Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Picnics in Fort Worth Stockyards highlighted in new book

Our Uniquely Fort Worth stories celebrate what we love most about Cowtown, its history & culture. Story suggestion? Editors@star-telegram.com.

Willie Nelson’s Fort Worth legacy has been well-documented. He was a disc jockey for KCNC/870 AM, hosting “The Western Express” back in the ‘50s. His Christmas standard “Pretty Paper” is about a Fort Worth street vendor. He lit up his first joint at a home in the Scenic Bluff neighborhood in 1954. He even went to Federal Medical Center Prison once (to play a show in 1991).

But Nelson’s biggest Fort Worth legacy might be his Fourth of July Picnics. The day-long music festival where Nelson hosted his closest musician friends got started in Dripping Springs in 1973 and turned into a yearly tradition.

The Fort Worth Stockyards played host to seven of Nelson’s annual shows from 2004 to 2014. “Picnic: Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Tradition,” a new book out now by former Austin American-Statesman journalist Dave Thomas, chronicles every picnic Nelson put on from 1973 to now. Thomas has attended almost every one since 1995, when he first broke the news for the San Angelo Standard-Times that the picnic would be moving to Luckenbach.

“Of course, I was a huge Willie fan at the time, I just didn’t know much about the picnic,” Thomas said. “I just happened to be in Luckenbach on the day that Willie’s people made the deal to move the festival over there. I was at the bar on my day off and I was just learning the history of that whole scene from some of the people who had experienced it firsthand, and I was so fascinated with it.

“With this book, I just wanted to provide a history of the whole event outside of this year, or even of the next 10 that Willie does until he’s 107.”

The book is an exhaustive archive of the picnic’s history, but it’s also a fascinating look at Texan history and the way its music scene and live music traditions have changed over the years. Country music and history buffs alike will love this book. Each picnic gets its own chapter, but the book is written so the reader can drop in at any given point and read about a picnic they attended, or read up on the infamous moments of a picnic from years past.

This year’s Fourth of July Picnic will be in Camden, New Jersey. While Austin and its surrounding areas can lay claim to hosting the most picnics over the years, the city that has hosted the most in the same location is Fort Worth.

Seven Picnics in the Fort Worth Stockyards

In 2004, nearly 20,000 people descended onto the “North Forty” field next to Billy Bob’s Texas for the first Fort Worth Picnic. The show had been in North Texas before, at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas in 1978, but this was the first one in Cowtown.

The way it came about started with Billy Bob’s — or rather, Haltom City native and entrepreneur Rick Smith’s pitch to Billy Bob’s co-owner Billy Minick. Smith wanted to record artists performing live albums at the honky-tonk. Soon after, the “Live at Billy Bob’s Texas” series was born. After Nelson recorded his live album in December 2003, Smith again pitched Minick on another idea: Hosting the picnic in the Stockyards.

That idea soon had the ear of then-Mayor Mike Moncrief, who announced the show in April 2004 with Nelson at the Livestock Exchange Building. The Fort Worth Stockyards wound up hosting the picnic in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014.

The city was on board from the beginning, and it showed, Thomas said. Those seven Stockyards shows stood out for how well-run and they were — a contrast to some of the picnic’s earlier years.

“They were absolutely the most fan-friendly picnics because Billy Bob’s allowed people to go in and out,” Thomas said. “If you got hot, you could go to a bar and cool down. If you got rained on, you could go back to the hotel and change your clothes. If you don’t want to sit through a 90-minute Gary Allan set, like I didn’t want to, you could go down to the Riscky’s and sit down and have dinner instead of standing there for an $8 corndog.”

While all the Fort Worth picnics went smoothly from a logistics standpoint, later ones in Cowtown never matched the large crowds of the 2004 event. Thomas says that was due to the concert lineups, which featured Nelson pals like Billy Joe Shaver, Ray Price and Asleep at the Wheel, alongside other younger country acts Billy Bob’s brought in to sell more tickets.

“(Billy Bob’s) kind of pioneered that idea of bringing in a ringer for the slot ahead of Willie to get some more of their crowd. Because you know, Ray Price and Billy Joe Shaver just weren’t bringing in the crowd that they wanted,” Thomas said. “And you kind of saw that in 2011 or 2012 when those picnics were really small. Billy Minick told me, ‘Willie’s loyal to his buddies, but his buddies don’t make us a lot of money.’”

Where the Picnic goes from here

Nelson turns 91 on Monday and he’s still performing shows. Thomas said there has been speculation about the picnic’s future at least since 1995, when he first covered the show for the Standard-Times.

“Some of the other people were asking him, ‘Willie, how long are you going to keep doing this?’ I definitely am not asking how long Willie’s going to keep doing anything. Because it’s really clear that he’s going to keep doing whatever he wants to do for as long as he can. And I wouldn’t dare ask him about about retirement or the last Picnic.”

“Picnic: Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Tradition” is now available online and wherever books are sold. Thomas will be at the Longhorn Saloon in the Stockyards, 121 W. Exchange Ave., on May 4 for a book signing.