Phases and Stages
Dressed in a black suit jacket fitted with a red-flowered lapel, Mickey Raphael looked across the stage at Willie. After 7000 shows, Mickey has checked in with Willie …. a million times? Tonight, Mickey’s glances felt more like habit, or perhaps checking to see if Willie, 92 years old and fighting a cough, was OK. It’s suddenly down to Willie and Mickey as the last Family members standing, after sister Bobbie’s passing in 2022, and drummer Paul English just before that. Mickey’s #1 fan, Kris Kristofferson, passed this last year, joining Highwaymen Waylon and Johnny¹. Willie and Mickey’s 52-year musical relationship is often compared to a marriage, but I imagine Willie as a father or mentor to Mickey more than a spouse, no matter how much of a hot catch young Mickey would have been in 1972.
Willie sat center stage with Trigger, flanked by his son Micah Nelson on his left and spiritual Godson Waylon Payne to his right. The set opened with the traditional Whiskey River / Stay All Night (Stay a Little Longer) medley, and closed with “Will the Circle Be Unbroken / Turn Out the Lights,” (as opposed to “On the Road Again”). The encore, “I Saw the Light,” featured Willie ascending from his chair and flinging cowboy hats and bandanas to the adoring crowd, who reacted as if they’d just witnessed a miracle. As Willie walked off stage, the PA blared “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die,” letting us all know that Willie had gone home, and so should we.
In this stripped-down phase of The Family, Mickey’s harmonica is the only lead instrument outside of Trigger.² For decades, Mickey has shared leads and sonic range with piano, electric guitar, and occasionally fiddle or pedal steel. Lately, the mid-range, and responsibility for filling it are all Mickey’s. On Whiskey River-Stay All Night (Stay a Little Longer) Mickey’s single notes and short phrases provide a melodic counterpoint, rhythmic structure, texture, and dynamics to separate bigger and smaller sections. Mickey used a lot of staccato phrasing this evening — maybe because 3 acoustic guitars, slap bass, and a snare drum can sound mushy. Maybe it was just his mood. I heard more tongue blocking and octaves than usual, which might be to counter the jangle of 2 acoustic guitars and Trigger. Mickey didn’t play much echo harmonica, perhaps because the echo works as an adornment on top of the sound, whereas the typical diatonic harmonica allows you to lock in with the rhythm section.
With an acoustic band set-up, one might expect Mickey to play “acoustic,” straight into the house PA through a microphone³. This is how almost all folk, country and bluegrass players — think Dylan or Charlie McCoy — play, and how Mickey played this evening on Georgia. The sound is bright, cuts through acoustic instruments (as Dylan’s playing does), picks up nuances in mouth effects, and allows for hand “wahs.” But, playing through the PA typically lacks the warmth of amplified harmonica.
“I don’t know what it is, but it’s just kind of shrill after a while,” my wife said about Bob Dylan’s harmonica, as he finished his set.
“Well, yeah,” I explained. “It’s kind of what Dylan does. He’s playing more from his head than his belly.”
“Well, you’re better than that,” she offered, as a loving wife does.
“I don’t know about that, but I do know what you mean. Wait until you hear Mickey.”
Listening to Mickey and Bob back-to-back is almost like hearing two different instruments. Dylan, playing mostly straight harp, often embraces the abrasive, metallic quality of the harmonica. It snarls. Mickey is like Sonic Velvet. It shimmers, coaxing feelings out of you. I was hoping they’d play together, as they did in 2024, but not tonight.
Most of the night, Mickey played into a handheld microphone plugged into an amplifier, making for a warmer, occasionally dirtier sound. Mickey uses a good vocal microphone that picks up nuances without distorting. This allows Mickey to play around with the chordal textures of the acoustic harmonica, but still get the resonance of amplified harmonica, which is somewhat distinctive to him³. You can hear these dynamics at play underneath Willie’s solo on “Still is Still Moving.” By cupping the microphone with his left hand so that the low notes on the left side of the harmonica get extra resonance, he gets a big, honking sound. But with an open right hand, the upper range cuts through on chords. Mickey effortlessly alternates back and forth at the end of Whiskey River, manipulating the sound cavity to make it sound effectively amplified or acoustic.
Georgia on My Mind is a centerpiece of any Mickey Raphael performance. On tonight’s solo, Mickey opened with his signature rephrasing of the “Georgia” melody, moving to a descending, then ascending riff that continued the staccato theme. I wonder what Mickey is channeling with this choppiness — frustration, anger, reservation over what is to come, or just a certain chippy energy that I felt in the crowd. Whatever it was, it released with maybe “most Mickey Raphaeliest of the Mickey Raphael heavy bent 3rd note vibrato” notes I’ve ever heard. On second listen I think it’s a blue note, warbling between the harmonic and minor third — perfect musically, metaphorically, all of it. No wonder the crowd was cheering as loudly as it did all night. Tension released.
