Willow Avalon’s Vehicle Is Held Together With Duct Tape: “Runs On Prayers”

If it is broke… don’t fix it?

Willow Avalon joined the Whiskey Riff Raff podcast recently to talk about growing up in Georgia and moving to California (and eventually New York City), pursuing music at the young age of 15 , honing her skills as a songwriter and some of her musical inspirations, playing at Stagecoach with Zach Bryan, her debut album Southern Belle Raisin’ Hell, her plans for future music and much more.

Despite the fact that Willow Avalon could be considered a rising star in the music industry, she’s dealing with some rather unfortunate things outside of her music career. For one, she just found out that where she was living in Nashville had a mold infestation, and had no choice but to move. That’s obviously a scary situation, but you know what might be even scarier?

Willow Avalon’s daily driver.

The “Hey There, Dolly” singer brought up her vehicle – an old Mercedes – a lot during the interview. Especially towards the end of our conversation, where she told a truly unbelievable story about getting arrested and the whole experience ultimately leading to her taking the photo (some might call it a mugshot) that graced the cover of her Southern Belle Raisin’ Hell album.

That’s a whole other story though. What’s really intriguing is the fact that Willow evidently refuses to give in and get a new car. She instead chooses to make what she has work, and it truly takes a lot for it to work:

“You all saw my car… my car is literally held together by duct tape. Alabama chrome, as my dad calls it. (It’s also held together) with prayers. I have to drive with the heat on full blast to get anywhere… If you stop that car when it gets really hot, sometimes it won’t start back up again.”

Sounds like a daily driver nightmare.

And since Avalon says she has to run the heat on full blast to keep the vehicle trucking along, the air conditioning feature is obviously not an option. But that’s okay… Willow takes care of that problem by driving with all of the windows down (sunroof included) and – for good measure – a leg out the window. You’ve got to offset the heat being on full blast somehow, right?

If you had to take a guess, do you think Willow Avalon’s locks on her vehicle work? If you guessed that they don’t, you guessed correctly:

“My car doors don’t lock. None of my car doors lock. Shh.. don’t tell anyone that. They totally lock. They lock so good… no, they don’t lock.”

But seriously… don’t tell anyone that Willow’s car doesn’t lock, okay?

To top it all off, there’s one other very important feature of the artist’s vehicle that doesn’t fulfill its purpose as it’s supposed to. One could say Willow is missing one of the more critical, informative functions of the car she currently drives around:

“None of my speed gauges work. They just bounce… like little floaties. It’s awesome. I test the temperature of the car, I’ve learned, by sticking my finger in the vent and I’ve learned to figure out if it’s too hot or not by my finger being in the vent. But like I said, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. It is very broken, and it should get fixed.”

@whiskeyriff Held together by duct tape. Read More