Drake White has openly said he, like so many other artists, is influenced by the legends that came before him, including George Jones, Merle Haggard, and for White, especially Willie Nelson. So when the “Makin’ Me Look Good Again” singer had the chance to not only meet Nelson, but tour with him, it was a dream come true.
“I had the opportunity to play with Willie 40 or 50 shows earlier in my career,” White recalled to PopCulture.com at a recent media event. “The first time I met Willie, he was cooking biscuits and gravy. [Nelson’s sister] Bobbie, I’m not going to say she hit on me, but she hit on me. It was pretty cool … Bobbie’s still kind of sexy.”
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White still remembers how he felt when he was invited on Nelson’s bus for the first time, to eat Nelson’s biscuits and gravy, and came face-to-face with the country music icon.
“When I walked up the stairs, your imagination’s cranking, because you’ve imagined what it’s going to be like to meet Willie, or I have, my whole life,” White said. “I walk up, and it’s like a glow around his face. It smells like biscuits and gravy, so it smells like my grandmother’s house. His bus has got this mahogany smell to it, and weed. It’s like, ‘This is perfect. It’s exactly what I thought.’
Nelson broke the ice first by telling White a joke — one White admitted he still tells today.
“The first thing he told me was, ‘Hey, you like jokes?’” White recounted. “He said, ‘What’s the hardest part about shooing flies?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ He’s like, ‘Putting the little socks on their feet.’”
White is hard at work on his sophomore album, where he promises to show his fans even more of who he really is.
“I’m a perfectionist, but I also understand I have to be vulnerable and get those feelings out there,” White stated. “I have to be vulnerable in exactly what I want to push out. To have people that just are moved by the music, media, inside the media or not, if you write your heart and your guts and you lay them on the table, and you’re really honest, I found that it doesn’t matter if it’s media, or the girl you’re trying to get with, or the person that you’re trying to impress. People gravitate towards that realness. They gravitate towards somebody that says, ‘Hey, I’m not having a good day today.’”
