Terry Lickona on Willie Nelson

By John T. Davis
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Friday, April 25, 2008

"Austin City Limits" producer Terry Lickona first got a good look at Austin in the summer of 1974, in the wake of Willie Nelson's three-day Fourth of July Picnic in College Station. At the time Lickona (who journeyed to Texas with his friend, the late musician Dan Del Santo) was a country music disc jockey in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. Del Santo had turned Lickona on to the new fusion of country and rock coming out of Austin and the pair decided to hear it firsthand. Lickona was particularly fascinated with the godfather of the movement, Willie Nelson.

Little did Lickona know, but fate was to throw him into Nelson's orbit. In 1979, Lickona became "ACL's" producer, a post he has held ever since. Though Lickona wasn't around for the pilot program Nelson taped in 1974, Nelson has made a dozen appearances (on his own or as part of various groups) on the show, most recently as part of the 25th anniversary season in 2000.

In addition, Lickona has also worked with Nelson on an HBO special filmed at the Austin Opera House, another special that teamed Willie and Ray Charles for the first time and on several of Nelson's Farm Aid festivals.

One afternoon not long ago, Lickona sat in his 'ACL' office and reflected on his unique history with the Red-Headed Stranger.

On coming to Austin:

I grew up in upstate New York in the '60s and I listened to the same rock 'n' roll that most kids my age did. Then Dan Del Santo introduced me to this Texas music, to people like Bob Wills and Ernest Tubbs and Willie Nelson and Ray Price, Waylon and Billy Joe Shaver, etc. And I'd never heard anything quite like it.

The first Willie Nelson album I fell in love with was "Shotgun Willie." That and "Phases and Stages" just blew me away.

I already had a preconceived notion of what country music was. Back where I grew up, the old-time country artists would actually tour quite a bit. My parents remembered Red Foley coming through in the '40s, and George Jones and Tammy Wynette coming to play a high school auditorium somewhere. And that held no interest for me at all.

But Willie and his crowd were something else. They spoke a different language musically and lyrically. And his singing and guitar playing — and everything about him — was totally different. I just decided I wanted to come down here and see him play live and meet him at some point and just kind of absorb that charisma that he seemed to be projecting.

The first time I saw Willie play in Austin was about two weeks after I moved here in November 1974, at a show at the Ritz Theater on Sixth Street. Then, I saw him time and time again at the Armadillo, at Tim O'Connor's joint on Lavaca Street (Castle Creek), and at the Split Rail and the Broken Spoke and the Austin Opera House, or wherever he would play.

His favorite 'Austin City Limits' episodes featuring Willie:

I would say my favorites are, have been and always will be the first Songwriters Specials (from Seasons 5 and 6, in 1980-81). I guess it was my idea, with proper credit to (longtime University of Texas football) Coach Darrell Royal. That's where I got the inspiration for it: going to coach's house back in the day when he'd have a guitar pull with pretty much the same cast of characters — Willie, Sonny Throckmorton, Whitey Shafer, Red Lane and Hank Cochran. And I wanted to get Floyd Tillman involved, too.

So we decided to get them into the studio and tape an "Austin City Limits," my second year as producer. And it was such a great show. Once they got up there they just kept going, a couple of hours at least. So we made it into two shows, one that aired that year and one that aired the following year ... Ray Price happened to come to the taping and he sat in the audience and at some point during the show they invited him to come up onstage.

So I think that still has a special place in my memory and my heart, because, No. 1, it was the first time I met Willie and, No. 2, it was the first time I had gotten to work with him.

Watching Roger Miller tape an 'ACL' episode with Willie:

He's been to this studio many times. One time, there was the Roger Miller show ... Willie had hit the big time when his buddy Roger Miller was going to tape the show (Season 8 in 1983), and he wanted to be there. But he didn't want to disrupt it; he didn't want to just sit in the audience and have it focus on him. So Willie came into the control room to watch part of the show.

Then I said, "I have a place where you can check out the studio and no one will even know you're there." So I took him up to the upper-upper catwalk in Studio 6-A. And it was just Willie and me.

And it was one of my strongest memories because it felt like we were invisible, floating in the clouds — literally in the clouds — up above it all. And Willie was looking down through the lighting grid and you could tell he was really enjoying it, because Roger was as much a comedian as he was a musician and the audience was just rolling in the aisles.

So Willie, as he is wont to do, pulled out one and lit it up and started to enjoy the show that much more.

He did eventually get onstage with Roger Miller and one of the rare moments in ACL history was seeing Willie and Roger Miller dancing together on that stage. I think it was Roger's idea.

Dealing with Willie over the years:

My personal dealings with Willie have pretty much been consistent with what everybody who knows Willie knows him to be like. And by that, I mean he can be so gracious, so friendly, he makes you feel so comfortable in his presence, whether it's on the bus or backstage.

And then there's that other side of Willie, where he does have that famous temper that he flashes from time to time, or impatience, or suddenly he does like a 180 (degree) turn.

