Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and today I'm playing along with Mickey Raphael.

I'm just playing along with you.

I'm just playing along with you.

Hi there!

I'm Nora and with me as always, Sarah Oda. Here I am. Welcome to the show. Welcome. Our guest today is a legendary harmonica player, Mickey Raphael. Oh, it's family times this episode. If you don't know his name, you probably could recognize his signature harmonica sound as he's contributed

to performances and recordings of so many artists, such as Chris Christofferson, Emmy Lou Harris,

Neil Young, Elton John, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, John Prine, Solomon Burke, Allison Krause,

and many, many more.

And this year, he's celebrating 50 years of playing and touring with one of our absolute favorites.

Willie Nelson.

50 years.

He's played with Willie Nelson for 50 years.

It's crazy.

And I met Mickey in somewhere in 2002, the first time I opened for Willie. And he's been a good friend

for, God, over 20 years now, which is crazy. Time is a funny thing. We happened to be in LA in April for Willie Nelson's 90th birthday party, which was a crazy two-day show at the Hollywood Bowl.

And I got to spend all week hanging out with Mickey and eating breakfast with him.

And he agreed to do this show with me.

So we had so much fun just talking and playing songs. And I learned a lot about

him that I didn't know. And this, this episode really runs the gamut. I mean, you're going to hear

songs that are familiar. You're going to learn about his instrument, the harmonica, and here's some

great stories from the road. Oh, yeah, the road. He knows the road.

And we happen to record this episode at 9 in the morning because he had rehearsals all day for Willie's birthday shows. And it was kind of tricky fitting this in, actually.

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