Willie Nelson’s son performs on his own, plays with father in Outlaw Music Festival
Willie Nelson is topping the bill at the Outlaw Music Festival Sunday at the Pavilion at Star Lake.
ZZ Top is set to appear in the Outlaw Music Festival Sunday.
Gov't Mule is on the bill for the Outlaw Music Festival at the Pavilion at Star Lake Sunday night.
Larkin Poe are among the performers who will be in this year's Outlaw Music Festival.
Photo by Randy Steinberger
Micah Nelson, performing under the name Particle Kid, is participating in this year’s Outlaw Music Festival. He will also be backing his father, Willie Nelson.
Painting. Filmmaking. Playing music. At one point, Micah Nelson was throwing himself into it all with reckless abandon.
The 32-year-old son of Willie Nelson eventually decided, though, that he needed to channel his energies into one primary pursuit.
“I always kind of did it all,” Nelson explained over the phone from Los Angeles earlier this month. “I didn’t think too much about it until it became, OK, you have to organize yourself, and time-manage yourself and your energy. There were years I would say yes to everything and I was doing a million projects all at once, playing in 10 different bands, spreading myself so thin that I would have these psychotic mental breakdowns.”
Eventually, he learned to say no so that he could better focus himself. In the process, he came to realize that plying the family trade and being a musician was how he wanted to spend his time.
“Music is holding it all together,” Nelson continued. “Music is the one thing that, even when I was making films or painting, it was always surrounding music. … I’m just wielding music like a medium.”
Choosing music might well have been a natural choice for Nelson, not only because his dad is a titan of country and pop, but also because music runs strongly through his family tree. His late aunt, Bobbie Nelson, was a pianist and singer, his sisters, Paula and Amy, are singers, and his brother, Lukas, fronts his own band, the Promise of the Real.
Nelson will be joining his dad when the Outlaw Music Festival pulls into the Pavilion at Star Lake Sunday, appearing in two capacities – he’ll be playing his own experimental music under the name Particle Kid and, at the end of the night, playing guitar in his father’s band.
“Any chance I get to spend time with him, whether we’re playing chess or dominoes or poker or music, or just hanging out watching something, I try to soak up every minute,” Nelson said.
The Outlaw Music Festival first took to the road in 2017, with Willie Nelson at the helm of each outing. The line-ups have included such artists as Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, My Morning Jacket and the Avett Brothers. This year, the Nelsons are being joined by ZZ Top, Gov’t Mule and Larkin Poe.
Aside from playing with his dad — “We wouldn’t get to see each other much if we weren’t on the same gig,” according to Nelson — the Outlaw Music Festival gives him an opportunity to expose a wider audience to his own music. His output as Particle Kid has been described by a reviewer for AllMusic.com as including “sonic touchpoints in psychedelia, lo-fi, indie rock, electronica, folk, jazz, and all points in between.” His most recent album, “Time Capsule,” clocks in at two-and-a-half hours and includes guest appearances from his father, Dinosaur Jr. frontman J. Mascis and fellow son-of-a-legend Sean Lennon.
Despite its sprawling length, Nelson said he wasn’t at all tempted to trim “Time Capsule” down.
“That’s just how long it ended up being. I don’t see any reasons to break it up. … It’s one of those things that is best experienced as a whole sequence from start to end. … If I was to try to cut it down, it would be like cutting scenes out of a movie, and why would I do that? There’s no reason to do that.”
And how did Nelson land on the name Particle Kid?
It was something his dad called him after he came home from a school trip.
“I think he wanted to say ‘prodigal son,” Nelson recalled. “He probably said ‘prodigal kid,’ but one of us was high, and it sounded like ‘particle kid’ and it just stuck.”