Picnic Logic: How a copy editor became an author
Texas A&M releases a history of Willie Nelson's Fourth of July tradition
Dave Dalton Thomas was a 23-year-old copy editor for the San Angelo Standard-Times when he happened upon a big Texas entertainment scoop that would change his life. On a day off in 1995, Thomas trekked to Luckenbach, his spiritual recharge spot, which ended up being the right place at the right time to break the news that Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Picnic, which had been on hiatus, would be coming to that mythical, musical outpost in the Hill Country, 10 miles southwest of Fredericksburg.
“Let’s go to Luckenbach, Texas/ Waylon and Willie and the boys,” from the 1977 hit sung by Waylon Jennings and Nelson, was the hook that defined the outlaw country heyday, so the movement’s signature event setting up in Luckenbach for the first time called for a press conference announcement. That would be the normal way. The unorthodox Picnic way was to see if there was a reporter in the house. Thomas was summoned to the room where Willie’s promoters met with the Luckenbach folks, and asked, “Can you help us get the word out?”
Suddenly, a lazy longneck afternoon turned hectic in the hamlet “where everybody is somebody,” but it was worth it, as Thomas’s report in the Standard Times got picked up all over the world via wire services. With luck came a sense of responsibility, and Thomas took ownership of the story, researching Picnic history for a followup. “I found a lot of holes, especially from 1980 to 1995, when the Picnic was still happening, but not a major event,” Thomas says.
“There was no real expert on the Picnic, so I decided to become one.” He also started collecting every bit of Willie/ Picnic memorabilia he could find, now on display in his “honky tonk garage” in Austin.
“As fans of Texas music and Willie Nelson, the Picnic is part of our cultural fabric,” says Thomas. “And the early years, from ’73-’80, are part of our mythology.”
Not quite two years old when Nelson hosted his first Picnic in 1973, Thomas has made up for a lot of lost years, an obsession that was legitimized with the April release of PICNIC: Willie Nelson’s 4th of July Tradition from the author’s alma mater Texas A&M. The author is currently on a crazy booksigning tour- soon to appear at your neighborhood 7-11- because that’s what you do when a dream comes true.
The Picnic grew out of the 1972 Dripping Springs Reunion, which aimed to be “the Country Woodstock,” with expectations of 60,000 fans a day to see a mix of Nashville legends like Loretta Lynn, Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, with the Texas nonconformist songwriters Willie, Waylon, Jerry Jeff Walker, Kris Kristofferson, Billy Joe Shaver and the like. The lineup was stunning, but only about 20,000 total showed up over the three days at Hurlbut Ranch. “They lost a fortune,” Willie said of the Dallas promoters in a 1973 interview. “They spent too much money (on advertising) in New York and Nashville, and not enough in and around Austin.”
Willie saw his future in the longhairs and good ol’ boys who coexisted in musical affinity, without incident, and plotted his move to Austin four months later. American-Statesman columnist Townsend Miller called the event “the greatest family picnic ever.”
Willie Nelson picked up on that vibe when he brought his first Fourth of July Picnic to Hurlbut Ranch the next year because the infrastructure was in place. Those poor Dallas guys had to clear paths, bring in electricity and drill wells.
Willie, who turned 40 in ‘73, would be a Red Headed Stranger-to-the-charts for another two years, until “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” ended a thirteen-year drought on the country singles Top Ten. So how did he and his scruffy friends draw an estimated 35,000 fans to Hurlbut Ranch in July heat just a year after the biggest bust in country music concert history? They treated the Picnic as a counterculture festival of country music, hiring the crew from the Armadillo to run things, and buying ads on KLBJ-FM and other rock stations in Texas and neighboring states.
The secret weapon was Leon Russell, whose gospel-infused piano turned concerts into spiritual revivals, making him one of the biggest touring rock acts. Promoting 1973’s triple-LP Leon Live, which reclaimed “Delta Lady” from Joe Cocker, Leon had his own headlining dates in Texas so he couldn’t be advertised. But word-of-mouth confirmed him coming to help his new best friend Willie celebrate the births of not only the U.S.A., but the new country music individual—a figure so foreign to the way Nashville ran things they were called outlaws.
