Willie Nelson is no stranger to confronting his mortality.
The reedy-voiced country music icon has written, performed and popularized countless songs mourning loved ones, pondering the aging process or joking about being rolled up like a joint and smoked upon death.
And yet, “Last Leaf on the Tree,” his 76th studio album, out this Friday, is perhaps Nelson’s most direct statement on the matter.
His son Micah Nelson, who produced the project, has described the album as his father’s “facing death with grace.” The lead single, “Last Leaf,” is a weepy ballad originally by Tom Waits. “I’m the last leaf on the tree,” the narrator observes. “The autumn took the rest / But they won’t take me / I’m the last leaf on the tree.”
In the hands of Nelson, the song — with atmospheric, funereal production and Willie’s tearjerker vocals — becomes autobiographical. That’s because just last month, he lost his close friend Kris Kristofferson, leaving Nelson as the only living member of the Highwaymen country supergroup and among the last from his generation of country icons to still be performing.
“I’ve lost a lot of good friends,” Nelson said on a Zoom call with NBC News last week. He paused a beat, chuckled, then added: “And for some reason, I’m still here.”
Elsewhere on the album, Nelson covers thematically similar tracks, including “Keep Me in Your Heart,” Warren Zevon’s swan song, written shortly before his death from cancer in 2003. (“When I listened back to my dad’s vocal on it, I just started bawling,” Micah Nelson said in the album’s accompanying essay.) And the Flaming Lips’ existentialist anthem “Do You Realize??” which features the enduring refrain: “Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?”
Nelson knows that axiom well. Over just the past few years, he has mourned Kristofferson and other close friends like Toby Keith and Loretta Lynn, his longtime drummer Paul English and his elder sister and touring pianist, Bobbie Nelson. Before that, the losses were already significant — there were Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Guy Clark, Nelson’s daughter Rene Butts and his son Billy, among many others.
The grief has never gotten easier, Nelson confessed.
“We all have to go through it in various ways. And each time it is just as bad as the last time.”
But at 91 years old, Nelson is only looking to the future.
He expressed joy about working with Micah Nelson, 34, who played a key role in making the album.
“He produced it, picked all the songs, and he played all the instruments and made the video, did the artwork, animation,” Willie said of his son, who this summer joined Neil Young and Crazy Horse on tour as a guitarist. “I’m really proud.”
Nelson’s wife, Annie D’Angelo Nelson, who joined him on the Zoom call, said: “Micah is this little renaissance dude. It’s all art to him.”
Nelson said he was excited to record songs by his contemporaries like Waits and Young alongside artists from his son’s generation, including the Flaming Lips, Beck and Sunny War. “There’s great music in every generation,” he said. “And I love it all.”
He fondly recalled contributing vocals for two tracks on Beyoncé’s genre-bending, forward-thinking “Cowboy Carter” album this year.
“I love her,” he said, beaming. “She’s great, and she asked me to be on her album, and I said, ‘Heck yeah, anything else you need.’”
Nelson's been stumping for Kamala Harris
Nelson is similarly optimistic about what he hopes will be a President Kamala Harris, whom he has described as a “real partner” on his pet issue, the legalization of recreational marijuana.
“There are so many good people in prison right now just for having something on them. That ain’t right,” Nelson said. “These folks need to be out of there.”
Nelson, a lifelong Democrat, hasn’t shied away from politics or his views in the past. He endorsed Joe Biden in 2020 and rallied for former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, a fellow Texan, during his 2018 Senate and 2022 gubernatorial runs.
In recent weeks, he has stumped for Harris and Texas Senate candidate Colin Allred at a series of public events and urged his fans to support ballot initiatives to legalize recreational marijuana in Florida and decriminalize it in Dallas.
“This is our chance to truly end prohibition,” he said Thursday evening during a “Cannabis Community for Kamala” digital fundraising event. “Get out and vote for Kamala Harris.”
The next evening, he appeared at Harris’ Beyoncé-headlined rally in Houston.
“We ready to say ‘Madam President’?” Nelson asked the crowd, donning an oversized “For a Brighter Tomorrow” Harris-Walz campaign T-shirt. He then launched into rollicking versions of the classics “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” and “On the Road Again.”
“We’re feeling hopeful,” Annie Nelson said on the call. Willie added: “I believe in being positive. And thinking positive and asking everyone else to think positive.”
Next up: A cannabis cookbook
Nelson shows no signs of slowing down.
Two weeks after “Last Leaf on the Tree” is released, Nelson and his wife will publish a cannabis cookbook, a collaboration with chef Andrea Drummer, co-owner of the Original Cannabis Cafe in West Hollywood, California — true to its name, the first cannabis restaurant in the U.S.
“Willie got pneumonia, and he couldn’t smoke because he had emphysema,” Annie said of the cookbook’s genesis. “But he has night terrors, and [marijuana] really helps. So I had to figure out how to make something that he could ingest. And then it started from there.”
Among the book’s recipes is a cannabis-infused version of “Willie’s favorite,” a sweet potato hash with eggs and applewood-smoked bacon.
And although Nelson just wrapped a summerlong stint co-headlining with Bob Dylan on the Outlaw Music Festival tour, he intends to get back on the road again soon.
“I don’t have any thoughts about hanging it up yet,” he said.
“He doesn’t want to make Bob Dylan sad,” Annie Nelson chimed in. “Bob Dylan doesn’t want him to quit. He likes being out with us. We’re fun!”