Stripped down: Lukas Nelson and the art of storytelling

History will be made at the Jazz Aspen Snowmass Labor Day Experience on Friday, when Lukas Nelson plays what will likely be the first solo-acoustic concert in the 35-year-old musician’s career.

Nelson has played solo shows before, but that was before he made the following announcement on his website on June 5:

“After 15 unforgettable years, Promise of the Real has decided to take a well-earned hiatus, and begin a new creative chapter in all of our lives. Lukas plans to keep writing, recording and playing shows, while the rest of us will continue to pursue our own projects and artistic ambitions. Expect to see a lot more great art from all of us in the near future.”

Nelson and his younger brother, Micah, 34, are the sons of Willie Nelson and Annie D’Angelo who married in 1991 (Willie’s fourth marriage).They have five step-siblings; one stepbrother passed away in 1992.

“I was born in Austin,” Nelson said in an interview with the Aspen Daily News. “I grew up in Maui and Austin and on the road. I mean, I grew up in the United States. I grew up on the interstate. I grew up in diners, in truck stops and in hotel rooms. I grew up on the road with Dad, and my dad is everybody’s dad, so I’m just an American son.”

When asked what his earliest memory of playing music was growing up, Nelson said, “It’s hard to pinpoint an exact moment but I do remember the moment where I felt like I was a musician and it’s when I wrote a song when I was about 11 years old, called ‘You Were It.’

“It was a good song to the point where I listen to it now and I think, ‘That’s just as good as anything I’ve written,’ and my dad liked it so much he put it on one of his albums and at that point I realized that I was a songwriter, and that took me from childhood to now with the dream that I’ve carried with me ever since, to write a good song.”

Nelson started Promise of the Real (commonly referred to as POTR) in 2008 when he was 19. He had just moved to Los Angeles from Maui when he met drummer Anthony LoGerfo. The two bonded over their love for Neil Young. Nelson soon quit school and he and LoGerfo recruited Merlyn Kelly on bass (he would be soon replaced by Corey McComrick) and Tato Melgar on percussion. 

“We took the name from a lyric in Neil’s song, ‘Walk On’ — ‘some get stoned, some get strange, sooner or later it all gets real,’” Nelson said.

POTR recorded their first EP, “Live Beginnings,” in 2008 at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach, California.

In 2010, they recorded their first studio EP, “Brando’s Paradise LP.” If there is one song that announced POTR as the second coming of Young’s seminal rock band (and progenitor of grunge) Crazy Horse, it’s the opening track on The Brando’s Paradise EP “The Awakening,” an electric guitar-drenched rock anthem (Nelson was already a shredder of the first degree) that could have easily been slipped into “Rust Never Sleeps.” The song features Neil-esque lyrics about love, redemption and nature.

“When I wake up, the eagle will forever cry my name. When I wake up, your tears will shed the potion to my pain. My soul will shine like northern lights, like the way my life’s supposed to go. My mind will play a melody that weaves us to the web our hearts have sown. When I wake up, I’ll start over again.”

“Country, soul, funk” became a term that was thrown around in discussing the music of POTR. “The Promise of the Real was kind of the bat phone to Neil,” Nelson joked. 

The band would release two more albums and play hundreds of shows before POTR seemingly fulfilled its destiny joined Neil Young as his backing band in 2014. 

Over the next five years, Neil Young and POTR would play dozens of shows intermittently, including a legendary two-night stand in Telluride in 2016.

The band also joined Young in the studio for the 2015 album “The Monsanto Years” and on 2017’s “The Visitor,” as well as appearing on Young’s live album “Earth” from 2016.

POTR continued touring and recording on their own throughout the Young years. The band released multiple albums, including their self-titled album from 2017 that became their breakout record, debuting at No. 2 on the Billboard Country Albums chart. 

The album came out on the heels of Nelson’s work with Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga on the remaking of “A Star Is Born.”

Cooper made The Promise of the Real his backing band in the film and Nelson helped produce the soundtrack, for which he won a Grammy.

After finishing “A Star is Born,” Nelson collaborated with Gaga, who starred with Cooper in the film, on the song “Find Yourself” and “Carolina,” the former being a high mark in Nelson’s career.

There may be no better song that captures the “you better get your act together fast or I’m out of here” space than “Find Yourself.”

“I know the love that I deserve,” the song goes. “I hope you find yourself before I find somebody else to be my lover.” Gaga’s background vocals add a crucial layer of depth to the song.

In an interview with Grammy.com, Nelson acknowledged that in “Find Yourself” not only does Gaga “kill it,” she “turned it into a universal relationship song, having that female balance there.”

It’s one thing for someone to say to their lover, “I hope you find yourself before I found somebody else.” But when the other person in the relationship is saying the identical thing back at the same time, that dynamic tension puts the song in the rare ether of break-up songs. 

Nelson often plays with the he-she dichotomy of the song when he performs “Find Yourself” live, having the men in the audience sing a verse and then having the ladies do the same.

Indeed, when asked what songs he never tires of singing, he Lukas said, without missing a beat: “‘Find Yourself.’ It’s a fun song to sing because it’s a sing-a-long.”

Nelson also cited “Just Outside of Austin,” “Set Me Down on a Cloud,” “Forget About Georgia” and “Carolina” (another collaboration with Gaga) as personal favorites. 

When it’s pointed out those are all songs from his 2017 eponymous record, he said, “That record got people listening to us. We had spent almost 10 years putting out music before that without much impact commercially. We were known as a great live act.

“It was great to find a wider audience with that record. And they’re just really great songs.”

Nelson said that after 15 years of playing over 100 shows a year, it was time for a pause. “I personally need to spend more time with my dad and spend more time at home and just take a little break.”

Regarding his future with POTR, Nelson said, “In order not to burn out on the music, on each other, we just gotta just give it space and let it breathe a little bit. 

“I love playing with those guys, and I’ll always want to play with them. Those guys are always gonna be the first people I call to put music to when I write. But for now, I also want the freedom to play with other musicians.”

Nelson used an analogy from Young’s catalog to describe where he is musically.

“I’m in my ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ phase of my career rather than my ‘Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World’ phase,” he said. 

“I really want to delve into my roots and dig into who I am as a songwriter and as an artist. Right now, I’m focused more on a stripped-down song. I’ve fallen back in love with a short story in the form of songwriting. I’ve got 300 songs in an archive, and I’m sifting through all those songs and I’m writing new ones every day. I wrote three songs in the last few days. So my creative spark is just exploding.”

Nelson said he’s watched Tyler Childers, 33, and Zach Bryan, 28, blow up and find massive audiences to where they are now doing stadium tours. Nelson wants to build a similar legion of fans and said the way to do it is to write songs “that people remember the words to and that impacts their lives.”

When asked what he wants people to take away from seeing him perform live, Nelson said, “I want to make music that makes people feel good, that makes people feel they’re seeing something special. I want them to tell their friends about it  — their brothers, their sisters, their mothers, their fathers, their children — and make them want to see it again because I want to have a career when I’m 90. I would like to be able to play music my whole life for a living.

“For so long, fans of Neil and fans of my dad kind of looked at me like, ‘He’s the second coming of this, or the second coming of that.’ Well, I don’t really want to be the second coming of anything. I want to be the first coming of me.”