#2348 - Lukas Nelson

Joe Rogan (0:03)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

Lukas Nelson (0:06)

Trained by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

Joe Rogan (0:12)

We're up. Lukas, what's up? Good to talk to you, man. Thanks for being here.

Lukas Nelson (0:17)

Thank you for being here. Yeah, I appreciate you having me.

Joe Rogan (0:19)

I gotta tell you, you know, when I heard Willie Nelson's kid plays music, there's a thing that you always do, and I have to admit it, you do it, you like when the son of a great man, you always assume, well, he's probably mediocre. You know what I mean? And then you performed at McConaughey's that charity function thing, and you fucking killed it, man. You blew me away. It was incredible. And I was like, wow, it was really cool to see, man. It was really exciting.

Lukas Nelson (0:52)

It was really fun.

Joe Rogan (0:54)

You were the highlight of the night, man. You really were. Sure.

Lukas Nelson (0:57)

It's moments like those where I started to gain confidence. You know, I'd have over the years, I'd go out and play and I'd play my songs that I've written. And when I get crowds that would do that, you know, and so that gave me the confidence to keep going. And I first started playing music in order to get closer to my father.

Joe Rogan (1:20)

Oh, wow.

Lukas Nelson (1:21)

You know what I mean? So he would be gone all the time.

Joe Rogan (1:24)

Right.

Lukas Nelson (1:25)

And I'd be missing him.

And so in order to get close to him, I figured I need to speak the same musical language. And so I learned Young and I wrote a song, Young, that's on the new album actually I got, it's called You Were It. It's the first song I ever wrote when I was 11 And my dad loved it so much that he covered it at the time. And he put it out on his album back in 2004, called It Always Will Be, the album was called It Always Will Be. And that gave me the confidence at a young age. Chris Christopherson came up to me and he's like, man, you don't have a choice but to be a songwriter. And so I had all this inspiration at a young age, kind of like an athlete at a certain point, you kind of have to look at like, oh, well, if I have a talent at this, I have connections in the industry. I need to work like I was going to go to the Olympics on this because it's something that I can do that will make it so that I never have to rely on my family or my father for anything.

Joe Rogan (2:31)

Right.

Lukas Nelson (2:31)

You know, my whole goal in life is to discover who I am as an individual, you know.

Joe Rogan (2:39)

Is that part of the difficulty of growing up with an incredibly famous father?

Lukas Nelson (2:45)

I think the, you know, Victor Frankel has a book, a very famous book called Man's Search for Meaning.

Joe Rogan (2:53)

Oh.

Lukas Nelson (2:54)

And it's about Auschwitz. And he was an Auschwitz survivor. And he wrote about what was the common denominator in terms of people who persevered and survived in these camps. And dignity and meaning were the common denominators generally. And so finding who you, what you mean in this life to yourself, it doesn't have to mean anything to anyone else. And I think that's where, for me, I've lived my whole life trying to discover who I meant to myself, so that at the moment of my death, I can look back and say, I did something that I enjoyed, that was meaningful, that gave me a sense of purpose.

Joe Rogan (3:38)

Yeah, there's both a blessing and a burden to being the child of someone who's incredibly famous at a thing that you're trying to do.

Lukas Nelson (3:50)

Sure.

Joe Rogan (3:50)

You know, like there's a lot of sons of athletes, for instance, that live in their father's shadow, and very few of them ever rise to the level that their father was at. Sure.

Lukas Nelson (4:03)

I think, for me, I was never trying to be as great as him. I was only trying to be close to him, because more than anything, my father's a great human being. He's a well-rounded, kind, empathetic human, and I'm truly grateful to be his and my mother's son. You know, because I have a good family, I'm lucky, you know.

Joe Rogan (4:27)

That's awesome.

Lukas Nelson (4:27)

You know, I have a good, good parent. So what I was trying to do was just be closer to him. And, you know, as a little kid, you know, the best thing my mom ever did was when I was like earlier, I was probably five or six years old, and my brother had just passed away not too long before this, actually, and I would cry every time my dad would leave, you know, and my mom sat me down one time. She said, it tears him apart when you cry like this because he doesn't want to leave. He's going out there. He's making people happy. He's giving people joy, and he's doing what he came here on this earth to do. And he's supporting this family. And so the support that my mother had for him, at that moment, I never cried again. I was able to let go of that idea. And then just from that point on, work towards creating what would make me happy in my life and give me the same joy and then be able to take care of a family, hopefully. One of my greatest sources of pride is that I haven't had to ask my parents for anything. I bought my own house. I went and did Stars Born.