The Voice Behind One by Willie
John Spong is the creator, co-producer, and host of One by Willie, a PRX podcast born of a simple premise: talk each episode with one Willie fan about one Willie song that means a lot to them, then let them unwind with memories and insights on the way Willie’s music and example have shaped their lives.
Guests have ranged from people you’d expect, like Lyle Lovett, Kasey Musgraves, Booker T. Jones, and Willie’s kids…to people you might not, like Ethan Hawke, Whoopi Goldberg, Brené Brown, and Pulitzer-winning New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright. What’s emerged are singular, personal looks at the life and art of a genuine American folk hero.
“We started this project,” says Spong, “because we thought listening to Willie records with cool, smart people would be fun. And it definitely has been. But it’s turned into a much deeper look at him, with three main takeaways: As an artist, Willie Nelson found success by being true to himself. As a person, he never wavered from being true to the people around him. And as for the songs themselves, every single one of them comes with a great story.”
Spong created One by Willie in 2020 with Texas Monthly, where he was a staff writer from 1997 to 2024. Through those years, he covered everything from rodeo clowns and trial lawyers…to book censors and Hurricane Katrina survivors…to his own military embeds in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But his emphasis was on Texas music, profiling artists like George Strait, Miranda Lambert, Guy Clark, and Spoon. He has received three National Magazine Award nominations, most recently in 2021 as co-editor and lead writer on two large Willie-related projects: Willie—Now, More than Ever, a finalist for best single-topic issue; and “All 155 Willie Nelson Albums, Reviewed and Ranked,” a book-length, online compendium nominated for best digital storytelling.
Since 2024, he’s focused on One by Willie. He’s been profiled as a Willie scholar in The Washington Postand CBC Radio One’s The Current with Matt Galloway, One by Willie has been praised in The New Yorker, and NPR jazz critic Nate Chinen recently called Spong “maybe the world’s foremost Willie Nelson expert.”
Spong holds BA and JD degrees from the University of Texas at Austin, and he lives in Austin with his wife, Julie Blakeslee, and their two sons, Willie Mo and Leon.
