Waylon Jennings On The Difficulty Of Connecting With A Festival Crowd: “Girls Start Taking Clothes Off, How Do You Sing To That?”

Some wise words from Waylon Jennings. The man who might as well have been the mascot of the "Outlaw Country" movement always shot things straight. Nowadays, when you see celebrities and artists do interviews, all they give are safe, cookie-cutter answers. It's basically just an organized, orchestrated press release. But that's not how Waylon rolled. Anytime Jennings sat down for an interview, he spoke from the heart and he rarely ever - if at all - sugarcoated things. In this old interview from 1983, Waylon touched on a number of big-ticket topics, ranging from the "Nashville machine" to Hells Angels motorcycle club. He gave what is quite possibly the best description I've ever heard about the music coming out of Nashville: " It’s rolling along, a lot like it was, you know? Trippin’ over themselves and then somebody accidentally, every once in a while, does something fantastic." Still true all these years later... The part of the interview that really stood out to me is when the "I'm A Ramblin' Man" singer spoke on festivals. Waylon made it clear that he's a fan of festivals and what they can do for up-and-coming artists, but personally, he always felt like it was challenging to connect with festival audiences. And Jennings listed one... or I guess technically two reasons for why he felt that way: “Festivals are great… it’s always a party going on, a good time thing happening. It’s really hard... it's kind of hard to communicate as far as with the audience, especially when the girls start taking their clothes off. How do you sing to that? I ain’t found no rhythm." Absolute gold. It's always great to get some insight into how the legendary Waylon Jennings' brain worked. Clearly there was a lot going on up in that noggin' of his, and he never shied away from saying exactly what he was thinking. As you'll be able to see in this vintage interview below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJnPLhyji2U