How to see Luck Presents shows at Willie Nelson’s ranch west of Austin

Magic issues occur in Luck, Texas.

“How the hell am I speculated to do something after that?” gushed Tami Neilson, a New Zealand singer-songwriter who’d simply sung a music onstage with Willie Nelson through the annual Luck Reunion final month at Nelson’s ranch in Spicewood. Inside weeks, that music, “Past the Stars,” was launched as Neilson’s new single, full with a video she filmed through the pageant that captured her particular second onstage with Willie. She was in Luck, certainly.

2022 marked the Reunion’s tenth anniversary, and its creators needed to mark the event by increasing actions on the ranch past simply that once-a-year showcase. And so we now have Luck Presents, a fledgling live performance promotion firm run by a handful of music trade mavericks with direct ties to the Nelson household and a imaginative and prescient to create a musical oasis that is “Simply Exterior of Austin” — as Willie’s son Lukas Nelson described Luck in a music bearing that title.

Extra:Michael Bublé coming to Moody Middle after canceling final Austin present over COVID-19 guidelines

Such locations in Central Texas are usually not unusual, after all. Willie’s pal Waylon Jennings made Luckenbach world-famous when he recorded a music name-checking the tiny Hill Nation hamlet within the Nineteen Seventies, shortly after Jerry Jeff Walker had recorded his landmark “Viva Terlingua” dwell album there. And loads of Austinites have headed an hour south on Interstate 35 to attend reveals on the 145-year-old Gruene Corridor close to New Braunfels.

However Luck has one thing totally different, one thing distinctive. That is Willie Nelson’s residence turf, the stays of a film set constructed for his Eighties movie “Crimson Headed Stranger.” Initially, the set was to be burned in a fireplace that was a part of the story, however the script was modified when Willie grew hooked up to the Outdated West buildings that included a saloon, a submit workplace and a chapel.

Quick-forward a number of many years — lengthy sufficient for Nelson’s grand-niece, Ellee Fletcher Durniak, to be born after which come of age as a New York style college graduate turned budding music entrepreneur. Whereas in New York, she met Matt Bizer at a present by short-lived however influential Austin band the Dedringers.

Extra:Willie Nelson retains on rolling at 89 with new album ‘A Stunning Time’

Earlier than lengthy, she and Bizer have been organizing a South by Southwest day occasion in Austin for the Dedringers and different bands. However Durniak — whose father, Freddy Fletcher, is the son of Willie’s late sister and pianist, Bobbie Nelson — had grown up on Willie’s expansive acreage, so it was maybe solely pure that her ideas turned to the Luck Ranch.

How Luck Reunion received began

At dinner one evening with Willie and his spouse, Annie, they broached the topic. “It was like a pitch shot at nighttime: ‘Would you allow us to use the property?’” Durniak recollects. “And so they have been like, ‘Yeah, simply get a allow.’”

Bizer, who’d just lately constructed up a film-crew resume in Texas on tasks similar to Turk Pipkin’s Christmas story “When Angels Sing,” didn’t assume it may presumably be that easy. “I believed it was a joke,” he says with a chuckle. “After which a number of weeks later, Ellee and I have been speaking, and he or she was like, ‘How’s all of it coming with the planning?’

“I spotted in a short time, that’s how they function. If you happen to’re a part of the household otherwise you’re in that dialog, hastily you’re doing one thing.”

Durniak and Bizer organized their first present at Luck Ranch throughout SXSW 2012. For a number of years, it was known as the Heartbreaker Banquet, along side different companions who ultimately departed. By 2016, the occasion had been re-christened the Luck Reunion. Regardless of a significant rainstorm that yr, which halted the music for a number of hours, the occasion was an enormous success, producing buzz that put the Reunion on the map as a sought-after SXSW cease for a lot of outstanding performers and rising stars.

After a 2019 occasion that included the primary Austin-area present for Yola, who’d quickly be nominated for finest new artist on the Grammys, Bizer and Durniak started brainstorming for an 2020 enlargement that would come with extra reveals throughout SXSW’s second weekend. The pandemic grounded all of that, although the Luck Presents group managed to tug collectively a makeshift however fascinating livestreamed Reunion that included digital performances by everybody from Neil Younger and Paul Simon to Orville Peck and Courtney Barnett.

Their plans lastly took root this yr. After the normal Thursday reunion, Luck booked reveals with Americana luminaries Jason Isbell on Friday and Shakey Graves on Saturday. A late add was a Sunday efficiency by landlord Willie Nelson, who additionally performed a second present the next weekend.

