Austin360 blogs > Bottlecaps & Wingnuts > Archives > 2008 > July > 07 > Entry
Willie Picnic ‘08: Report 2
Perhaps I was a little too quick to dismiss the Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic in Selma as something short of a real Picnic.
Given how it has evolved over the years, it fits right in. Besides, who am I to judge? A veteran of the Picnics in Dripping Springs or College Station or Gonzales might look at my beloved Luckenbach Picnics and say “Where’s the drugs? Where’s the nudity? Where’s the wildness? That’s not a real Picnic.”
So, sure. We’ll count it as a traditional Willie Picnic. Even though we were missing Leon Russell … where were you Leon?
My personal distaste for this year’s picnic was no doubt amplified by the fact that I was still sick from the whatever-it-was gastrointestinal bug that had struck me down last Tuesday. My Picnic partner was also ill, so I had to sit there by myself, feeling ill-at-ease with a stomach too rumbly to have any beer or enjoy the bad food.
Oh, I tried to have some beer. I was provided with several options for Bud Light: the 16-ounce draft beer for $7, the 16-ounce bottle beer for $8, the 24-ounce draft beer for $9, or the 24-ounce can for $10. Premium beer (or, beer snobs take note, what Verizon Wireless Amphitheater deemed to be premium beer) cost even more.
Mysteriously, they seemed to immediately run out of 16-ounce cups for the draft beer. So I forked over $9 for a 24-ounce cup of beer that I in no way could finish before it got warm. “This is the most I have ever paid for a beer,” I told the guy. He was not impressed.
I mean, seriously. Nine dollars for a beer?
This wasn’t peanuts. No they were $4, same as a bottle of water.
And there were people who seemed to have brought the whole family, multiple kids included, to this event. How on earth could anyone afford this?
I did notice that Verizon provided a “family zone” in the lawn seating area. A roped-off smoke- and alcohol-free area. It was largely empty throughout the day.
I do want to call out Event Staff No. 139. In the half-hour between musical acts, I had plenty of time to observe what was going on around me. Now Mr. 139 had been vigorously enforcing the no-smoking rule in the seating area through mean faces and violent hand gestures and fiercely guarding the gate leading to the higher-dollar seating area.
At one point, an older woman and her younger escort — we’ll assume it was her daughter — had to get up, I assume to use the restroom. She was seated at the front end of the upper-tier section that I was in, about 20 rows in front of me, and just next to the gate that led to a walkway between our section and the higher-priced sections.
If she could go through that gate, she would have a straight shot to the bathooms.
Now let me point out that this was no slightly older woman. Nor was she just lazy. No, she was hunched over with age, walking in tiny steps leaning on her daughter. This was a woman who had probably seen the Depression.
Would Mr. 139 let her through the gate? No. He did not budge. Instead, this woman had to walk back up the slick concrete ramp to the top of the amphitheater and shuffle all the way around to bathrooms.
An hour or so later, I saw the older lady and her daughter seated in padded folding chairs in the VIP section, directly in front of Mr. 139. She must have found the right person to complain to. Good. And Mr. 139, I hope it ate you up.
The house music provided what little entertainment we had between sets. The crowd sang along with Robert Earl Keen and “The Road Goes on Forever.” The crowd was puzzled by Bon Jovi and “Bad Medicine.” The crowd was insulted (well, at least I was) by Alan Jackson’s “Where I Come From.”
Let me share one of David Allan Coe’s quotes of the day: “… songwriters … songwriters … songwriters … there’s a lot of great songwriters here today and I’m one of them.”
Well, there was a lot of mumbling in between. But that’s what I remember.
There seemed to be a lot of young girls at the Picnic who had won the “you are NOT going to go out dressed like that” argument. They weren’t the only ones out of place. A few rows in front of me sat a guy who looked like an investment banker on a yacht, along with his wife, who looked like that rich aunt who never had any children but did have a little work done.
From my notebook: “You can’t swing an overpriced T-shirt without hitting someone selling overpriced beer.”
I spent much of the last 45 minutes of my night talking to a 75-year-old woman from Austin who had just driven down to see the Picnic because it seemed like fun.
I didn’t ask her name, because by the time it was obvious this was going to be more than a fleeting conversation, she had revealed so much it seemed disingenuous to say, hey, I’m a reporter of sorts and tell me who you are.
But it was a pleasant conversation, especially given that I had been at the Picnic for 9 hours already by myself.
She had enjoyed the Picnic — especially Merle Haggard’s set. But I’ll remember her for two wonderfully innocent questions.
First, we saw a police officer leading away a young woman in handcuffs. I looked over and she asked me “What on earth could you get arrested here for?”
And later she asked, “What song do you think Willie we open with?”
For those looking for other coverage of the Picnic, John Goodspeed of the San Antonio Express-News provided on-the-spot blogging. You’ll have to scroll down a bit to find ‘em.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: By Dave Thomas
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By stevear
July 7, 2008 3:17 PM | Link to this
I enjoyed both parts of your ruminations; thanks for narking out staff number 139. I hope you complained too.