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    • Willie Nelson joins Orville Peck's ACL set for a gay cowboy serenade
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    Willie Nelson joins Orville Peck's ACL set for a gay cowboy serenade

    Kathleen William Posted on

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    At the Austin City Limits Music Festival on Sunday, Willie Nelson sang the gay cowboy anthem “Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other” alongside rising star Orville Peck. The song inspired Peck's 2024 duet album “Stampede,” he said at ACL Fest.

    “Someone asked me if I wanted to do a duet with him, and he’s from Texas,” Peck said. The crowd's cheers began to rise as the Austin country legend took the stage. Peck performed the song at Willie's 90th birthday celebration at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles last year, but “we've never performed the song live together before,” he said.

    Peck took lead vocals while Willie sang support, and the power of his presence pushed Peck to new heights. The crowd roared as the song came to an end. As the red-haired stranger left the stage, a chant of “Willie! Willie! Willie!” exploded through the crowd. Peck beamed across the sultry field.

    More: Dua Lipa represents the Horns and takes ACL Fest “to the moon” on Saturday.

    This isn't the first time Willie Nelson has serenaded gay cowboys

    Nelson, who acquired a cassette of Ned Sublette's original in the mid-to-late '80s, first covered the song in 2006, around the same time that the film “Brokeback Mountain” was generating Oscar buzz. Willie's song “He Was a Friend of Mine” is on the soundtrack. He debuted the song on The Howard Stern Show on Valentine's Day of that year.

    He released the song, among other things, to support his manager David Anderson, who recently announced that he is gay.

    “This song obviously has special meaning to me in more ways than one,” Anderson told the Dallas Morning News at the time. “I want people to know, more than anything else – gay, straight, whatever – how cool Willie is and … his mindset, his tolerance, everything about him.”

    Nelson has long been a supporter of gay rights

    As calls for same-sex marriage grew louder in the mid-2010s, Willie Nelson spoke out in support of the cause.

    “I never thought that marriage was only for men and women. Gays should be just as unhappy as the rest of us (laughs). Love does not discriminate, and it should not discriminate,” he told Seattle publication The Stranger shortly before the passage of the marriage equality law in 2015.

    “She makes us proud”: Chappell Roan fans wait for hours at the ACL to get into the massive Pink Pony Club

    Nelson has long been a supporter of all human rights, but the issue of gay rights is a personal matter for him. Willie's nephew Michael Fletcher, son of his sibling and closest friend Bobbie Nelson, was a gay man who died in 1989 at the height of the AIDS epidemic. The siblings dedicated the gospel album “How Great Thou Art” to Michael in 1996.

    Willie Nelson is in town for the 50th anniversary of “Austin City Limits.”

    Willie, who reshaped our city with his iconoclastic approach to music, is in town to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the recording of the first episode of the festival's television show of the same name on October 17, 1974. “ACL” will be celebrating with a party next week on the Long Center Lawn. Free tickets to the public were awarded via lottery and for music fans who did not receive tickets, there will be a livestream on aclturns50.com starting at 7 p.m.

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    Kathleen William
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