With full creative control from Columbia Records, Willie had to get as far away from Nashville as he could to record his eighteenth studio album. He had a concept album in his sights about a preacher who kills his wife and her lover and seeks redemption after the vengeful act. It wasn’t a story that Willie could tell via Nashville’s “Countrypolitan,” a pop-infused commercially-oriented sound popularized by artists such as George Jones.
Willie picked Autumn Sound Studios in Garland in 1974 to make it. It was reportedly the first 24-track studio in Texas, and he’d already gathered the songs that he felt would tell the preacher’s story such as Fred Rose’s “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” “I thought the music reflected what I was feeling at the time, what I was feeling people wanted to hear,” he told the Library of Congress in 2016. “I had been doing some of the [album’s] material at my shows and I knew the reaction I was getting to it.”
Instead of a big production that Columbia Records wanted, it was just Willie, his guitar Trigger, a piano and good studio musicians. He recorded Red Headed Stranger in two days and handed in the new stripped-down album to Columbia. Bruce Lundvall, president of Columbia Records in the 1970s, thought it sounded like the album “was done in Willie’s living room.”
It took a weekend for Lundvall, who played it over and over, to fall in love with Willie’s minimalist approach. As Lundvall recalled in his biography, which Rolling Stone excerpted in June 2014, “I told everyone this is Willie’s labor of love. He’s always wanted to do this record. It’s going to be a collector’s item. It’s not going to sell, but it’s special.”
Released in 1975, Red Headed Stranger became Willie’s first commercial success, selling more than two million copies and ushering in the outlaw country era. “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” reached number one on the Billboard charts.
Fifty years later, Red Headed Stranger is regarded as Willie’s magnum opus. It has influenced generations of Texas musicians, some of whom are coming together on Saturday night in Garland to perform the album and share stories about how Willie’s music has impacted them. Curated by Dallas songwriter John Pedigo, the featured singers include Ray Benson from Asleep at the Wheel, Rhett Miller from the Old ’97s and Joshua Ray Walker. Max and Heather Stallings, Dallas’ dynamic duo of songwriting, will also be joining them on stage.
Sadly, Willie, who’s in his early 90s, won’t be in attendance, says Dallas musician Jeff Ryan, the creative director of the two-day celebration this weekend.
“He is going to be playing in California at the time,” Ryan says. “Maybe we can get an email or a text. They are on the road. It’s great to be in connection with that team and have their blessing and to show respect and homage to those musicians and the iconic record.”
Texas Troubadour Matt Hillyer will play lead guitar for the performance on Saturday night, which is part of the two-day celebration in Garland. The first night kicks off Friday, May 16, with a screening of the ’80s movie Red Headed Stranger and a conversation with actress Morgan Fairchild, who starred in the movie with Willie, biographer Joe Nick Patoski and journalist Michael Granberry at the Plaza Theater in Garland.
Walker will also be joining them for the conversation. Walker’s uncle, Phil York, was one of the engineers for Willie’s record.
On Saturday, May 17, fans will be taking shuttle buses to the former Autumn Sound Studios — now known as Audio Dallas Recording Studio — and photographs of Willie’s tour bus “Red Headed Stranger.” They’ll enjoy live music and vendors on Saturday afternoon and then join together that evening for the concert with Benson, Miller and Walker who will perform 1975’s Red Headed Stranger in its entirety while sharing stories about Willie with the audience.
“Of course, Willie Nelson was a massive influence on me,” Hillyer says. “I play country music for a living, and Willie is the cornerstone of Texa music.”
Hillyer, who grew up in Dallas, doesn’t recall ever not knowing about Willie. He recalls his parents' diverse musical tastes in their record collection, from Willie, Paul Simon, and the Beatles to the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Joan Biaz.
Learning Willie’s guitar parts for the performance on Saturday night also wasn’t easy for Hillyer.
“Willie plays guitar like he sings and phrases it the way he sings,” Hillyer says. “He follows the melody and does these different sorts of runs. It’s easier said than done. I gained a whole new appreciation [for] learning the parts. What a brilliant guitar player.”
