Charley Crockett Tells Joe Rogan That He Almost Died In The Back Of Willie Nelson’s Old Tour Bus, Which He Bought On The Side Of The Road

That Willie Nelson tour bus magic, I guess you could say…

Today, Charley Crockett appeared as the guest on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, where he talked about growing up in South Texas with a single mother, and how he eventually started hitchhiking and traveling around the country playing music for tips in his guitar case, before eventually making a name for himself and becoming one of the premiere independent artists in the genre.

During the podcast episode, Charley opened up about a heart condition he has, which he was told was simply an “annoyance” when he was younger, though as he got older and into his 30’s, it became a much more serious issue. The two of them discussed the many issues with the American healthcare system, which led Crockett to open up about his own personal story with his heart and how he almost died on the back of Willie Nelson’s tour bus…

If he hasn’t already written that song, it sounds like country gold, but obviously, in the moment, it was extremely scary. Charley had been going through bouts of blacking out and feeling lightheaded, which he attributed to how hard he was working and the substances he’d been taking. One night after a show in Austin, it came to a head, and he thought he was going to die in the back of Willie’s old tour bus, which he’d bought from a “shyster” in Oklahoma.

Charley said a guy named Chuck was selling it on the side of the road in Oklahoma, and it was one of the items Willie had lost during the ’90s when he was in major trouble with the IRS. In case you didn’t know, back in August of 1990, the IRS showed up at Willie’s door, and federal agents actually seized Willie’s property in six different states, including his houses and land, his master tapes, his recording and touring equipment obviously, as well as his gold records, and even his clothes.

They claimed that the country legend owed $16.7 million in unpaid tax bills to Uncle Sam, and while they tried to auction most of it away in order to recoup part of the money he owed, many of his loyal fans and fellow Texans stepped in to buy it all back for him. You should definitely go read about that remarkable story HERE.

But he obviously never got the Red Headed Stranger back, which was a beautiful bus with portraits on the side and carried him across the country on some legendary tours over the years. Charley recalled:

“I was blacking out. I moved up to a bus and s***, and I was getting really lightheaded. I’d be sitting in the back of the bus and I would be so lighted. Just sitting there short of breath, but I just thought, I’m grinding, I’m playing all these shows,. I’m going as hard as you can go. Taking potions, doing all of this dumb s***, working hard. and I was playing at the old Shady Grove here in town, that’s now closed down.

It was the KGSR radio thing, Marsha Millam put it, and then it turned into ACL radio, and then Shady Grove close down there. But I played it a handful of times, the first time I played it, there was nobody there. The second time I played it, it was packed and I had Willie‘s old tour bus The Red Headed Stranger. It was one of the ones he lost in the IRS era that he never got back.

This f****** Chuck Laigon, some mother****** was selling this thing on the side of the highway of an Oklahoma. The Red Headed Stranger with the murals on it and s***. It’s a beautiful bus. Somehow this guy gets it, I shouldn’t call him a shyster but he definitely shysted me. The music business is crazy.”

He said one side of the bus had writing that said, “Driven only by the finest bass players,” because back in those days, there was no professional driver, someone in the band had to drive or they all took turns.

But it was a scary moment for Charley, and while he understandably didn’t divulge too many details, you can imagine how traumatic all of that was:

“That’s the one. On other side it says, ‘Driven only by the finest bass players.’ Because somebody in the band always drove those old buses. I had that bus, I used that bus exclusively for about a year . And we get off the stage at Shady Grove, and my heart had gone out of rhythm.

I’ll just say this, I almost died in the back of that bus. I end up finding… here I am at 30-something years, in my early ’30s, my arrhythmia is out, it’s going out, and it’s getting harder and harder to get back in. To shock it back into normal rhythm. and I just kept ignoring it, because somebody told me in South Texas in the 80’s not to worry about it.

Anyway, it turned out that my heart enlarged and all this s*** was going on and I had to get surgery. The long, round about point that I’m making to you about medical industry that I learned the hard way, man, is no one‘s advocating for you. Only you. You have to be your own advocate. They don’t give a f***, you know. They don’t. Like they were just gonna automatically put a mechanical valve in my heart. automatically. Didn’t present any other options, anything.”

He went onto talk about how the driver at the time was a woman who held séances and was into some weird stuff, and during this medical emergency, was burning sage over him thinking that would heal something. He joked that obviously, it didn’t work, and he ended up having surgery for it and got a new valve placed in his heart.

But, clearly, he pulled through that night on the bus and lived to tell the wild tale about it all:

“And I mean, I just got lucky man, because I was like in the back of that f****** bus, and there was this lady driving us back then that was holding séances and burning sage over the top of me while I was laying in the back of that bus like that was gonna heal me. That s*** didn’t work and she doesn’t drive me anymore. Get yourself a good bus driver. You have to get a good bus driver or you’ll never get good sleep.”

If the walls on the Red Headed Stranger could talk… man, I can only imagine.

You can watch him talk about it here, and it’s really a fascinating story all the way around:

The post Charley Crockett Tells Joe Rogan That He Almost Died In The Back Of Willie Nelson’s Old Tour Bus, Which He Bought On The Side Of The Road first appeared on Whiskey Riff.