Gumption: America's Gutsiest Troublemakers

by Nick Offerman

  If you don’t normally hear about a celebrity and music legend getting behind groups like horse ranchers and farmers, then prepare to be doubly impressed (or if you are already baked, unsurprised) when I tell you that Willie Nelson sits on the advisory board of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. It has been reported that Willie was not as pleasant a rambler when alcohol was his main medicine, and so to me, his regular and cavalier employment of pot as a reliever of stress is a consistent representation, decades strong, of the positive effects of the herb: “I think people need to be educated to the fact that marijuana is not a drug. Marijuana is an herb and a flower. God put it here. If He put it here and He wants it to grow, what gives the government the right to say that God is wrong?”

  Like any other mood-altering substance, of course you should think twice about consuming it before entering a situation wherein you might endanger others, like, say, behind the wheel of a moving vehicle or at work as an air traffic controller. One of the times Willie found himself in hot water with the Texas authorities was in 1994, when police found him safely parked on the side of the road, sleeping in the backseat of his Mercedes. He had been enjoying his luck at a late-night poker game and felt too tired to drive, so he pulled off the road to get some sleep. Police officers found a joint in the ashtray and a bag of weed under the seat and decided to give him hell instead of shaking his hand for doing the right thing by getting off the road. Common sense is often low on the list of priorities when it comes to prosecuting citizens for possession of marijuana. In most cases, the “perpetrator” will just be causing a given scene to become more mellow, a state of affairs that seems like it would behoove the authorities to promote rather than punish.

  He has said, “There are a lot of ignorant people who don’t know, that have been told it’s a drug, and if you smoke it you’re going to hell. A lot of the right-wing religious fanatics are the ones who are the most against it, just like they’re [for] telling women what to do with their bodies. A bunch of old, ignorant white people that are dying off. And the big deal about weed or gays or any of that—it’s going away. It’s not a big deal no more to most people.”

  We can only hope that Willie’s sunnily disposed prediction on the matter will prove true. It seems like our population has plenty of conundrums to be more concerned with than those Americans putting on a pleasant buzz. For example, the crooks running the pharmaceutical racket: the real drug lords, who exploit our citizenry with exorbitant prices as they maintain a stranglehold on their pill monopolies. There are many places where our law enforcement tax dollars could be better focused than upon stoners consuming suspicious quantities of Rolo candies.

  In 2010, Austin appended the name of its downtown Second Street to Willie Nelson Boulevard, and two years later, an heroic bronze statue of the wizard (and Trigger) was added at the corner of his honorary street and LaVaca. Appropriately, the unveiling occurred at 4:20 P.M. on April 20 (4/20), 2012, when, according to the Austin American-Statesman, “there was something in the air.” It’s long been no secret that Willie is for weed, as Willie is for America, and so, by God, I am for Willie.

  Now that we have paid homage to the cowboy—the sort our mamas should not let us grow up to be—let us also give praise to his weapon. The aspiring baby luthier in me would be remiss if I did not take a moment to turn the bloodshot eye of my journalism upon Willie’s one and only axe for about as many years as I’ve been alive (forty-four): Trigger.

  When it comes to acoustic guitars, Trigger’s maker, the estimable C. F. Martin guitar company out of Nazareth, Pennsylvania, has been synonymous with the most desirably crafted American quality since 1833. Although Collings, Gibson, Taylor, Santa Cruz, and a score of smaller makers can give them a run for their money by now, Martin is like the Louisville Slugger or Filson cruiser jacket when it comes to longevity and quality. They are the Zippo lighter of guitars.

  The year was 1969, and Willie was playing a gig with his band at the John T. Floore Country Store in Helotes, Texas, when a drunk stepped on his Baldwin 800C classical guitar and destroyed it. Willie’s crew sent the mess to their guitar man in Nashville, Shot Jackson, who informed Willie via telephone that the damage was irreparable. However, Jackson had this Martin N-20 classical on hand into which he could transfer the Baldwin’s electric pickup. For the price of 750 dollars (5,000 dollars today), Willie acquiesced—and unwittingly entered into a marriage made in country music heaven.

