Weyes Blood on "September Song" - Live From Luck!
One by Willie
John Spong
4.6 • 898 Ratings
🗓️ 15 September 2022
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, we wrap up the special Live from Luck! mini-season of OBW with California-based singer-songwriter Natalie Mering—known to fans by her stage name, Weyes Blood—who will discuss another standard off of Stardust, Kurt Weill's 1938 composition, “September Song.” It’s a classic that Natalie discovered the same way Willie did, through a Frank Sinatra record, and it prompts crystal clear memories of the night she first heard Willie’s version and the way her appreciation of the song changed there and then. From there we get into the unlikely backstory of how Willie recorded it, with digressions on Lindsey Buckingham, Elvis, and Greek yogurt.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Texas Monthly. |
| 0:07.0 | 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. |
| 0:23.0 | This week, one last installment in our special four-episode mini-season of the podcast |
| 0:28.0 | that we've been calling One by Willie live from Luck. |
| 0:32.2 | That's right. These are interviews taped this past March at Willie's Ranch slash Golf Course slash Old Westtown |
| 0:38.3 | with four artists who'd come to play his annual luck reunion and that we recorded in an old |
| 0:44.2 | Bowles Arrow camper trailer that Willie's great nephew-in-law, Joe, tricked out just for these |
| 0:50.1 | conversations and parked about a hundred yards from the main stage. |
| 0:57.8 | And if, by chance, you're having a hard time picture and how cool that was, |
| 1:01.5 | you need to get to the next big show and luck and check it out for yourself. |
| 1:05.7 | This week, acclaimed California-based singer-songwriter Natalie Merring, |
| 1:13.5 | known to fans by her stage name, Wise Blood, talks about another song off Willie's 1978 masterpiece Stardust, |
| 1:18.3 | specifically Kurt Viles' 1938 classic September song. |
| 1:23.3 | It's one of those great American songbook touchstones that's been covered by hundreds of artists, |
| 1:32.5 | and Natalie talks about first learning the song from a Frank Sinatra recording when she was growing up in the early 2000s, just like Willie first did when he was a kid in the 40s. |
| 1:44.5 | From there, we get into the record label's opposition to Willie even making Stardust in the completely unorthodox way he ended up recording it with great digressions on Lindsay Buckingham, Elvis, Integrity, and the unforgettable night in a Sierra Nevada cabin |
| 1:46.8 | when Natalie first heard Star Dust. |
| 1:49.6 | Let's do it. |
| 1:51.8 | A's art. |
| 2:01.6 | Oh. Oh, it's a long long wine from May to December. |
| 2:27.3 | As I say, where we always start is what's so cool about the song you've picked, which is a goofy thing to ask when you're talking about Kurt Bile. But what's so great about September song? |
| 2:30.3 | I think September song is just a really haunting, beautiful tune about the passage of time. |
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