Hillyer was learning the parts mostly by ear and called it a “fool’s errand” to attempt to play Willie’s music strictly in time because Willie messes with time signatures. As he delved into Willie’s record, he realized that so much of it was just Willie and his guitar.
Though Hillyer feels like he has a good handle on Willie’s music, he says that his guitars weren’t suitable for the performance on Saturday night. Willie is known for his gut-string classical sound, so Hillyer is borrowing a guitar from Max Stalling in hopes of harnessing Willie’s musical prowess on stage at the Granville Arts Center in Garland.
“So much soul coming out of that guy and learning those parts that I’ve listened to since I was kid, learning the way he plays them gives you a whole new appreciation for his brilliance.”
Similar to Hillyer, Ryan was a kid when he first discovered Willie’s magic. Ryan’s parents brought him up on artists such as Willie, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams and John Denver.
Ryan would revisit Willie’s Red Headed Stranger over the years and says that he always thought the album was “weird and odd” with soundbites of instrumental in between songs such as “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” — about which he points out: “You can’t get any better than that, no matter what genre you’re in.”
Ryan has curated a lot of shows with music enthusiast Eric Nadel, the voice of the Texas Rangers, for State Fair Records. Nadel called him and asked if he would work with Amy Rosenthal, who became Garland’s Cultural Arts Director in 2022, on the 50th-anniversary celebration of Red Headed Stranger.
“I wanted to do it,” Ryan says. “It’s such a cool event to celebrate this record that was recorded in Garland at Autumn Sounds Studio near the square.”
Fans will be able to tour the former Autumn Sound Studios, where the album was recorded.
Paul Osborne
As Ryan points out, Audio Dallas still looks exactly the same inside as it did back in 1975 when Willie recorded Red Headed Stranger. There are pictures on the walls of Willie recording it. Ryan calls it “the most iconic studio in Dallas.”
Ryan says Rhett Miller recorded one of his earlier records there. Joshua Ray Walker and John Pedigo also record there.
But they weren’t the only ones who tapped into the vintage vibe offered at the studio.
Paul Osborn, the owner of Audio Dallas, says that they have cut between 30 and 40 gold and platinum Grammy-nominated projects there and recorded artists such as Kris Kristofferson, Charlie Pride, Miranda Lambert, Jack Ingram and the rock group Korn. He says that he was told that Paul McCartney mixed Wings Across America there in the 1970s.
Osborn purchased the studio in 1996 and kept as much of the original as he could. It still has the same look and the same wood on the walls. The studio is a full-service one with two-inch analog reel-to-reel and a room large enough to record a full band similar to the way “it was done in the old days.”
“There’s something about the vintage sound that you can’t get with a computer,” Osborn says.
As for why Willie chose Autumn Sound, Osborn says that he was told some of Willie’s band members knew the owner of the studio, which he says was the only 24-track studio in Texas at the time.
Before sound engineer Phil York passed away, Osborn says that York told him stories about Willie, who would return to record his follow-up 1976’s The Sound in Your Mind and 1980’s Family Bible. He says that some of the stories he can’t repeat for publication, though they may be repeated on Saturday night at the celebration.
One story involved Willie’s relentless drive to finish his album. At one point during the recording, York and everyone were ready to go home, but Willie wanted to stay and keep working on the songs. They left him at the studio and returned the next morning, only to realize that Willie wasn’t there.
They searched everywhere for him and soon discovered that Willie had crawled underneath the sound console to sleep.
When word got out that Willie had recorded Red Headed Stranger there, word began to spread and the studio soon became the place for musicians to go and record. As Osborn recalled in the 2018 video “A Garland Story — The Willie Days”:
“The place has definitely got a presence. That’s the first thing people say when they come in here. They’re getting out their old guitar and their amps, they’re setting up their drum kit, and they say that they can feel that this is a musician’s studio. It’s not a corporate studio. It’s not a jingle studio. It’s the real deal, and it has an ambiance to it that’s conducive for writing material and performing material without the artist feeling tense and nervous. It’s a place to relax and to create the next masterpiece.”
Willie and Trigger no doubt agree.
