Still Can’t Believe You’re Gone

It’s Willie Wednesday, a good day for a sneak preview of my  tribute to Poodie Locke, which will be in the  Austin City Limits Festival program this weekend. Thanks to ACL; love to all of Poodie’s family and friends.  turk

It’s Friday night at Poodie’s Hilltop, the Spicewood, Texas roadhouse founded by Texas music legend, Randall “Poodie” Locke. For over three decades, Poodie has been Willie Nelson’s stage manager, a great friend of up-and-coming Texas music acts, and the most popular party animal since Norm on Cheers.

But tonight you won’t find many people in a partying mood. The place is packed and there’s a great band on stage, but a hush sweeps across the room as Gloria Locke, mother of the long-ago “most beautiful baby in Waco”, slowly crosses the room to her customary seat in front of the stage. Mama Locke and a whole lot of friends have come to pay their last respects to a man who showed them how to make great music, hard work and good times into the meaning of life.

Inside the club is not the only place that Poodie is missed. Right outside the door, Asleep at the Wheel’s tour bus is stuck on the steep turn from Highway 71 to the parking lot. Driver, roadies and onlookers study the front and back bumpers dug into the pavement at both ends and someone says, “Never woulda happened if Poodie had been here.”

Poodie was a problem solver. For over three decades, he was the grease that made things run smooth for seven or eight thousand Willie & Family concerts in all 50 States and a whole lot of foreign countries. How he did it in Amsterdam, I can only imagine.

Raised in Waco, Texas – not far from Willie’s boyhood home in Abbott – Poodie was just 12-years-old when he first met The Red-Headed Stranger, who was playing bass at the time for Ray Price. Not too many years later, in 1975, Poodie was road-managing for Texas songwriter BW Stevenson when Willie offered him a slightly larger job. A couple of months later, Willie released Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain and, after twenty years in the business, Willie Nelson was an overnight sensation.

“We went on tour for eight days,” said Poodie, “And we didn’t come home for eight months.”

The next 34 years were a wild ride, and no one spurred the bull any harder than Poodie. Always ready for a cold beer, a shot of moonshine and whatever else was offered, he made a million friends. I was fortunate to have shared a lot of cold drinks, golf, music and fun with Poodie in wildly varying locations.

One night in Vegas when Willie had just moved his casino concerts from the Desert Inn to The Orleans, Poodie asked if I wanted to run out for a cold one between shows. We saw a bar across the street that neither of us knew and made a dash for it. When we stepped inside the door and stopped to survey the crowd, about fifty heads swiveled toward Poodie’s prominent profile at the door. There was a long beat, then half the room called out in perfect unison, “Poodie!”

One measure of his popularity – both of the Willie band buses had the same sign on the door: “Poodie’s on the other bus.”

Finding him backstage was as good as gold, because Poodie usually had the perfect place on stage to put friends who wanted to watch the show. He barely knew my daughter Lily, but always remembered that she’s a piano player and would find her a spot on stage right so she could watch Sister Bobbie’s hands move effortlessly up and down the keys.

I had a choice spot on the big stage for the last Austin City Limits festival gig Poodie managed with Willie. An hour after Willie’s set, the gear was all packed and Poodie was climbing on the bus. “That was fast,” I told him. “Best run festival we ever played,” he told me. “Pass that along to Charles and Charlie.” And I promptly forgot to deliver the message… till now.

Poodie loved to play golf – and bragged that the game had saved his life by replacing the bottomless pile of cocaine that claimed so many in the 70s and 80s. For years he was one of centerpieces of the freewheeling game at Willie’s Pedernales Golf Club, a seething mass of a dozen or more golfers, each in their own cart and all playing for vast sums of money and pride. When the last tee shot had been struck, we’d race off to claim the best drives as our own.

“May the man with the fastest cart win!” Willie would proclaim. Poodie’s cart was fast, but Willie’s was faster.

His famous friends could have filled a hundred tour buses. He taught the Dali Lama to make the Hook ‘em Horns sign; traded golf tips with Dennis Hopper and took wild midnight rides with Hunter Thompson. But in his whole life, Poodie only asked for two autographs and got them both – John Wayne and Walter Cronkite. The man had class.

Poodie and Owen Wilson in Willie's video, You Don't Think I'm Funny Anymore

Last year Poodie was immortalized in a hilarious video of Willie’s song “You Don’t Think I’m Funny Anymore.” Even with Woody Harrelson, the Wilson Brothers, Jessica Simpson and Dan Rather in the video, it was Poodie who stole the show as a rotund woman who was deeply infatuated with Owen Wilson.

After a long take with Poodie’s head and blonde wig locks on his shoulder, Owen looked at me and said, “What am I doing?”

“Having the time of your life!” I replied. Owen grinned, and I noticed in the next take that he seemed downright fond of the nearness of Poodie.

With his protruding stomach that was positively Falstaffian, it wasn’t easy to get near Poodie. For years I patted him on his big tummy and said, “When are the puppies due?”

“Soon, Big Boy!” Poodie would say. “Soon!”

Everyone told him he should go easy on the butter beans and the beer and take better care of himself, but Poodie was having none of that. Maybe he knew his heart would get him. Maybe he didn’t care.

His slogan, “There are no bad days” hung on a sign outside the club he founded in Spicewood.

I was with Willie, band and crew for a gig in Maui, and Willie treated everyone – thirty in all – to dinner and drinks at Mama’s Fishhouse. Sitting soft by the waves with its own little beach, life doesn’t get any better than Mama’s. We were there for hours, with Poodie grinning like a fool as he kept handing me double frozen pina coladas with a rum floater.

“I’m the luckiest guy alive,” he told me that night. We’ve outlived every band and road crew, and we’re still playing every night.”

His funeral service in Waco was described as a private, family service. A thousand people showed up. Even more came to a tribute show – Poodie’s Picnic – at the old Backyard in Bee Cave. But for me, the place to pay my respects was at the club that bore his name, on the night after we lost him.

With Ray Benson’s bus finally unstuck, the audience was anxious for Asleep at the Wheel to play some dancing music that would lighten the mood. The Wheel took the stage and with the crowd so loud they could barely hear his guitar, Ray began to pick out the delicate melody of one of Willie’s most emotional songs. Just as the crowd fell into silence, Ray began to sing more softly than I’ve ever heard him.

It’s the very first day since you left me
And I’ve tried to put my thoughts in a song
And all I can hear myself saying
Is I still can’t believe you’re gone

All around me bikers, barmaids, hippies and rednecks began to wipe the tears from their eyes. I was doing the same when I realized we were in the middle of a perfect country song. Steve Goodman – who penned City of New Orleans and was yet another great Poodie Pal – once conspired with David Allan Coe to prove that the perfect country song had to have heartache, a hero, getting drunk, someone’s Mama and a train. The only thing we were missing was a train. And then I realized, Poodie was the train. The rest of us, we were just along for the ride.

The crowd hardly noticed when Ray’s band eased into the song, but lemme tell you, not many bands can bring it like The Wheel, and everyone in that band could feel where this train was headed.

“You’re gone and I’m alone and I’m still living,” Ray wailed from deep inside. “I don’t like it but I’ll take it till I’m strong.”

And somehow, we knew we would.

When the song ended, everyone raised their glasses high, and just like in that bar in Vegas, they called out in unison – “Poodie!”

And just for an instant, I thought I saw him standing in the door.

Turk Pipkin is the co-author of The Tao of Willie, which he wrote with Willie Nelson. You can listen to Willie’s original version of “I Still Can’t Believe You’re Gone” on the 1974 album, Phases and Stages.