put it on his record It Always Will be At the time, I was probably about eleven years old when that happened. So you're eleven you start to get royalty checks from one of your dad's albums. I have a funny story about that too, because when I was older, I was living in California. I went to Well. I went to Loyal and Merrymount University. Briefly I dropped out, but as I went after I dropped out. I was paying rent at this place in Venice, California, and month to month it was kind of difficult. I was going on the road and making money, but there there were times where I was not almost going to make my rent. And I remember one day the day of the rent came due and I didn't have the money. I didn't have hardly any money at that point. I'm not sure if anybody realizes, but I'd never take money from my parents. I just I'm just kind of I don't know. I forced myself to separate from that because I again, it was my own thing, so I couldn't pay the rent. And I was driving down the PC and something just came over me, like, Okay, I'm gonna be okay no matter what. I'm just gonna trust you know that life is life is going to be okay. And I got a call. As soon as I had that thought, I got a call and it was that I had a package at FedEx, and so I drove to FedEx and I opened up the package and it was a check from writing that song for exactly what was due or my rent, the exact to the dollar amount. And I said, wow, you know, and that point. At that point on I just started. I just sort of said, you know what, I'm just gonna keep trusting that is fantastic story. Yeah, I'll play that song. Let's see if I can remember it. You were it, the one, the only one one who onderstood it all when we fought out loud. You be the one who made me feel so small. You could kill, you could hurt and bring out the worst inveryone you, but no one could ever bring the worst out of you. But now I'm fine. All the pain is gone. I once had a heart. Now I have a song that was fantastic. Thank you. That's pretty heavy for eleven year old. Oh yeah, I was a pretty heavy eleven year old for sure. We'll be back after a quick break with more from Lucas Nelson and Bruce Hedler. We're back with the rest of Bruce's conversation with Lucas Nelson. Tell me about meeting Bradley Cooper and how your work on A Star Is Born came around. Well. At first, I was hired because he saw us that desert trip with Neil and he's a huge Neil fan, and he hired me to be an authenticity consultant. He wanted to basically, uh, he wanted he wanted me to let him know what looked authentic on stage and how to be you know, a rock and roller on stage, and what kind of guitars to use. And but we ended up singing. I ended up having helping him sing, learned to sing, and I ended up being the guitar and the music. And I ended up bringing my band in and then writing a bunch of songs with them, and producing U and having brought the band in, and and and we you know, I mean one of the great experiences were I mean he was just sitting with him and watching his voice progress and then having him you know, really get pretending to play down pretty well. But but it was cool seeing our music come off the big screen and you know, here my lick, you know here. And so you know that working with Stephanie with Gaga was great too. You know, it gave us a lot of validation. I think as musicians we felt like we're we could hang with with with these you know, pop stars as well as we could hang with you know, the legends. It was great. What's it like to write with some of New N't because he he did write some of the songs or co wrote some of the songs. Yeah, we wrote black Eyes together and a couple other ones. Yeah, he has great ideas. He's really musical. And then Stephanie Lady Gaga. You didn't have to teach her how to sing. She was didn't have to teach her how to saying no, she could sing her ass off, but you know she you know, it was nice to h to have the band in there, and she was a great producer, and I'm glad that she chose to keep my version of you know, the band's version of shallow pretty much you know, on the record as well. It's a trip to hear your guitar out there when all of these you know, young kids are singing along to it and they don't know that promise of the real is the band they're singing too. You know, you know, one of the people you've worked with a lot, and I want to talk about different people in your life that have helped you, but he's a good example of someone who has so much material you're never sure when it's coming out. And that's Neil Young. Yeah, you've been his backup band, you've played with them, or can you tell me a bit about how you guys first met and how that all came about. Well, Neil and I had known each other just peripherally because we did farm aide every year, but I was always kind of you know, I'd never really spoke to him until maybe I was sixteen, and I wrote a song called American Dream, which I have I have to go find that. I don't know where it went, but it was like a farmer's song. And I wrote that song and then I got the courage to to go up and play