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In 2025, the beauty of Willie and Mickey’s Georgia is tinged with sadness. We all know that this may be the last time we hear these two playing it. Mickey will continue the tradition when he plays Georgia in Chris Stapleton’s band; you might say that Mickey will be the conduit through which Georgia continues its travels from Ray Charles to Willie onward. But it’s still sad.
Americans are famously in denial about death, shuffling our elderly away into institutions to scrub clean our fears. Willie is publicly embracing death, which is coming for all of us, and finding creative inspiration within it. The set list, which includes the title track from 2024’s “Last Leaf on the Tree” (written by Tom Waits), as well as Micah Nelson’s lighthearted “If I Die When I’m High I’ll be Halfway to Heaven” could be read metaphorically, ending in Willie’s passing into pure energy (and our invitation to smoke him up in the end). Not since Warren Zevon’s The Wind can I recall a musician so fully embracing the concept of their passing in their creativity. This tour is not an artist “past his prime,” elder abuse, or driven by a need to feed the beast of Willie, Inc.; it is an extended meditation on the ultimate subject matter, from one of our great lay spiritual figures.
Willie is, of course, still very much alive. Like Trigger, there is a profound beauty in his time-worn vessel. More than once, Willie’s command of Trigger caused my teenage son to turn to me and ask, “How is this happening?! A 92-year-old shouldn’t be able to do this.” Willie's voice has always been about phrasing, inflection, and presence and is more than capable of delivering a commanding musical performance.
I felt a mix of joy, sadness, even anger at something… not wanting to let go of a consistently, unambiguously good force in the world. We live in a country pulled apart by the seams, and Willie Nelson is one of the few people we all recognize as worthy of admiration for speaking to the American experience. “America First” may not resonate with me, but Farm Aid, created 40 years ago as a response to taking care of our own here in America, does. Likewise, Willie’s model of masculinity, based on humility, care, and protection for the less fortunate, is a welcome counterpoint to the rise of hypermasculinity, and maybe MAGA types can see the power in his tenderness. It’s sad to think that we may lose Willie in a moment where we need him most.
Seeing Willie in 2025 is also to celebrate joy. Watching Willie toss a bandana into a crowd of 20,000s is a triumph of the human spirit. Willie’s humor, from his one-liner that became “If I Die When I’m High I’ll be Halfway to Heaven” to sending the crowd home to “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die” reminds us to revel in every moment. The trick seems to be, like in the Tao that Willie embraces, to hold this joy and sadness together, knowing that this is life’s impermanence.
As Mickey, Billy Strings, Micah, and Waylon played Willie out to “I Saw the Light,” the energy coalescing around Willie lived on. Mickey, who plays on these folks’ records, is a big part of that. Listen to John Spong’s excellent podcast “One By Willie,” and you hear a parade of musicians, including a younger generation like Nathaniel Rateliff, Conor Oberst, Charlie Sexton, Miranda Lambert, Susan Tedeschi, or Kacey Musgraves who describe the impact of Willie's music, philosophy, and life on theirs. Mickey is deeply ingrained in these episodes, connecting new musicians with Willie or playing on their records. May the Circle Be Unbroken.
I can’t imagine what it’s like for Mickey to accompany Willie through this phase. Mickey has seen Willie through the critical and commercial success in the 1970s, the glitz of the 1980s (including Willie movies!), the bankruptcy and the IRS tapes era, the resurgence of outlaw country, Spiritual Willie, Living Legend Willie collaborating with the likes of Snoop, and now, the Final Act Willie. Maybe he’s doing what we all do: Keep breathing, keep moving. Channeling the energy of a lifetime playing with Willie Nelson forward.
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¹Kinky Friedman died this year, too, and I had no idea if they were friends, so I googled it. Here’s Mickey playing with Kinky Friedman in 2016. Of course.
² Micah Nelson, a phenomenal guitar player, did play a lead in specific spots, but mostly played acoustic with Willie.
³ Without knowing what Mickey was doing at the time, I also used a vocal mic through a guitar amp while playing in Crooked County, playing a Shure SM58 through a Fender Champ or Concert on songs like Whiskey in the Winter. I caught endless crap from a fellow harmonica player for this sacrilege.
⁴ This sound, particularly chugging the 1 chord on the 2nd beat, then 3 & 5 notes on the 4th beat then is central in my hearing of “On the Road Again,” and true to form, Mickey skipped it entirely this evening. Maybe it normally comes in after Mickey’s solo on the second half of the break (following Willie’s solo). Maybe he it didn’t makes as much sense; maybe he didn’t feel like it. The crowd was just happy to hear Willie playing Trigger.
⁵ As readers may know, Willie Covered Zevon’s “Keep Me in Your Heart” on his 2024 album “Last Leaf.”
