While the majority of musicians make an impression on me due to their abilities, there are some who have become even more indelible because not only are they talented but I associate them with certain periods or specific people in my life. The late Joe Strummer of the Clash, for instance, will forever be associated with the late seventies and early eighties and my burgeoning political activism, and Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull will always be the first rock concert I ever went to.

Yet the person who I associate with someone in my life more than anyone else wasn't even someone I listened to with any particular interest until later in life. I've always know about Willie Nelson and had listened to him sporadically throughout the years, but it wasn't until I met my father-in-law that I began to go out of my way to find his music. My father-in-law used to tour throughout North Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec in Canada with his band, playing hotel bars and taverns in logging towns, farming communities, and mining towns. At the drop of a hat, or on occasion the toss of a beer bottle, he'd have to be able to play any song that the crowd demanded. In those days, early seventies, and in those places, that meant knowing one hell of a lot of country music.

Now by the time I met my father-in-law he had stopped touring, but he still plays locally in the legions and small taverns in the city we live in. He no longer has to worry about flying beer bottles (he actually played in a place like that bar in the first Blues Brothers movie where he was behind fencing to protect the band from the patrons and objects they might throw at the stage) but he still does quite a lot of the music he used to perform from those days, and one of his favourites was always Willie Nelson.

Hearing him sing various songs that Willie wrote, or perform songs that Willie made famous, started getting me interested in hearing more of his music. There's only so many times you can listen to "Good Hearted Woman", "Momma Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys", "Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain", and a couple of others after all. It quickly became apparent that those few songs of Willie's, that everybody was always demanding to hear my father-in-law play, didn't even come close to representing an iota of the man's talent.