  The yellow guitar top is Sitka spruce from British Columbia or Alaska. The back and sides are made of Brazilian rosewood, that precious hardwood that is so ideal for musical instruments that its supply has been almost entirely used up and is no longer available for import or purchase, except in tiny, hard-to-find quantities, like the rarest of pearls. The neck is mahogany, also from South America, and the bridge and fretboard are black ebony from Africa. These precious woods, along with the German brass tuning pegs, are typically ideal for this type of instrument, but Willie Nelson’s guitar style has proved to be anything but typical.

  Although he first learned to play western swing and polka, as well as cribbing all the Tin Pan Alley hits he could handle off the radio, Willie had been turned on to the playing of jazz guitar master Django Reinhardt early on the professional circuit, and he was spellbound. He immediately recognized that Reinhardt’s playing was the wellspring from which had sprung all the other riffs he had previously learned, but the original source material was much more pure and variegated. Willie had been learning from fiddle and guitar players who were emulating Django, but now he was thrilled to find the fuel that would spark the fire in his artistic belly for the rest of his life.

  Unfortunately, the Martin N-20 was not designed to tolerate the brutal workout of Willie’s fingers, as they mixed Spanish finger style with jazz, blues, and good old-fashioned country strumming, a mélange of techniques that alternated between the use of a pick and just the fingers of the right hand. The pinky and ring finger of his right hand soon wore a hole right through the spruce top, near the sound hole, not to mention the other scars Trigger began to accumulate. Some were accidental, or the result of Willie’s hammering pick, but others were of a decidedly more intentional bent, such as the place where Leon Russell signed the top with his knife.

  Willie and his stage manager, Poodie Locke, found a luthier in Austin named Mark Erlewine, who gave the Martin a thorough tune-up and refinishing, but he could have had no idea that he was entering into a stewardship that has lasted nearly forty years. Twice a year he repairs the finish and he adds bracing under the top where and when necessary, thereby keeping Willie in the saddle. Willie has surmised that he and Trigger have played more than ten thousand shows together, logging more than a million minutes of playing time.

  Over the years, Willie’s crew have tried to get him to switch to different versions of the same model N-20, both from Trigger’s vintage and newly built “classic reissues,” but no guitar ever feels remotely the same to Willie, and so it would seem that Trigger will see him through to the finish line. That sense of loyalty bleeds over into everything Willie does, whether he’s helping out an animal shelter or just bringing young talent into the recording studio. He seems to have maintained a pertinent sense of humanity in every undertaking, which I suppose is unsurprising by now. Like a Texan Gandhi, he clearly just gets it: “Anybody can be unhappy. We can all be hurt. You don’t have to be poor to need something or somebody. Rednecks, hippies, misfits—we’re all the same. Gay or straight? So what? It doesn’t matter to me. We have to be concerned about other people, regardless.”

  Maybe he’s so good at speaking for the rest of us because he spent many years as just another one of the people trying to make ends meet until he could see his way clear to making his dreams come true. Whatever the reason, this particular troublemaker has done little but bring music and good times to a lot of Americans for a lot of years. We should all be so lucky as to make such trouble
.

  21

  CONAN O’BRIEN

  Megan and I share an e-mail, simply because it’s all the e-mail address we ever needed. Like many of you, we often feel oppressed by the amount of correspondence in which our business obligates us to partake, and so it has never occurred to us to update or enlarge our computer-using capabilities. As a married couple, this sharing also affords us a considerable degree of transparency, since every electronic letter that we receive by computer is available for perusal by the household. It’s not “my e-mail” or “her e-mail,” it’s simply: “the e-mail.” I like the system for its convenience and its inherent sense of fidelity.

  Thus, when an e-mail comes in from “somebody good,” we consider it fair game for both of us to enjoy. This explains how Megan came to learn about my secret second family in Spokane (but perhaps that’s a tale for the next book). She also read, and subsequently insisted that I include in the book, the following exchange between Conan and myself. Much of my solicitation contains the same language that you have previously seen in my electronic note to George Saunders, so I will cut to the chase wherever possible.