it for him and uh, and to play it for with my brother, and we went and played it for him and he was like, oh, that's great, sounds good. We were out by the buses and farm Maide. I remember clear as day. That was the first longer conversation that we had with him, and Uh, I don't know. Part of me thinks that maybe he was he was impressed that we had the courage to come up and do that. And then so over time I think he started to pay attention to what we were doing. And Um, we covered one of his songs at a farm Maide in two thousand and ten in Milwaukee, covered a song we were doing a song called la Uh it's like from a record that kind of didn't come out, time fades away. It wasn't like, you know, sort of if you're a die hard fan, you know it. It h and he really liked it, and so he came and said something after we played, said we did a good job. And then then we just sort of kept in touch his pen pals, and he started to give me some feedback and ideas and over the years, and then one day he invited us into the studio to record and we did the Monsanto Years, which actually aged quite well. I think, you know them having been found guilty of a number of different things involving glyph estates specifically, and so that that was our first foray into into his world. And we ended up going on the road extensively after that. And we still love him. He's our great captain. So what is it like to play on stage with him? It's like the fullest expression of our dreams as as a children. I mean, when I was a kid, I dreamed about playing rock and roll like that on a stage for eighty thousand people. I mean, your trip was quite quite an incredible show. And you know, if I do say so myself, I thought we'd made quite a statement on that show. A lot of people saw that show and really loved it. You know, he's this character who always seems a little never out of control, but on the verge of being out of control is Do you feel that way when you're on stage with him? Yeah, but I relate to it. We all sort of exhibit a sense of abandoned we're out there. It's what we love about being on stage with Neil because that's where your rock and roll spirit can really shine. What about songwriting? Has he influenced you in that way? Sure? Yeah, I mean in the same way that my father has. You know, we wrote a little bit together, and you know, he's got great feedback on the music. And another guy you knew. I don't know if you knew him growing up, but you've talked about him in the past is Chris Christofferson. Oh yeah, yeah, another one of the great songwriters of our generation, if not ever. Yeah, you see the kind of guy you ever went to and said, I've got this song was inspired by something you did? Can I play it for you? Sure? He was really a fan of art music. He is a fan of art music. He's writing something you do every day, or do you write just when it comes all write often every other day, you know, I mean there there it comes in bursts where like one week I'll write eight songs or something. You know, I might not write again for a month. But you know, that's how it works. You never worry it's not going to come back. You always no. And at this point, I have enough material for five records before I have to write another song, so I you know, it's actually kind of like it's kind of annoying because I have all this material and I don't know you know when it's going to come out, you know. And sometimes you write something and you want it to come out right away because it's how you're feeling at that moment. But like in the case of Perennial Bloom, which is a song from our record that's that's sort of been on the radio a lot, and it's uh, that song was written May of twenty twenty, and there's a line there this was like right when the pandemic had hit, but the summer was supposed to be when you know, the virus maybe would go away because of the heat, and we were feeling really hopeful and it was like Summer's healing coming soon, and somebody, someone beside me actually smiled without a mask, and it was more of a metaphor for someone smiling without, you know, the metaphorical mask because of being themselves. And yet that song didn't get released until a year later that same time in May, in May of this year, and the same thing applied, and so it was almost like it was meant to come out a year later and not at that time, because we had a more hope for the summer this year than we did back then. Even songs. It was interesting how how songs can maybe be written and not be meant to put out until later, which I'm being forced to accept that. Listen, thank you so much, it has been just fabulous talking to you. Yeah, Tess. Thank you. Thanks to Lucas Nelson for playing a couple of songs off his new album and sharing his story with Bruce. You can check out all our favorite Lucas Nelson and Promise of the Real songs at Broken Record podcast dot com. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken record Podcast. We can find all our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. 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