Red Rocks is God's own concert venue. Two sandstone monoliths, as long as a football field and several stories high, flank this natural amphitheater in the Rocky Mountain foothills 15 miles west of Denver.
"Stunning" does not begin to account it. The stage sits at the bottom of the basin; all 9,450 seats that fan out above it gas unobstructed views and flawless acoustics.
For those of us accustomed to the rock-free environs of southeast Louisiana, it is especially impressive. On Tuesday night, I tagged along with Houma guitarist Tab Benoit and members of his Voice of the Wetlands Allstars to listen Willie Nelson at Red Rocks.
As we approach shot on a winding road far down the gradient, eerie amber lights reflect off the sandstone boulders that frame the venue high above us. Distant silhouettes shuffle along narrow catwalks strung between the rocks.
"We're being drawn to it like Richard Dreyfuss in 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind,'" says Robert Jr. Whitall, a Detroit-based blues journalist traveling with Benoit.
Red Rocks has hosted events of every description since the 1940s, from New Age pianist John Tesh to Easter Sunrise services; throng band Widespread Panic holds the venue record for sell-outs, at 32. Jethro Tull fans without tickets famously rioted in 1971, resulting in a basketball team year ban on sway concerts.
Blues mouth organ man Jumpin' Johnny Sansone logged character of his misspent early days in nearby Evergreen, Colo. He and his buddies discovered a way to secretly rock-climb into the amphitheater. "I was a much better athlete so," Sansone says. "I byword every show at Red Rocks 1 summer."
His route into Red Rocks Tuesday night is much easier and more legitimate: Aboard Benoit's tour bus. Benoit and Nelson are buddies; Benoit's retinue -- which includes a guy wHO bought Nelson's old mount retreat in Morrison, Colo. -- attends the concert as Nelson's guests.
So after parking the tour heap, a Red Rocks shuttle van transports our mathematical group the net quarter-mile uphill to the venue entrance. Appropriately enough, the New Orleanians put down as opening move act Jerry Jeff Walker reprises "Mr. Bojangles," a song inspired by a character Walker met during an overnight stay in Orleans Parish Prison.
Denver sits at an superlative of unitary mile; Red Rocks is another 1,200 feet higher. Behind and to a lower place the Red Rocks stage, the lights of Denver sparkle in the distance.
"This is the highest I've been except in an airplane," says Deborah Vidacovich, drummer Johnny Vidacovich's married woman. As she walked along a row of benches, "I unbroken leaning downhill. I'm not used to being up."
"I didn't recognize it was this outrageous," Benoit says after mounting 60 rows to our seats. "It's pretty darned steep, especially when you're walking."
He'd visited Red Rocks once during the day, but this was his first concert there. Johnny Vidacovich says he power have played Red Rocks years ago with a jazz band. "I don't know," he says. "I was drunkenness then."
After Jerry Jeff Walker, we join Nelson's 50 or so other guests in a side-of-stage keeping area. For a time both Benoit and Nelson were signed to Justice Records; Benoit recorded respective early albums at Nelson's studio, which sits on a golf course outside Austin. They spent many hours playacting golf and chess.
"He's very competitive," Benoit recalls. "He'll discover your weaknesses and tap them.
"I didn't look at him like this ikon. He was just a cool bozo. I wished he was my grandpa."
Benoit has careworn big crowds in Colorado for over a decennary; on Monday night, he played a sold-out show at a bar in Evergreen. A woman approaches him backstage at Red Rocks and asks to take a photo.
"Why do you want to do that?" Benoit says, messing with her. "I'm just here watching Willie."
"You know why," says the woman, at which compass point Benoit acquiesced.
Nelson's band these days is minimalist. In addition to the leader's battered acoustic guitar, it includes bass, harmonica, piano, pennywhistle, rhythm section and a drummer wHO deploys only a single snare drum and brushes.
The Louisiana musicians are impressed. "That's an easygoing load-in and load-out," Benoit observes, as Vidacovich nods in agreement.
The Red Headed Stranger's hour-and-45-minute set is toss full of hits: "Whiskey River," "Crazy," "Georgia," "On the Road Again," "Beer For My Horses," "Always on My Mind," "Bloody Mary Morning." He and his band are agile and agile; his voice is in fine variant, even as he bunches up lyrics in his trademark, misleadingly off-hand delivery.
Watching from the wings, Benoit says, "I keep intellection, 'Is it over?' Every sung sounds like an encore."
Nelson finally winds down with a abbreviated set of Hank Williams Jr. songs. During the "Jambalaya" line "We'll have big fun on the bayou," the cool breeze that has blown steadily all night -- it wreaked havoc with the giant Texas flag backcloth -- picks up.
"I'll always roll this way again," Nelson sings. That's non surprising -- he'll likely never find a more than beautiful setting for his songs.
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