Extra:Prime-selling Colombian artist Karol G to play UT’s Moody Middle in October

Subsequent up is a Friday live performance by Pacific Northwest indie-rock band Modest Mouse, a sign that Luck Presents is greater than keen to work past the outlaw nation/Americana borders mostly related to the Nelson household. And so they just lately introduced an Oct. 1 look by theatrical rockers Flaming Lips.

However there’s additionally nonetheless room for stuff that’s proper down the middle of the strike zone. That’s the reason Willie, who turns 89 on April 29, is about to observe up Friday-Saturday reveals with George Strait at Austin’s new Moody Middle by collaborating in a Sunday birthday tribute at Luck Ranch that will even function performances by Margo Worth, Nathaniel Rateliff, Robert Earl Eager, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Vincent Neil Emerson and host Bruce Robison.

There’s extra to come back. Along with the Flaming Lips live performance, Durniak and Bizer are planning a collection of reveals this fall that they’ve tentatively dubbed Lucktoberfest. Performers haven’t but been introduced, however Luck Presents’ observe document so far nearly assures a slate of high quality bookings.

What makes Luck particular

Durniak says that this yr’s schedule in all probability will quantity to round a dozen reveals complete. That quantity may very well be greater subsequent yr, however she and Bizer don’t appear to have a selected goal in thoughts. “We select the folks we would like,” Durniak says. “It is acts that we actually wish to have on the market.”

A part of what has made the Reunion so successful is a willingness to take probabilities on up-and-coming acts. The lone fixed is Willie, who headlines the present along with his Household band very similar to he does along with his half-century-old Fourth of July Picnic. However whereas the Picnic tends to concentrate on established acts and longtime Willie compadres, the Reunion is extra within the spirit of music discovery.

This yr’s model was a primary instance. Sure, there have been a few Picnic-styled bookings: Isbell was a particular visitor on the Reunion along with taking part in his personal Luck present the next evening, and the Nineteen Seventies-era Misplaced Gonzo Band offered a connection to Willie’s outlaw nation glory years. However the Reunion’s most memorable moments got here from rising stars similar to Allison Russell and Japanese Breakfast — each of whom scored “Austin Metropolis Limits” TV tapings this spring — and Danielle Ponder, who appears poised for a breakout much like Yola’s 2019 second.

Luck’s potential to scout and current such expertise is essentially a matter of “ensuring to look each place, and preserving that door open,” Bizer says. “We like to only attempt to elevate up no matter we will out right here. … Japanese Breakfast was clearly not the primary (act) you’d consider taking part in Luck, However for us, it is actually enjoyable to show folks to (artists) like that.”

There’s a precedent for such makes an attempt at constructing bridges between audiences on the planet of Willie. “What all people talks about on a regular basis in Austin is like, ‘Oh, he united the hippies and the cowboys,” Bizer says. “However we do not assume consciously (about that). The music, and the variety of people who find themselves drawn to that music, is what creates it. We make an area the place all people is accepted, and also you simply neglect about it while you’re there.”

And so, even with extra live shows being added on the property that don’t contain Willie’s onstage participation, his spirit runs by means of every thing that occurs at Luck Ranch. Certainly, what makes this place most particular is just that it is Nelson’s residence turf, and that he’s keen to share it.

“There’s only a pleasure that surrounds his units when he is on the market,” Durniak says. “I believe it truly is a way of pleasure. He pulls up in his pickup truck, proper as much as the backstage, and simply struts on. I can not communicate for him, however I believe he has the time of his life. I’ve seen one million Willie reveals, however there’s one thing totally different about him onstage at Luck.”

If you happen to go to Luck Ranch

Friday: Modest Mouse with the Cribs, 7 p.m. (doorways at 5:30 p.m.), $55 normal admission ($125 VIP), $40 ranch parking go

Sunday: Willie Nelson birthday celebration with host Bruce Robison plus Margo Worth, Nathaniel Rateliff, Robert Earl Eager, Ray Wylie Hubbard and Vincent Neil Emerson, 7 p.m. (5:30 p.m. doorways), $35 normal admission ($150 VIP), $40 ranch parking go, $50 shuttle from Austin’s Arlyn Studios

Oct. 1: Flaming Lips, 7 p.m. (doorways at 5:30 p.m.), $47.50 normal admission  ($125 VIP)

Parking/shuttles: $40 parking at ranch; $50 shuttle from Austin’s Arlyn Studios

Handle: 1100 Bee Creek Street in Spicewood

Extra info: luckpresents.com