The Cult of Willie went national when Rolling Stone and the New York Times, among others, covered the Picnic as if it was the Super Bowl of the hippie cowboy lifestyle. Willie Nelson and the Picnic got famous at the same time.
Willie’s Picnic was no picnic. It was an endurance event, a test of loyalty and sunscreen, a showcase for wannabe strippers, as much as a concert. The Statesman used to send interns and rookie reporters to cover the Picnic in brain-scrambling heat, which came close to hazing. I always volunteered for the early reporting assignment, which entailed covering the parking and vendors situation, plus the Pauline Reese and Geezinslaw Brothers sets. Also had to check in at the medical tent, where I was once ended up being treated with an IV when I interviewed a medic about heat stroke symptoms and realized I had some.
The press release for the second Picnic, at the Texas World Speedway in Bryan, recounted some of year one’s problems: “Traffic backed up 10 miles…water and restrooms were inadequate… the sound system blew out. The temperature reached 100 degrees and there was no shade. Texans love their music, however, and at 2 a.m. on July 5, 1973… happily exhausted fans headed home, unanimously looking forward to Willie’s Second Annual Fourth of July Picnic in 1974.”
Willie’s Picnics ran on a communal vibe. Everybody was just so happy to be there, even when they were miserable. But the sunburned soiree took a dangerous turn in Gonzales in 1976, when 80,000 showed up, even as the Picnic teetered on the verge of cancellation due to permitting issues. Country music’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Willie and Waylon were never hotter than in ’76 when they topped the charts with Wanted: The Outlaws and the single “Good Hearted Woman.” But the bigger audience meant more problems. Finally getting a 24-hour mass gathering permit, the Gonzales Picnic featured 44 hours of continuous music- and 147 arrests, mainly for drug possession, DWI and public intoxication. The Texas Dept. of Health cited 14 deficiancies, including only 25 port-o-potties for all those people, so the Sterling Kelly Ranch was, literally, full of squatters.
“Willie's camp now shrugs off the 1976 Gonzales Picnic as simply chaotic, but I think it was actually a fairly dangerous event,” says Thomas, who conducted nearly 120 interviews for the book. “It was very much what the Christian groups that opposed it were fighting against.”
In 1987’s Willie Nelson: The Autobiography, Willie writes (with Bud Shrake) that as “the Picnic grows beyond control, I try to never worry about what is out of my control- just to give it my strongest positive thoughts and trust for it to turn out well.” When it didn’t, he admitted slipping off to Hawaii to hide out for a week “while the damages were assessed.”
As he dealt with various lawsuits, Willie vowed that Gonzales would be the last Picnic. But the comeback came just three years later at the Pedernales Country Club Willie had just purchased in Briarcliff, about 30 miles west of Austin. Not all his new neighbors approved, so after two years the gypsy fest was on the road again.
“It’s not a question of how much money we make, but how much we lose,” Willie told reporters in 1980. The worst Picnic, financially, was at Carl’s Corner, near Willie’s hometown of Abbott, in 1987. Nelson, landowner Carl Cornelius and promoter Tim O’Connor lost an estimated $600,000 on that one, which made it easy for Willie to turn his focus to the yearly Farm Aid benefit, which he started in ’85. The Picnic skipped six of the previous seven years before locking into Luckenbach for five.
Willie, 91, will host his 40th Fourth of July Picnic of the past 51 years in Camden, NJ in July, but it’s just another stop of his Outlaw Fest package show with Bob Dylan and Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, with Mavis Staples and Maren Morris added. The days of the chaotic Picnics Dave Thomas chronicled are long gone.
This is the first draft of a piece in Texas Highways that was changed considerably in the editing. From the September 2023 issue.
Went to the one in 80. Traffic was backed up down 71 for miles at 4-5 am before the show. We had staked out parking right near the gate the day before or else we would have been among the masses that parked a mile before and started hiking with coolers and chairs. Reminds me that you could bring anything you could carry back then. Now you get strip searched .
Great re-counting over the years. Reminds me of why I never attended, since my window of foolish robust health while living in Austin came when the picnic was on hiatus. Texas Jam was tough enough for me! At least there were fire hoses at the Cotton Bowl!