Lukas Nelson is sitting on his tour bus behind the Fonda Theatre on a recent evening as he awaits a takeout bag with dinner inside it.
In a few hours, the 36-year-old singer and songwriter will take the stage for a show behind this year’s “American Romance,” his first solo LP after a decade and a half fronting his band Promise of the Real. It’s a handsome and philosophical set of tunes about life, love and the endless road that Nelson cut just about a mile away from the Fonda at Hollywood’s Sunset Sound. And now it’s nominated for a Grammy Award in the traditional country album category.
“American Romance” was a family-ish affair: Nelson, whose father is Willie Nelson, made it with his old friend Shooter Jennings, whose father was Willie’s frequent collaborator Waylon Jennings. Which makes it all the more amusing that Lukas’ record is nominated against Willie’s “Oh What a Beautiful World” for that Grammy.
“‘Against’ is a strong word,” Lukas says. Dressed in jeans, a T-shirt and a white ballcap emblazoned with the Texas flag, he grins as he leans over a small dining table. “‘Alongside’ is better. I mean, the Nelsons have a 40% chance of winning, which is pretty good.”
According to Jennings, “American Romance” shows off the “crazy lyrical depth” of Lukas’ songwriting. “I compare my stuff to his, and I’m like a little kid with toy blocks,” says the musician and producer, who’s also nominated against himself at the Grammys with a second traditional country album nod for “Dollar a Day” by Charley Crockett. Adds Jennings with a laugh: “I think I might have to vote for Willie.”
Why’d you cut your hair?
Lukas Nelson: I was exercising a lot, and it was in my face all the time, getting all knotted up. There was nothing symbolic about it — I just said, ‘F— it,’ and I cut it.
OK, but Longhaired Guy was your vibe for a long time.
Well, I also didn’t really like that thing anymore for me. I didn’t want anything to define me. There’s a lot of longhaired people that I got upset with over the years for their hypocrisy.
Like who?
There’s a spiritual community that uses spirituality to shirk responsibility.
Wait, what community?
I’m talking about a general community of people — I’m sure you’ve met a few — who are all about spirituality until they have to actually be practical and do something. These are the people that worship anything other than what’s right in front of them.
This is what I’m saying: Fairly or unfairly, long hair connotes certain traits.
And for that reason I cut my hair. I don’t want people to look at me and say, “I know who that is. He’s playing a role he was meant to play.” It’s all a bunch of bull—.
You said you were exercising a lot. What’s your regimen?
Use the hotel gym. Go for runs. I use this Whoop band — it’s like having a trainer on your wrist. Really, it’s due to this that I stopped drinking because it just kept killing my sleep score.
I feel like you might have reverse-engineered sobriety: You stopped drinking —
To get the good sleep score. That’s exactly right. They should pay me, actually. I’ll be a Whoop spokesman. I’ve been wearing this thing for years now.
Has not drinking been hard?
It was really easy for me to stop drinking. Weed was harder, probably because it was tied more into my identity.
Are you an all-or-nothing type of guy?
I had a keto diet for most of this tour, and I thought that when I got back to carbs, I’d be more in moderation with it. But it’s so much easier to just say, “I’m not eating any of them,” than it is to say, “OK, I’ll have one cookie for the week.”
What time will you go to bed tonight after the gig?
That depends on a lot.
Bunch of friends coming, I’d imagine.
I used to live here. I went to Loyola Marymount — dropped out after a couple years and started touring when I was pretty young. But I loved it. My girlfriend at the time and I had a little spot in Venice. I was renting from this guy, kind of a character on the scene, and he would set up these speakeasy acoustic shows above this jeans store on Abbot Kinney called the Stronghold. He’d have guys like Ben Harper and Brett Dennen and myself when I was first coming up.
So I rented a house from this guy — paid a thousand bucks a month. But my girlfriend’s mom was a realtor, and after about a year of us paying for this place, she realized that the house itself was in escrow. He didn’t even own it. We were basically squatting.
Willie Nelson and Lukas Nelson perform during Farm Aid 2018 at Xfinity Theatre on Sept. 22, 2018, in Hartford, Conn.
(Taylor Hill / Getty Images)
“American Romance” ends with a new recording of the first song you ever wrote. Why?
