Willie Nelson is a country music singer that people love even if they don't care for country music. Despite being a redneck, I am not really a huge fan of country music but I love Willie Nelson. I believe his style transcends any sort of label that you might put on music. He is more of a story-teller and someone who simply writes songs about country-living and redneck type stuff. He is timeless as well, his songs that he wrote 50 years ago are still very memorable today and likely will be through all time.
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One would think that given the fact that Willie has released a whopping 69 albums and has been massively famous for almost his entire life that he would have money falling out of his ears and is constantly tripping over gold bars that he just leaves lying around his mansion but that, which was surprising to me to find out, is not the case at all.
Don't get the wrong idea though, he definitely isn't poor, it just might surprise you to find out that he has a net worth of a mere $25 million. If I had been asked to guess, I would have thought that he was worth AT LEAST 10 times that much, but nope, that's all he's got.
I don't know how I missed or forgot all of this, but Willie got into a lot of trouble for income tax evasion in the 90's and the IRS went as far as to raid his home and seize his possessions including his gold records and guitars in order to attempt to force him to settle his nearly $17 million in back taxes.
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It would be hysterical if this statue was outside of an IRS building but it isn't.
Willie didn't throw a fit when his house was raided, he was actually exactly the way that you would expect Willie to be and he was kind to everyone and even accompanied them to the IRS facility willingly and not in cuffs, once he got it all sorted out he even made autographs and took photos with the IRS agents. Now that is a really nice guy.
He attributed his inability to pay the back taxes to bad accounting advice, and I certainly hope that he sued his accountants who may have been stealing from him from the get go. I don't know about that but it seems to me as though the accountants are probably more to blame here than Willie is. Willie would later do commercials for a tax firm called H&R Block that would point out how important it is to make sure you do your taxes right.
Willie also isn't exactly hitting the soup kitchen lines lately either. He has multiple houses that the public know about one that he keeps many rescue horses at in Spicewood, Texas.
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He has another house in Maui, Hawaii so yeah, there's no reason to feel bad for the dude. I was just surprised that one of the most famous musicians of all time wasn't drowning in cash like Scrooge McDuck.
Willie is 90 years old and still tours and makes appearances all around the world and he also still writes new music. To me he kind of embodies the redneck life because even though he has tons of money, he still appreciates the simpler things in life and also enjoys being away from urban areas. I also really appreciate his advocacy work for the legalization of marijuana, a "crime" that he has been arrested for many different times and he has never fought the charges, he just fights the laws and suggests, I think correctly, that the laws are immoral and incorrect.
Willie also states that starting to use marijuana saved his life as it took him away from the heavy whiskey drinking that plagues so many other musicians. He states that all of this friends who took to the bottle the way he was doing are not longer with us and I wouldn't be either if I hadn't switched over to weed. I'm paraphrasing here but I think there is a ton of truth to this. I don't really smoke all that often and it is still illegal in my state - this will hopefully soon change. Willie and others like him are strong proponents for the legalization of the plant, and I think they are correct. I've never met anyone that got into a bunch of violent trouble that was high on weed, but I know a ton of people that are terrible drunks that cause mischief after a certain number of bottles.
If you've got 49 minutes of something to do in your living room there is a worse thing to have on in the background than these greatest hits. Today I need to tidy up my garage and I think I will do precisely that.