Mickey Raphael: Press

photo credit:  Ben Noey, Jr. 
http://www.star-telegram.com
by Preston Jones
 
It’s the early Willie Nelson albums — 1967’s Make Way for Willie Nelson or 1969’s Good Times — that first grabbed Mickey Raphael, well before the Dallas native began playing harmonica with Nelson in the mid-1970s.
 
“I’ve always been a fan of these songs and this era,” Raphael said. “I love these tunes; these were the first recordings that I really ever heard of Willie. Not being into country music at all when I first discovered him, these songs have just kind of embedded in my mind.”
 
Nearly four decades later, Raphael revisited these seminal cuts for the fascinating Naked Willie, a 17-track collection in stores Tuesday. The album takes the classic Nashville sound — syrupy strings, walls of background vocals — and strips it away, often leaving little more than Nelson’s limber voice, an acoustic guitar and other minimal instrumentation. The concept feels in line with Nelson’s recent string of albums, like last year’s Moment of Forever, that are decidedly light on ornamentation.
 
The effect can be downright haunting on Naked Willie — Jimmy’s Road, from 1992’s The IRS Tapes: Who’ll Buy My Memories?, is a stark slow-burn — and occasionally jazzy (the 1968 single Bring Me Sunshine). But Raphael, who claims an “un-produced by” credit on the album, said the impetus for the archival project stemmed from advice that’s been “drummed into his mind.”
“Willie, being with him for 35 years, he’s always stressed musically, when we’d go in the studio, less is more,” Raphael said. “Keep it simple — it’s the space between the notes, you don’t have to overplay.”
 
Nelson was open to the idea of revisiting and slightly remodeling his vintage Chet Atkins- and Felton Jarvis-produced material, which involved securing the multitrack masters, painstakingly peeling back the layers and making sure that he didn’t obscure anything lyrically.
 
“To hear this stuff now, it’s kind of a cool Willie record,” Raphael said. “If you go back and find the original, you can see what they did to the original track and see how they were making records in the ’60s with that whole style.”

http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/

Mickey Raphael wouldn’t say he is a double threat. “I was just in the right place at the right time,” Raphael said of his brief film career acting in “Honeysuckle Rose” and “Songwriter.” “It was fun at the time, but I wouldn’t want to pursue that again. I’ll stick to what I’m good at.”

The right place was at the side of his bandleader, Willie Nelson, who also appeared in those films. “There’s no bandleader that’s as loyal as Willie is. We’ll go off tour and he’ll let me record and play with whoever I want. He doesn’t tell me what I can do, other than from 8 to 11 at night.”If any lesson can be taken from Raphael’s career it is this: Stickwith Willie and everything is gonna be all right.

In fact, it’s a lesson more than a few musicians have learned.

When Nelson comes to Sioux City for a Tuesday night show at the Orpheum, he’ll bring with him a backing band of musicians that is more like a big family. The band is called in many circles “Willie and the Family.” It’s a collection of six musicians, including Nelson’s sister and a set of brothers. The newest edition to the lineup can say he has been with the band for more than twenty-five years.
 
“We’re unhireable,” Raphael said with a laugh, explaining the lack of turnover in the band. “I mean, if you have this great gig with this great musician, why would you look anywhere else? He’s great to play with.”
 
Raphael first crossed paths with Nelson back in 1973. The young harmonica player was invited to a University of Texas football post-game party. To his surprise, Nelson and Charley Pride were there participating in an informal jam session. The meeting resulted in an invitation to play with Nelson in the future. That show resulted in Raphael leaving Dallas to join Nelson in Austin, Texas, marking the official birth of a lasting musical relationship.
 
“Willie took a chance on me in ‘73 when he hired me as a solo instrument. Most country has fiddle and steel as the solo instruments. It was unusual. Might have been a bad idea, I don’t know,” he said from a tour stop in Baltimore.
 
Trained in the blues world, the harmonica player had no other harmonica players to turn to for guidance on how to make the harp work in the world of country music. He did find a bit of a mentor in Charlie McCoy, a great blues harpist who had recorded a few country records before hooking up with Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Ween and the cast of “Hee Haw.”
 
As McCoy found out, a good county harp player can stay very busy, especially one who has nearly mastered smooth note transitions and melodic riffs.
 
Raphael has recorded with so many artists that listing them takes too long. There was Elton John, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Emma Lou Harris, Neil Young, U2 and Motley Crue — that’s Raphael soloing on “Smokin’ in the Boys Room.”
 
“It was something you could carry with you everywhere,” Raphael said of his initial attraction to the harmonica. “Funny thing is I wanted to be a guitar player.”

art by Tiffany Maples

http://sacurrent.com
By Jeremy Martin

New to Willie Nelson?   Don’t cop to that shit around these parts, partner, unless you do it in a Martian accent.  In his 76 years, Abbott, Texas’s native son has done so many phenomenal things a list of them would amount to a religious text, but let’s put it this way: He wrote a hit song for Patsy Cline (“Crazy”) and appeared in a Snoop Dogg video (“My Medicine”). The words “living legend” aren’t really adequate; that should’ve opened up a wormhole in space-time. We’re still waiting for him to bring his Fourth of July Picnic back to San Antonio, but you’ve got a chance to verify his actual existence Sunday at the Majestic Theater, 224 E. Houston Street, on  February 28, 2010, majesticempire.com.

Mickey Raphael has played harmonica with Willie Nelson since 1973. He produced 2009’s Naked Willie, featuring Nelson recordings from 1966-1970 stripped of their Nashville studio flourishes. Raphael is currently working with Salvador Duran and Calexico’s John Convertino and Joey Burns to record a follow-up to his 1987 solo album Hand to Mouth.

How is Willie Nelson’s hand recovering? [He canceled a concert last month due to hand pain.]

It’s good. I mean he plays. He had that carpal-tunnel-syndrome operation — it’s been awhile back [2004]. … We’re out on the road now, but we just had a day off yesterday, and we’ve got a day off Monday, so he’s giving it some rest. … He’s the only guitar player we got, though.

What’s the strangest experience you’ve had playing with Willie Nelson?

[Performing in Amsterdam with] Snoop Dogg was pretty unique. We’ve gotten to play with U2.  Willie and I went to see Bono in Ireland, and they were working on a record and they asked us to come down and record a song that they released in Europe [“Slow Dancing”].  I don’t think it was a U.S. release. Willie and I played in Georgia at Ray Charles’s funeral. We just did this thing with Wynton Marsalis [2008’s Two Men With the Blues].

How did you begin playing with him?

I met Willie through [former University of Texas football coach] Darrell Royal, at a jam session at the coach’s hotel room after a ball game. He had about 30 people in there … a bunch of musicians and just his buddies and stuff. They just sat around passing the guitar around. Willie sang some. I think Charlie Pride sang some; I can’t remember who else was there. And Willie just said, “Hey, if you ever hear we’re playing anywhere, come sit in.” I started checking his schedule and seeing where he was playing in Texas. … It just kind of segued into playing with him more often.

How did the idea for Naked Willie come about?

I just pitched the idea to the record label. I said, “We’ve got all these great songs from the ’60s, and I wonder what they would sound like without all these strings and background vocals. What would it sound like if Willie had been the producer?

So this was your idea?

Yeah, totally my idea.  Willie really heard it when it was finished.

The impression I’d had was it was similar to the way that Let It Be N