"Shotgun Willie" turns 53 this year, and it's still one of the wildest origin stories in country music.

After walking away from RCA in '72, Willie Nelson signed with Atlantic as the label's first country artist and headed into a New York studio determined to make a record on his own terms... The songs weren't coming — until they were.

Legend has it, he wrote the title track on the back of a sanitary napkin box in his hotel bathroom, pulling from a real family incident: his daughter's abusive husband, and Willie showing up with a gun to end it. It's a snarling, satirical, autobiographical opener to an album that kicked off outlaw country as we know it — proof that Willie was never interested in playin' it safe, on record or off.

Enter: Waylon Payne, guitarist for Willie in modern day. Turns out, that same defiance runs straight through Waylon's blood. His father, Jody Payne, played lead guitar in Willie's band for nearly 40 years, and his mother, Sammi Smith, toured alongside Willie during those same outlaw years — meaning Willie's records were the soundtrack to Waylon's childhood before he ever picked up a guitar himself.

Decades later, Waylon's stood in for the Family band on stage, playing the same songs his dad once played behind Willie. "My favorite part of playing with Willie would be the fact that I've known him my whole entire life," he says. "His voice and his words have been at the heart of my human existence since I drew first breath. He is the master in my opinion and it's an honor anytime I get to sit down with him. And he tells great jokes."

When it comes to the song itself, Waylon recalls it as one of the first records he ever loved: "One of the first songs I remember is Shotgun Willie. I mentioned to my momma once why do I love this album so much? She said probably because you were there at the session clapping along… that whole album is just a dance. A dance with something human and breathing and real."

So when we linked up in Nashville and he offered to play us the tune on the porch with his trusty pooch, we just couldn't say no.