Watch Willie Nelson Work Sleight of Hand With Card Trick
Step aside, David Blaine. There’s a new magic man in town. Willie Nelson recently wowed his older sister Bobbie Nelson — and, so far, nearly 80,000 viewers on YouTube — when he posted a six-minute video of himself performing a card trick on his tour bus for his piano-playing sibling.
We know what you’re thinking: an 81-year-old dude doing a six-minute card trick is about as exciting as watching a guy freeze himself in a block of ice for three days. But this is Willie, and the inherent charm with which he performs the card-counting stunt is the real magic. Over five minutes — the first 53 seconds are devoted to Nelson counting out the 52 cards in the deck — the Rolling Stone cover star tells a tale of a well-off man enlisting a hotel porter to organize a poker game, complete with women and whiskey. Nelson recounts the story, flipping cards in the process, with his typical nonchalance, but it’s the normally stoic Bobbie who becomes increasingly animated, giggling at her brother’s trick.
At the end, Nelson, in the part of the wealthy man, laments how he just can’t win a hand of poker even when dealt four of a kind. “Some son of a bitch will come up with a hand like this,” he says, flipping over a straight flush with a wicked grin.
Check out the video above and marvel at Nelson’s sleight of hand, as adept as his fast-fingered picking of Trigger.
Nelson, whose latest album, Band of Brothers, debuted at Number One on the Billboard Country Albums chart in June, is set to return to the road next month with a September 7th appearance at the Lock’n Music Festival in Arrington, Virginia.