  Dear Tall Sir,

  8/15/14

  I want to ask you for a significant favor, and, despite our secret, long-suffering passion for one another, I mean to do so with (approximately) the same pomp with which I have petitioned Oprah Winfrey.

  I am working on my second book for Dutton Books . . . etc., etc. . . . looking at religion, technology, human rights, nature, guns/war, tobacco, hand-crafting, advertising . . . hopefully with a chuckle. Hilarious, right?

  Since my list of swell Americans must necessarily be quite subjective, I can’t help but think of you and your, frankly, carnal dance moves and the sense of humor behind which you proffer a mighty intelligence and gentle compassion. I’ll be honest: I intend to lionize you. To supplement my detailed recollection of your rippling abdominals, glistening with sunscreen in the Seattle half-light, I would love to engage you in an interview.

  If we can nail down a date, I thought it would be really fun to make some sort of destination or adventure out of our interview; nothing too buccaneering, per se, but someplace we’d like to go and rest our weary hindquarters and enjoy a chin-wag. Fresno, I guess, is what I’m driving at.

  It could be a hike, or a rooftop where Scotch is served, or it could also be your household fire pit or the ridiculously opulent hot tub at our new digs.

  It’s also worth mentioning that, as you may be aware, my bride, Megan, is doing a Terrence McNally revival (It’s Only a Play) on Broadway from September through the top of January, so if you’re heading east at all and you’d like to come as our guest, perhaps sporting a playwright of your own [Liza Powel-O’Brien is a playwright!], do simply holler. I would relish squiring you to any meal or diversion in New York City as well. The Bull Moose Room at Keens. Perhaps I could row you across the Hudson in an historic Whitehall skiff, and that is not a joke. I know a guy.

  Sincerely,

  Nick Offerman

  It took the sluggard an entire day to get back to me, but I was otherwise rather pleased with his response.

  Nick, you insufferable bastard,

  8/16/14

  How much time will you need? Forty seconds? A full minute?

  Count me in, old chum. Let’s figure out a date and I will disappoint with meandering tales. And I will move heaven and earth to see Megan’s play. I would watch that woman read from the phone book and ask for an encore.

  On a related topic, we must eat beefsteaks soon at a down-on-its-luck Chop House. It has been too long.

  Your steadfast friend,

  Conan

  I guess the headline here is: We talk to each other like total nerds. Passionately. Unabashedly.

  The first time I truly beheld Conan was when Megan was doing his Late Night with Conan O’Brien show in New York City, circa 2001 or so. I was nothing short of tumescent to meet this impossibly tall man who had already brought me so much mirth with his televised comedy stylings; a hairdo like Kenickie’s wet dream; and brave, high weirdness—weirdness that I would later come to understand as the collaborative goulash of chef O’Brien and his coterie of writers of the highest (silly) caliber, like Mike Sweeney, Robert Smigel, Bob Odenkirk, Louis C.K., Jon Glaser, Brian Stack, and Brian McCann (four of whom have appeared on Parks and Rec, as Officer Dave Sanderson, Councilman Jeremy Jamm, Ted, and Freddy Spaghetti), with many others over the years.

  Conan’s take on Late Night, replete with his undeniably fetching gyrations (Try and deny it! You can’t!), his masturbating bear (not a euphemism, nor golden sidekick Andy Richter—there was an actual man in a bear suit and diaper pleasuring himself), the ineffably irresistible Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, and Pimpbot 5000, had overwhelmingly become the flavor of choice for my generation. The ever-winning David Letterman, to my way of thinking, would always remain our elder statesman of hilarity who had carried forward the legacy of Johnny Carson as the jocular and sidesplitting uncle upon whom we depended for daily humor and wisdom. Don’t get me wrong, Dave’s still got it, but Conan behaved in a way that our parents’ generation could only have described as “deviant” or “squirrelly,” and that, by God, made him ours.

