One By Willie x Nashville Now: Happy Birthday Willie Nelson!

Rolling Stone All Access

Rolling Stone

Music Commentary, Music, Music Interviews

4.0 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2026

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Happy birthday, Willie Nelson! In honor of the country music legend turning 93 on April 29, Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now podcast joins forces with Texas Monthly and PRX’s One By Willie podcast for a very special crossover episode. One By Willie host John Spong, the preeminent scholar on all things Willie, joins Nashville Now host Joseph Hudak in the cabin to talk about Willie’s catalog of songs and why each is uniquely important. Then, Spong asks Hudak about the impact that Nelson’s 1980 Number One hit “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys” had on his own life. It’s a celebration of the Red Headed Stranger! Country is Here…Nashville is Now. Check out our Hear Now playlist on Spotify, updated weekly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody, it's Joseph Hudak, Senior Music Editor Rolling Stone.
0:10.5	You are here at the Nashville Now cabin for our country music podcast and all things Nashville.
0:16.9	Rolling Stones, Nashville Now, as we like to say, country is here.
0:21.9	Nashville is now.
0:24.2	Man, we have the Willie Nelson guru with us today,
0:28.4	the preeminent Willie Nelson scholar,
0:31.4	and the host of the One by Willie podcast.
0:35.0	Man, I'm so excited for this episode.
0:37.0	It is John Spong. John, hello. It is great to be here.
0:42.7	A couple of years ago, I did some kind of live TV thing, and they introduced me as noted
0:47.3	Willie Nelson scholar. I started giggling. It was live. I ruined everything. But I feel like I've
0:53.7	completely hoodwinked somebody by having
0:56.0	this be what I do for a minute. It is a, there's a, there's worse titles to have. Yeah. Come on.
1:02.1	Absolutely. It's great. Well, listen, we are here for a very special episode. We're going to
1:07.2	try to pull this off into a crossover collaborative episode between
1:12.0	Rolling Stones National Now and won by Willie.
1:15.5	But first, I'm going to talk to you about your, about what makes you, man, that Willie Nelson
1:21.8	guru.
1:22.7	When was the first time, when was the first time you met Willie?
1:25.5	Oh, the first time I met him.
1:27.1	Well, it was cool.
1:28.3	I had just gotten out of law school. I'd just taken the bar exam, but I didn't want to be a lawyer, so I'd gotten an internship at Texas Monthly magazine.
	...

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