I figured that for the first time the moniker of Promise of the Real wasn’t gonna be there, I would want something that focused more on who I was when I first started. That song [“You Were It”] came to me when I was 11, and my dad loved it so much that he put it on his album [“It Always Will Be”]. Kris Kristofferson liked it, and that gave me the confidence to start playing.
At the time I was a swimmer, and I tried to approach music like I was an Olympian in training. I tried to give the same amount of practice, especially because I knew I’d have to work twice as hard as anyone else to prove I wasn’t handed everything because of the nepo baby thing.
What’d you learn by going back to such an old song?
That songwriting is not a linear thing, at least for me. There’s things I’ve written in the past that are no worse than anything I’ve written recently.
Promise of the Real could get pretty jammy. This album is tighter.
I wanted it to be about the art of songwriting and storytelling. My dad was a great balladeer — is a great balladeer — and I feel like I got a little bit of that innately.
You did a gorgeous rendition of “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” at your dad’s 90th birthday celebration at the Hollywood Bowl.
That’s probably my favorite song.
Period?
Period. The fact that it happens to be written by my father is mind-blowing.
The Recording Academy split the country album award into two prizes starting with this next ceremony: traditional country album and contemporary country album. What’s your take?
Man, I just play the music — I don’t care how they slice it. I don’t even know what genre I play.
Which is why it’s kind of funny that you and your dad are in traditional country. There’s been some conspiracy theorizing that the traditional category is meant to appease folks who were salty about Beyoncé winning country album at the last Grammys. But of course your dad was on “Cowboy Carter.”
I just like that country music is getting out there and that it seems to be more and more popular. I feel like we’ve got to open our arms and welcome everyone who wants to be part of it.
You ever go through a cranky traditionalist phase?
I never really did. When I was a kid I listened to all types of music: Green Day, the Offspring, NSYNC. That was what the girls liked, so I was into it. At the same time I was listening to Sinatra and Jobim because that’s what my mom would play in the car. I had so many influences, and if you look at my dad, I think you see why. He’s got a song with Snoop, for God’s sake.
You won your first Grammy for your work with Lady Gaga on the music from “A Star Is Born.” Have you and Gaga kept in touch?
I keep more in touch with Bradley [Cooper]. He and I are really close and actually plan on working together soon.
On a movie project?
Can’t say. But he’s an amazing, hard-working, clear-headed guy. I like him a lot. And I love Stefani’s music too. I haven’t seen her in a long time.
I recently discovered that you co-wrote her song “The Cure.” Would you want to work more in the pop world?
Absolutely. Sometimes I’ll put on a Top 40 playlist to keep tabs on it. Sabrina Carpenter, “Please Please Please” — that could have been written in 1940 and sung by Sinatra. I always look at songs in the pop world and say, OK, if Sinatra could sing it, then it’s a good song. “God Must Have Spent a Little More Time on You,” the NSYNC song — timeless.
Dave Chappelle, from left, Lukas Nelson, Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper at the Los Angeles premiere of “A Star Is Born” at the Shrine Auditorium in 2018.
(Eric Charbonneau / Getty Images)
You’re not married.
No.
You don’t have kids.
I don’t think so.
I heard you on Joe Rogan’s show, where you were talking about how you used to cry every time your dad would go on the road. Then your mom, Annie D’Angelo, explained to you that it wasn’t that your dad wanted to leave but that he was supporting the family and doing what he loved.
My mom is the greatest supporter of my dad. She’s kept him alive.
If you were to have kids, do you think your experience as the child of a touring musician would shape how you think about touring as a parent?
I think a lot of the problems that come are when the person at home becomes embittered and starts showing that bitterness to the kids. Then the kids grow up feeling resentment because that’s what they’re exposed to.
I’ve been in love before. I was with someone for eight years, and I was on the road for four of those years. I was committed to her and wanted to marry her, and then we grew apart — realized it wasn’t exactly right.
I believe that I have to be best friends and in love with the person that I decide to be with. And that person won’t become my best friend, and I won’t fall in love, unless I know that they’ll support me and I can support them and they’ll be OK with me being on the road.
You ever worry that true romantic satisfaction would ruin your songwriting?
Well, “American Romance” came from a deep love. I had a deep love that I didn’t tell anyone about — it was between her and I, and it will always be that way. That love is the story of “American Romance.”
