Willie Nelson, despite being 76, is still steadily releasing albums, tours almost constantly, is a busy commercial pitchman and according to his biographer, Joe Nick Patoski, is a pretty wicked kickboxer.
"He could kick my ass," Patoski explained a few weeks ago from his home in Wimberley, Texas. "[Nelson’s] on this earth to make music, and there's nothing that pleases him more than to be picking or fiddle-farting around and have people sitting and listening to him.
"I think he's going to play until he can't. Nothing would please him more than to die on stage or die on the road."
Patoski wrote "Willie Nelson: An Epic Life," a comprehensive biography of the country music icon published in April.
And Willie Nelson is still busy playing Country Music. He is currently touring minor-league baseball parks with Bob Dylan and John Mellencamp.
In the last few years, he's released a reggae album, a blues album with Wynton Marsalis, a collection produced by alternative rocker Ryan Adams, collaborated with the Western swing band Asleep at the Wheel, and, in August, he'll release another standards set.
Nelson has been making as much music as he can since he was growing up in Abbott, Texas. When he was young, he picked cotton, but realized that he could earn more money, and have more fun, playing with an area polka band.
"That's when he figured out what his destiny was going to be," Patoski said.
Nelson worked as a disc jockey and performed occasionally until he moved to Nashville in 1960. In the Music City, he wrote classics like "Pretty Paper," "Crazy" and "Funny How Time Slips Away" that became hits for other artists. In the 1970s, when Nelson returned to Texas and became one of the founders of the Country Outlaw movement, his career soared.
Since then, Willie Nelson has been constantly writing and playing new music.
Patoski said that Nelson records so much music and has stashed so much of it in his vaults that we could be treated to new albums long after the Country star passes on.
"We're going to be hearing new Willie Nelson music in the 22nd century."
