Lucas Nelson, son of country legend Willie Nelson and frontman for Promise of the Real, has a rather wild story about how he decided on his band’s name. It involves a Neil Young concert, late-night surfing, string rays and a whole lot of pot.
Thanks to Q104.3 New York for the Lucas Nelson interview from 2017 where he shares this story:
“I met Anthony LoGerfo, he’s our drummer and I met him at a Neil Young concert in LA and after the concert we went back to his place. He’s like, man, let’s go surfing. And I was like, all right, so it’s the middle of the night. And he took us out with some of his buddies that are still my buddies today and we went out under the pier in Seal Beach, but the first step I took in the water, I stepped on a sting ray and it flipped around and stung me in the ankle. And I, I didn’t want to seem like I was pussing out. Right? Because I figured they would never believe me that I stepped on his thing.
You know, like as a first met these guys, kinda gnarly everybody’s going out and surfing in the middle of the night. You know, I thought, well, I just got to man up, man. I charged it. So I went out and I served for awhile until my leg started swelling up and I like showed everybody and they’re like, oh my God, yeah, there’s tons of stingrays out here. It happens all the time. He should have said something. And I was like, oh man. So um, we went back and Anthony took me back to the place they were staying and I was crashing on the couch and he brought this big pile of weed. It looked about three feet high, put on some Neil and said, hey, listen to this. And he put on that one song from Ragged Glory. I think it’s from Ragged Glory or Freedom or something, which is a “Walk On.”
And sooner or later it all gets real. Some get stone, some get strange. Sooner or later it all gets real. And then after that I started thinking I just got, maybe I could start a band called Promise of the Real. Because that’s kinda what that promise is. And that song is the promise of the real. And that, and the concept of what’s real really was hitting me a lot at that time because I’d grown up kind of like on an island or in the country out in Austin or you know, and I, and I was, it was just a slower pace and there was more, I don’t know, personal connection. And then I went to LA and it was just, everything was polar opposite, you know, and I, I got there and I was in college and there are all these people and I couldn’t tell what was real or not, you know. So it was a big concept for me and coming of age time and it stuck.”
The Neil Young tune “Walk On” is actually on the album On The Beach. Watch the interview below and stick around until the end for Nelson’s great acoustic cover of Stevie Ray Vaughn’s “Texas Flood.”