And who knows? You've got to put yourself in his shoes, considering what he's had to go through.

Filming 'Country Music Legends' in the 'ACL' studio:

One of the most emotional performances he ever made on that stage was not at "Austin City Limits," but as part of a special we produced for PBS called "Country Music Legends." And as part of that three-hour show, we had the Texas Playboys come back and do their last performance.

It was billed as such, and Leon McAuliffe announced it from the stage ... the last time they were gonna perform together as that group — Leon Raush, Smokey Dacus, Al Strickland and Leon — this was it, after 50-plus years.

We invited George Strait, Mel Tillis and Willie to come on as guests and sing. Everybody loved Mel and everybody loved George, but when Willie came out onstage that whole studio just erupted.

He sang "Stay All Night" and three other songs. You could see the tears in the eyes of the Playboys and we all had goosebumps, too, because that really was history, as many times as history has been made on that stage.

If you know anything about the music of Bob Wills and about the impact it had on Willie and Willie's connection with the Texas Playboys, you couldn't help but be emotional about the whole experience.

Taping Willie's first HBO special in the early '80s:

It was around the same time a couple of years later that Willie taped his HBO special at the Austin Opera House and he asked me to produce. HBO had a different idea — they didn't know who I was or what "Austin City Limits" was.

Willie wanted to work with us; he knew we would capture him in the right way. And it was certainly, for a kid from Poughkeepsie, who had barely gotten his feet wet in Austin, to do something like his first-ever HBO special with Willie, whose star was taking off like a rocket, was hard to compare to anything I've done since.

Working with Willie and Ray Charles in May 1984:

We did that as an independent project — no connection with "Austin City Limits." I basically partnered with Tim O'Connor. We were gonna split the costs and then try to sell it commercially. So I did all the negotiating with Ray Charles to come in and be on the show. Ray and Willie had never even met, let alone performed together before that day.

I was dealing with Joe Adams, Ray Charles' legendary — notorious, shall we say — manager. And we had a deal struck where Ray was going to come and perform for a $5,000 talent fee. Willie was playing for nothing because he was one of the partners in this project.

I'll never forget the day they showed up to rehearse, and Ray's manager came up to me and said, "You do understand that the original deal was for $5,000 per song?" And by this time, Willie and Ray had rehearsed about seven songs. And I said, "No, no, the deal was for $5,000 for the whole show. There's been a misunderstanding; how can we clear this up?" And the manager said, "Well, you can go talk to Mr. Charles."

So me, again being naïve and desperate, goes over to talk to Ray Charles, and he says, "I got nothing to do with no business! You have to talk to my manager about that stuff. I'm just here to sing and play the piano."

So then I figured maybe I better go talk to Willie about this, because he was a partner in the whole deal. So I said, "Willie, I've got a little misunderstanding with Ray and his manager. They agreed to do this for five and now they're saying five a song, and we don't have that much money in the budget." And Willie said, "Well ... if you ask me, I think he's worth it."

So we went a little deeper in the hole than we expected to on that show, but as usual, Willie's instincts were spot-on — Ray was worth it. It was pure magic.

What the future holds:

When we hopefully celebrate our 35th season in our new venue downtown (the Block 21 site), he will be part of the inauguration of that.

Willie is an investor in the overall project. Beyond that, we haven't really defined what Willie's role is going to be going forward. There's a lot we need to decide programmatically about Block 21.

We've pretty much got the design nailed. We've spent the last two years with acoustic consultants, theater consultants, architects ... Got the whole place well-mapped and the blueprints are done.

A certain number of days each year will be set aside for "ACL" tapings, and the rest of the year it's going to be a live music venue. Is this going to be Willie's home away from home, his home base, so to speak? What exactly will his participation be? But he will be a significant part of it and we certainly hope and expect he's going to be there when the doors open.

Trusting his instincts:

I remember when we were working on that HBO special, going out to Willie's studio to talk to him about it. And he had just gotten back from a gig in San Antonio; he drove back in his Mercedes.

Anyway, I was there waiting for him and I dunno, he seemed like he was a little uptight about something or another, and I think he had forgotten I was going to be there. And I was real stoked up to be doing this HBO special — it was a big deal for me. But I was having to deal with some issues with the HBO people, who had their vision of how they wanted the show shot and what songs Willie was going to do.

Willie wanted Jackie King and Freddy Powers on the show as special guests. And the people at HBO were going, "Who the hell are they? We want Willie on this show, we're paying millions of dollars ... "

So I tried to be the middleman, the messenger so to speak, and it didn't go over too well with him. I didn't work with Willie on a full-time basis, so I didn't want to do battle with him.

But I learned real quick how to read Willie in those situations, and if he's not receptive to an idea or he has his own idea, you go with Willie's way. My philosophy has always been — do it Willie's way. Because, so far in my personal experience, he's always been right. Don't question it, because this man has been around a lot longer than I have. He's got a special gift; there's a certain magic. He may not be a TV producer, but he's got instincts when it comes to his music and how to show that. Trust his instincts.