I was at the Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic in 1984, at South Park Meadows in Austin. There are 14 pages dedicated to that concert in the newly-released book Picnic: Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Tradition, by Dave Dalton Thomas. The book traces the evolution of Willie’s annual shindig from its start in 1973 – on a ranch outside of Dripping Springs – to the 2023 picnic at Q2 Stadium in Austin.
Each picnic doesn’t get 14 pages, but each of the 10 chapters does begin with the story of one picnic and talks about why that particular picnic was significant. Thomas talked to lots of folks in Willie’s circle, but wasn’t able to get to the man himself, which actually may have made for a better book. There’s sort of a legend around the picnic – and around Willie – and Willie might have been more interested in keeping the legend alive than sharing how things really went down in the lead-up to each picnic and the happenings the day of. Thomas talked to some of Willie’s children and one granddaughter, all of who performed at at least one picnic, and various promoters, venue owners, musicians, city officials and others. Some of these folks sometimes tell conflicting stories about how things went down, but they’re also often talking about an event that happened 40 years ago, and not everyone at that time was living a clean and sober life.
Thomas is a graduate of Texas A&M, and was working as a copy editor at the San Angelo Standard-Times when he first became obsessed – that’s his word – with Willie’s picnics. He started covering the picnics for the paper after the music writers there decided they didn’t want to spend all day at an outdoor music festival, in July, in an open field in Central Texas.
Thomas now works as a writer for the state of Texas. He’s a big Willie fan and has lost count of the number of picnics that he’s attended. The idea of writing this definitive history had been floating around for a while, ever since he read a Texas Monthly article that got a few facts wrong about one of the out-of-state picnics. Thomas started his research in earnest during the early days of Covid. He was working nights at the Austin American-Statesman by this point, and had access to the Stateman’s vast archives of articles about Willie and the picnics.
I met Thomas a few months ago at Papa Joe’s Texas Saloon in Lorena, where he was holding a book signing. If the name of that establishment sounds familiar, it should. That’s where the singer/songwriter Billy Joe Shaver shot a guy in the face on March 31, 2007. Shaver was a longtime friend of Willie’s and played at the first picnic in ’73 and many others after that. Thomas tried to interview Shaver while doing research for the book, but Shaver was too sick to take part. He died in 2020.
I really enjoyed Picnic: Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Tradition, which is the author’s first book. He told me he has ideas for a couple of more, and I’m looking forward to those as well.
