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110 Mountain explorebigsky.com

L u k a s n e L s o n

The August sun is hot but threatened by dark squall clouds over the Teton Valley.

It’s 2 p.m. and Lukas Nelson, son of country legend Willie Nel-son, woke early for an interview, five hours before the start of a free show in tiny downtown Victor, Idaho.

Nelson, 22, mixes straight face and yawns while sitting on a leather wraparound couch in his father’s old touring bus. His arms are folded, legs crossed at the ankles. His broad smile hides sleep. Long brown hair frames his face.

r i d i n g h i s o w n w av eB y t ay L o r a n d e r s o n

With sleep still in their eyes, his band, Promise of the Real, huddles around a vegetable platter. They’ve taken a three-day break during a nation-sprawling summer tour to hang out at filmmaker Greg Stump’s Teton Valley home for parties and photo shoots.

Heir to an undeniable talent, the younger Nelson says he’s not looking to mimic his father, nor is he deflecting his past.

“Give credit where credit is due, you know,” he says. The added recognition from his famous name isn’t anything Lukas keeps hidden.

His Texas drawl flows like molasses in a high-pitched nasal voice reminiscent of his father’s. He speaks in short, soft-spoken sentences and often keeps his eyes lowered, as if deep in thought.

Lukas grew up traveling in Willie’s old tour cruiser. He met outlaw musicians, some past their prime, others still playing the game. He traveled across the country from city to city as his dad rode a prolonged peak of notoriety, and he grew. Those outlaws helped raise him along the way. “It was all I’ve ever known,” Lukas says.

photo by taylor anderson

outlaw

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Lukas is one of two sons from Willie’s fourth wife (out of seven total offspring). He started playing guitar as a birthday present for his dad when Willie turned 67 and Lukas was 11.

Now, years later, Lukas is re-living the town hopping, late nights and fast songwriting during his early career, barrel-ing into the modern profes-sional music business.

“I’m just headin’ down the road,” he says.

Willie didn’t waste time jump-ing into the music industry when he was around the same age as Lukas. His liftoff came on slow, and was propelled by a knack for quality songwriting. He had early downfalls, and later, after proving himself talented, his public statements and viewpoints would garner much attention.

In “All the Pretty Horses,” Lukas sings of his ride on a trail that his father left him. But while his path is similar to Willie’s, Lukas’s has been a bit more of a meandering road to stardom.

He seems to have high expectations for a kid that spent a year as a Venice Beach boardwalk street performer after leaving school at Loyola Mary-mount. But behind his aspirations there is only truth.

Promise of the Real has yet to sign with a record label despite releasing a defining EP, two studio albums, and possessing a growing fan base that has attracted nationally known filmmak-ers like Stump. Lukas says he’d rather keep the music ‘real’, the way he and the band like it, and not conform to the orders of a record label.

Lukas knows he’s good, and that’s all that matters.

Perhaps because they’ve chosen to take an alternate route down the road, they are teetering between main-stream fame and a cult following. For now, the boys ride their own wave, and the rest will follow.

Promise of the Real that night in Victor included Chilean percussion-ist Tato Melgar, Anthony LoGerfo on drums, Corey McCormick on bass, and band brother and manager Red.

They captivated the whole crowd and sent them into grooves, despite it being likely the first time most in attendance had heard the set. The intimate venue in the downtown park reverberated with whoops and whistles as new fans were turned on to the unique sounds.

Many times during the show, the band faded out into a slow bass jam with LoGerfo holding slow and steady and Melgar on shaker. In the middle of the first set, Lukas cut out almost entirely on guitar and transferred into a series of maniacal screams.

“Ahhhhhhhooooooowwww… Ahhh Ahhhhhh! Ahhh-hooooooooohhhhhhh,” he wailed into the microphone. The audience echoed the noises, and the energy in downtown Victor became palpable.

Each musician in the group added his own influence to the mix, creating a full-bodied rock sound, revolving around Lukas’s guitar licks and vocal wails.The sound was surreal.

Driving guitar licks peaked and dwindled, fading away to empha-size a drum, bass and percussion jam, or a quiet vocal solo leading back into an entire group jam.

The crowd followed down each crazed path the band took them.

