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On April 28th, 2006 I saw Willie Nelson at Ottawa’s Civic Centre. At the time I was living right up the street, the venue was literally no more than a dozen houses away so I was pretty happy for such a ‘local’ show.
I was also pretty happy with my seat on the floor in the small arena, and an opening set by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band didn’t hurt either. It was my only time seeing them and while I’m wholly unfamiliar with their Nitty Gritty material I thoroughly enjoyed a rollicking fifty minutes of good old ’70’s country music.
Willie was great, as usual. He played about a thousand songs, each one about two minutes long and all of it on that old beat-up Martin of his, Trigger. His perfect country soul voice was in fine form and so was his guitar playing, though good taste and humility (I guess) kept Willie’s vastly underrated command of the guitar limited to the occasional, very brief flourish. Still, the handful of six-second guitar breaks he did take left me shaking my head every time.
After Willie Nelson played pretty much every song ever written in the history of mankind he came out and encored with a few more pearls of country gold and finally bid us goodnight. I would have happily listened to him play for another hour.
But I didn’t; I’m not sure there were any songs left in the world to be played. Instead I gathered up my crew and in mere minutes we were back at my place gushing about the show over Willie Nelson nightcaps.
Todd Man Out 