Home » Picnic
Product Image

Picnic

Dave Dalton Thomas
€34.99
€43.99 Sale €34.99
Quantity:
In stock with our UK publisher. 14-28 days
Delivery/Collection within 10-20 working days
14 days return policy Shipping & Delivery
A01=Dave Dalton Thomas
A01=Joe Nick Patoski
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Austin Circuit of the Americas
Author_Dave Dalton Thomas
Author_Joe Nick Patoski
automatic-update
Billy Joe Shaver
Carl's Corner
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=AVC
Category=AVGL
Category=AVH
Category=AVLT
Category=AVM
Category=AVN
Category=AVP
Category=DNBF
College Station
COP=United States
David Allan Coe
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
Dripping Springs
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=0
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_music
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Farm Aid II
Fort Worth Stockyards
Language_English
Leon Russell
Liberty Hill texas
Luckenbach
Moe Bandy
Neil Young
PA=Available
Pedernales
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
Robert Earl Keen's car
softlaunch
South Park Meadows
Texas World Speedway
Tulsa
Waylon Jennings
Whiskey River
Willie's picnic
Zilker Park

Product details

  • ISBN 9781648431944
  • Weight: 272g
  • Dimensions: 156 x 235mm
  • Publication Date: 30 Apr 2024
  • Publisher: Texas A & M University Press
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Hardback
  • Language: English
Secure checkout Fast Shipping Easy returns
Description
In 1973, a forty-year-old country musician named Willie Nelson, inspired by a failed music festival the year before, decided he was going to hold his own party. He would stage it in the same remote and rocky field where the previous festival had withered. And he’d do it in July: not the hottest part of the Central Texas summer, but “damn sure close enough,” according to music journalist Dave Dalton Thomas. As unlikely as it seemed in 1973, Willie kept the event going, minus a year off here and there, for half a century.

Thomas has attended nearly every Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic since 1995, finding joy in an event some music reporters have compared to “death marches and prison labor.” For the last 20 years, Thomas has researched the history of the Picnic, chronicling the brutal heat and the quirky and sometimes illegal antics of fans, musicians, and others. Thomas has watched the Picnic evolve over the decades, as Willie and his audience have evolved. He has interviewed participants, including artists, organizers, promoters, and even a few colorful hangers-on.

While reviewing ten of the Picnics in detail—each chosen for its significance in the overarching development of the event—Thomas also includes basic facts about each gathering, from the beginning to the present, with the addition of pertinent information about the “off years,” when the Picnic was on temporary hiatus for one reason or another.

In his introduction, Thomas quotes country musician Johnny Bush as he recalls trying to talk Nelson out of the notion of holding the first Picnic. “Willie, there ain’t no way in hell a bunch of cowboys are going to come out in the hundred-degree heat to watch us pick our guitars.” As Thomas records them, Bush’s next words were “he proved me wrong.”
About Dave Dalton Thomas | Joe Nick Patoski
Dave Dalton Thomas, formerly a journalist for the Austin American-Statesman, has obsessively researched the history of the Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic for more than 20 years. With the American-Statesman from 2002 to 2019, Thomas’s reporting and writing have also appeared in the Daily Beast, CNN.com, Texas Highways, the San Angelo Standard-Times, and other outlets.

More from this author