  Wide-eyed and grinning with delight, backstage in the dressing room hallways of 30 Rockefeller Center, I was also digesting my first of many visits to the art deco wonderland of a building from whence the television comedy legends of Saturday Night Live and Letterman had sprung, not to mention straight-up hunks like Phil Donahue, Dr. Oz, and Rachel Maddow. Despite the fact that I was merely the frightening, shaved-headed boyfriend of a beautiful sitcom star named Megan Mullally, who was to appear as his guest that evening, Conan could not have been friendlier or more generous to me, and the same goes for his team of producers and writers—a company of brilliant goofballs; erudite and ribald sweethearts who were tickled pink at being paid to create fresh, challenging comedy on a daily basis.

  As we shook hands, cracked wise, and engaged in some general grab-ass there in the hallway, a murmur suddenly ran through the throng: “Make way!/Look at his jewels!/Don’t give him no jive!” and the crowd parted to reveal the arrival of none other than Mr. T, grinning and hugging everyone around whom he could wrap the tree limbs that he calls arms. I had always been an ardent fan of the man who portrayed both B. A. (Bad Ass) Baracus and Clubber Lang, all while promoting good manners, generosity, and kindness, especially to one’s mother, so I was triply excited at this bonus. In the early years of our marriage, riding shotgun with Megan afforded me a great bounty of such thrilling experiences, but Conan somehow proved to be special, and not just because he looks like a handsomer Ivy League version of something out of The Dark Crystal.

  Although when measured empirically, Conan O’Brien tops out at nineteen hands of height, or a lofty seventy-six inches with his delicate feet clad in only the finest stockings of China silk, with the additional sheave of flaxen ginger stalks atop his noble pate, he strikes me as much closer to ten feet tall. This suspicion of loftiness is redoubled when examining his early achievements. A pubescent Conando took time out from editing his high school newspaper, The Sagamore, to win a story-writing contest held by the National Council of Teachers of English, before wrapping it up by graduating as the valedictorian* of his class (*a Latin-ish term that I think means he was in the top several throwers of the javelin [it’s no wonder, with that wingspan!]).

  He then attended Harvard University, which I’m told is a “college” school on the “East Coast,” where in 1985 he earned his BA (also pretty badass) in American history. While attending “Harvard,” Conan was twice elected president of the hallowed parody magazine, The Harvard Lampoon, a double distinction awarded to only two other persons in history: the humorist Robert Benchley, in 1912, and one Matt Murray, who most recently worked as a writer on the seminal “television” comedy Parks and Recreation. (I am not at all “certain” how quo
tation marks work.) Conan topped off this trajectory by graduating magna cum laude, which I believe is Latin for “terrific at noisome self-abuse.”

  The fascination with American history exhibited by young Conan would come to play a pivotal role in my own development. While visiting the amazing New York apartment of Conan and his winning bride, Liza, Megan and I did ooh and ooh, and ooh again, in a prolonged fashion, and then we would aah: at the interior design, at the art, at their beautiful kids, who looked like they were prepared by the most talented dressers of Bloomingdale’s Christmas window displays, and at the breathtaking view overlooking Central Park from the balconies of the Majestic apartment building, just one door south of Yoko at the Dakota.

  In Conan’s library, the first thing one noticed (after the thick stench of his pomade, Danger Dan’s Dappity Dazz) was his collection of fine guitars—only a handful, but clearly chosen by a player with style, which most assuredly describes this comedian. For those of you who would have (rightly) drooled over such beauties, please adjust the book away from below your spit hole before reading further: There sat a 1963 Gretsch Tennessean, a 1957 orange Gretsch 6120, a 1946 Martin acoustic, and a green-and-gold Gretsch (Bono’s model) that was signed for him by the members of U2, so he’s afraid to play it.

  Once you were done with ogling the guitars, the next detail you noticed about the walls of stuffed bookshelves was the proliferation of books about either American history or the Beatles. As he says himself, “Two-thirds of the books in the house are about weird American historical figures, and the other third are about guitars and the Beatles, and the Beatles’ guitars. I actually have a book called Beatles Gear. I have two textbooks about the Beatles’ amps.” Many of the best comedy writers I know or have known are obsessed to inebriation with the music and lyrics of the Beatles, but Conan’s preoccupation may be the inebrationest.