Texas Monthly.

Hey there, I'm John Spong with Texas Monthly magazine, and this is One by Willie, a podcast in which I talk each week to one notable Willie Nelson fan about one Willie song that they really

love. This week, we talk with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright about a Willie hit of

recent vintage, roll me up and smoke me when I die. It's a song Willie used to jokingly call

my new gospel song I wrote, but it's also a pivotal composition in his career and one that

he introduced to the world at the 2011 unveiling of the Willie statue in downtown Austin.

Now, as a longtime resident of the city, Larry was deeply involved in the creation of that sculpture,

and he's going to get into its suitably odd backstory, along with describing just how shocking it was in the 70s in Texas,

to see a man wear his hair and long-braided pigtails,

the existential quality of watching Willie and Trigger grow old together

in Willie's outsized place in the Texas myth.

So let's do it.

Hey, it's art.

What a new gospel song we do for y'all.

Roll me up and smoke me when I die.

Roll me up that smoke.

When anyone don't like it, look how any I'll start differently than usual.

You are the first Pulitzer Prize winner we've had on the show.

You don't present as a Major League dope smoker, and yet we're about to talk about roll me up and smoke me when i die yeah

well yeah i am a willie fan so there is you know i i do have some excuse to be here but um yeah that song

played a role I started this group in Austin called

Capitol area statues or cast and we put up statues around town and we got three of

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