Stump hosted the band in his Driggs, Idaho studio down the road from Victor. He was present at the show, flanked by numerous camera-shoul-dered videographers. He put GoPros on guitar and bass, and set up a static camera behind LoGerfo and Melgar to capture the on-stage act. Stump is trying to push a promo video to a major documentary filmmaker, and has traveled with the band to film.

Halfway through the show the squall on the horizon neared, and threats of rain turned to fizzling drizzles. Lukas whipped off his sweaty shirt, tossed it aside and finished half naked.

He ended one of the band’s 10 songs that night with the lyric: “Ohhhh, let me smoke my pipe!” (This was ironic because he’d quit drinking and smoking pot a few days prior. “I got to thinkin’, I could either be sort of high all the time, or I could try and do something great.”) The band drew that song out with two more false endings, and the Victor crowd screamed for more.

“All right! If this party hasn’t started, it has now,” Lukas shouted.

photo by austin Caddis trayser

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Lukas isn’t quick to analyze his music—or his life—but he’s clearly been sur-rounded by love, and his music often includes exults to his family, or to past loves. He exudes an outright passion that fuels his quick and meaningful songwriting.

“All those songs are truthful,” he says, “but I like to keep all that personal stuff private.”

He doesn’t want to stir the pot too much, but as his career volts skyward that’s become harder. The more people start paying atten-tion to his talent, he says, the easier it becomes to start unnecessary and uncivil debates.

“I’ve noticed that I really have to watch what I say,” he says.

“If I’m going to take a stand against racism or [something else], then I want to make it official and have an organization, a place. Have a set of motions in action rather than just go making a blind statement and having people tell their opinions and getting into this whole philosophical or political discussion that just doesn’t have to happen.”

He’s played on stage with Willie, Way-lon Jennings and Bob Dylan. He’s ap-peared on the “Dave Letterman Show,” at the 2011 Farm Aid concert, and the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. He appeared on the “Today Show” in March 2011 beside his father for Amy Robach’s special segment titled “Like Father Like Son.” (“I actually had lipstick on my lip during that whole interview. It was great.”)

Lukas is heading in the right direction – assuming he wants the recognition.

Other musicians admire his talent and fledgling notoriety. As do the media.

Coverage on the band (and there is plenty of it, mostly from newspapers) tends to rotate around his father’s name, and a sense of surprise that Lukas would follow Willie’s path.

The road over Teton Pass was crowded that Thursday night, mostly with Jackson residents and visitors heading to the free show.

Teton Valley News had played up the gig as a chance to watch Willie Nelson’s kid, and printed an assumption that Willie in the Flesh would come south after a show the day before in Billings, Montana to open the show on stage next to his son. The headline read: “Greatness in his Genes.”

After the concert, hanging out with friends in Willie’s old bus, Lukas read the story and jokingly accepted his fate: “I thought these jeans made me look good,” he said of his denim.

Murmurs throughout a pub before the show were filled with talk of Willie Nelson and his (nameless) kid. “I guess he’s kind of the rock and roll, bluesy type music or somethin’,” and “I hear Willie’s coming from Montana tonight, that’s why I’m goin’.”

Assumptions like those pit father and fledgling kin against each other in high

expectation. The same happened with Bob Dylan and his son, Jake.

Being pit against Willie Nelson, king of Outlaw Country, seems an unfair battle.

In addition to his voice, Lukas’s face and overall appearance resemble Willie’s.His songwriting skills are on par with

his father’s. Musically, the likeness stops at the sound of Lukas’s screaming Fender Stratocaster, and Lukas proves why he has a different following.

In the back of his bus (dubbed Honeysuckle Rose) before the Victor show, Lukas closed his eyes as he played a three-verse song he wrote late the night before. His fingers fluttered along the neck of the guitar with bird-like speed and soft agil-ity before ending with an original flicker lick that

faded out of his hollowed guitar.

This is a style Lukas has made his own from a combination of influenc-es, namely the Allman Brothers, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Bob Dylan, the Beatles and Derek Trucks.

“Ladies and gentlemen, lightning has struck the generator,” Lukas joked as the Victor crowd cried encore.

After the Victor show, the band fin-ished its summer tour with stops in Ohio, Colorado and California. The four then migrated back to California and recorded their second studio album, “mixed at analog sound to create a warm, organic sound.”

Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real have the framework for something big, so long as lighting doesn’t strike the generator.

outlaw

lukas nelson and the promise of real press photo