Stardust memories

It’s early afternoon on a spring day in the Hill Country west of Austin, Texas. Tami Neilson has just met Willie Nelson in person for the second time in two days. They are on stage at Luck Reunion, a boutique music festival held at his ranch. She’s nearing the end of her set – her first live show in many months – and she introduces him by his local honorific “Willie f---ing Nelson” – to a hooting crowd. He was meant to be here a little earlier. “Sorry I’m late,” he says as they hug and Neilson brushes back happy tears.

The 88-year-old straps on “Trigger”, the battered nylon-stringed Martin guitar he’s played for 50-plus years. And with Tami’s brother Jay Neilson’s electric guitar gently putting the song into gear, they’re soon away on a waltz-time lament called Beyond the Stars. Neilson’s voice soars Patsy Cline-like above Nelson’s low harmony on the chorus. Nelson takes the second verse, finding his own melodic thread in his halting speak-sing voice.

As the song rides into the sunset on its last chorus, those gathered out front might be thinking it’s something Nelson could have written in the early 1960s, when he was penning such hits as Cline’s Crazy or Roy Orbison’s Pretty Paper.

But no,