“Everybody’s just in the best mood and it gets better and better throughout the day,” I overheard a fan say Thursday afternoon at the 2025 Luck Reunion. His observation was spot-on. For its 13th year, the boutique festival held on Willie Nelson’s Luck Ranch in Spicewood, Texas — just outside of Austin, as the song goes — proved to be unlike any music fest on earth.
With stages set up in and around the Old West buildings that dot the grounds, a movie set where Nelson filmed his 1984 Western Red Headed Stranger, the vibe is both cinematic and surreal. As was this year’s lineup: Arcade Fire, Julien Baker & Torres, and buzzy protest singer Jesse Welles played sets alongside Lucinda Williams, Taj Mahal, and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Jessica Simpson even made a surprise appearance to preview the rootsy Americana songs she recorded for her upcoming EP and went all-in on a cover of Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man.” She treated fans from her early MTV days with a country rendition of her 2023 hit “With You” too. Baker & Torres, however, may have been the most colorful of the day. Playing songs like “Sugar in the Tank,” off their album Send a Prayer My Way, the duo donned Nudie-type suits embroidered with cats and cannabis leaves (it was Nelson’s ranch after all).
At nearly every stage, guests popped up. During Williams’ fierce rock & roll set at the Barn Stage, Steve Earle cameoed to blow harmonica and sing harmonies on “Drunken Angel,” the tribute to tortured Austin songwriter Blaze Foley that appeared on Williams’ 1998 masterpiece Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. Margo Price was also in the house and emerged from the side of the stage to join Williams, and Earle again, on the defiant “Joy.” Williams’ set, peppered with her own songs, blues gems like “You Can’t Rule Me,” and Beatles covers off her recent Abbey Road album, was a revelation, making the case that her voice just may be at its strongest.
Lily Meola
Griffin Lotz for Rolling Stone
Earlier in the day on the same stage, Lukas Nelson joined bohemian songwriter Lily Meola for a duet on her song “Mar Vista” during a gorgeous set highlighted by Meola’s impeccable voice and some personal yet universal songs about navigating grief. She’ll release a project of songs she wrote about her late mother on March 17, her mom’s birthday, and also let slip that her long-awaited new album is coming this year.
The Arcade Fire
Griffin Lotz for Rolling Stone
The Arcade Fire’s performance inside the Saloon on the Luck Ranch was a hot ticket and a line of hopefuls stretched from the doors all the way back to Nelson’s little white chapel at the festival gates. To accommodate the crowd, Arcade Fire kicked off their show outside on the dusty dirt road in front of the building with a pair of fan favorites, “The Suburbs” and “Keep the Car Running,” before making their way inside to preview some new material. The Preservation Hall Jazz Band — who at sunset transported fans to New Orleans at the Revival Tent with a boisterous “Iko Iko”— sat in with the already large group, adding their brassy horns to Win Butler’s compositions.
Strains of the two groups’ musical mashup could be heard coming from the Saloon’s doors just as Nelson was kicking off his festival-closing set across the way at the Luck World Headquarters stage with the requisite “Whiskey River.” In just a few weeks, the Luck Reunion host will turn 92, but his set validated a popular slogan seen on T-shirts all around Luck: “I’ll quit when Willie quits.”
Griffin Lotz for Rolling Stone
Flanked by sons Lukas and Micah Nelson, with ride-or-die harmonica player Mickey Raphael and the Family Band behind him, Nelson was in robust form. “Blood Mary Morning” was particularly rambunctious, “I Never Cared for You” was brooding, and “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” gave Nelson a chance to slash away at his trusty acoustic guitar, “Trigger.” But Nelson also ceded the spotlight to his boys for some of the night’s most moving moments: Lukas’ “Just Outside of Austin” was a heartwarming love note to Luck itself, while Micah’s “Die When I’m High (Halfway to Heaven” celebrated his father’s favorite pastime. The Nelson men’s irreverent family chemistry was most on display though in “Everything Is Bullshit,” a song by Micah’s Particle Kid that essentially sums up humanity’s unfortunate technological enlightenment. As Micah and Lukas sang the chorus, their dad stepped in to echo “It’s bullshit” in a haunting yet humorous warble.
Nelson’s regular gospel send-off of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” and “I’ll Fly Away” brought out one more round of guests as many of the day’s performers’ gathered beside the American treasure to sing along. There was Earle, Meola, Price, Welles, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and Charley Crockett, among others, paying homage to the host and his party — keeping Nelson’s circle from ever being broken.
[Additional reporting by Griffin Lotz]
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