Willie Nelson—folk legend, guitarist, outlaw, chain smoker, freedom fighter, town planner?
That’s correct. The pop-up town of Luck is a short drive from Austin, Texas designed by Nelson for a 1986 full-length film he produced and starred in, Red Headed Stranger, that was never torn down after production ended. Luck is an Old West Potemkin Village of sorts that can easily be confused with the fictional town of Rock Ridge in Blazing Saddles starring Mel Brooks, Cleavon Little, and Gene Wilder.
In the film, Willie Nelson plays a shotgun-toting pastor who’s come to Luck to restore order in the lawless abode. Nelson’s Texas utopia features a dirt road for dueling with six-shooters, a Saloon where cowboys with ten-gallon hats smash glasses over each other’s heads, a general store, a jail, a chapel where Nelson delivers sermons, and Opry House, a fictional music venue.
Red Headed Stranger’s set design, and the fictional town of Luck more broadly, wasn’t exactly built to last however. Architects from Cushing Terrell were brought on to fortify the makeshift town into a functional performing arts and hospitality venue that can host up to 4,000 guests and exist in perpetuity. Read more here