‘King of the Roadies’ looks at the man ‘behind the spotlight’ of Willie, Waylon and the Boys

Ben Dorcy III didn’t quite fit the typical roadie picture.

Rail-thin with long white hair and a scraggly beard, he worked with bands on tour until he was 92. He’s largely recognized as the country’s first roadie, or band boy, and he worked with some of the biggest names in country music, such as “Willie, Waylon and the Boys.”

Willie’s daughter, Amy Lee Nelson, just finished a documentary about Dorcy. It’s called “Willie Nelson Presents: King of the Roadies,” and it’s premiering at the Dallas International Film Festival this weekend.

The filmmaker stopped by the Texas Standard studio to talk about the documentary. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.

This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:

Texas Standard: I know it’s been a long time in the making. Can you tell me about that journey?

Amy Lee Nelson: Well about 16 years ago, my cousin Trevor asked me if I would help him with this, make a documentary about Ben Dorcy, because Trevor was sort of the filmmaker of our family and Ben asked him if he would make a movie about him. So Trevor asked if I could help and I said sure.

And so we started following Ben around with a camera and we just realized this person that’s been in our life that we sort of took for granted just kind of had this star quality and his life sort of just unfolded into this amazing story.

Tell me about the voices in your documentary. We actually hear from a bunch of people who aren’t with us anymore.

Yeah, that is true. We have some footage from this roast from 1990 where The Highwaymen decided to get together and honor Ben for all of his hard work. So we’ve got Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson and Jessi Colter and my dad and June Carter Cash. There’s just this whole group of people, roadies in particular, but it’s not singular to roadies.

These professions that, when people are really good at their jobs, they go unnoticed because when the show runs smoothly, people don’t notice it – but the artists noticed. So we realized that Ben was a legend among legends, but nobody else really knew who he was. So it really became more apparent to us that we had to tell that story.

Can you talk about the job that he did? I mean, what did a “roadie” mean? I can’t visualize him hauling amps, but apparently, he hauled amps like no other, right? 

Oh yeah, he hauled amps, he hauled guitars…

Apparently he would, like back in the day in the ’50s in Nashville, they would have these variety shows and Ben would stand there and just help all the artists. He sort of volunteered his time doing anything that they wanted him to do and that’s how he got into it. He just started doing the job and making it happen.

By most accounts, or by all accounts, no one has disputed that he was the first man to ever be called a “roadie.”

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It’s better than a “band boy,” I think. That was an upgrade.

Yeah, well the band boys were the ones who were the stagehands, and then the roadies were the traveling stagehands.

So I think when the operations really started touring on the road and taking their roadies with them or taking their band boys with them… I think he was maybe the first person to actually be the band boy that got invited for the tour.

But they do everything. According to Waylon Jennings, in the song he wrote about him, they do every thing we couldn’t do because we were busy being stars. So, like, for instance, my dad can’t go to the grocery store. Waylon couldn’t go to the grocery store without getting pummeled by a bunch of people and so they have to send someone in to do that kind of thing.

But then also they need someone who has the know-how to be able to set things up and set up the spotlight and set-up all of the equipment every day, day-in and day-out.

I used to go on tour with my dad and we would arrive at the shows a couple hours before show time. All of the stage crew, all the production crew, they’d been there since eight in the morning and they were gonna be there till three in the morning – or midnight at least – breaking everything down.

So their jobs are just so incredibly difficult, and they do it day-in and day-out with very few breaks. So it’s, really, a very difficult job.

You mentioned the song by Waylon Jennings, and it’s in this film, and it struck me. It sounds like a Waylon Jennings song. There’s a clip of it on the Ben Dorcy Facebook page.

Could you tell me a little bit about discovering that song and about bringing music to life in this film?

Waylon made a cassette for Ben with this song that he wrote for him back in, I guess, maybe in the early ’80s and it was just this beautiful tribute to Ben and roadies in general.

So for the film we thought, well, it was just basically Waylon and a guitar, so we decided to add some instrumentation. So, Shooter Jennings, Waylon’s son, and Micah, my brother, co-produced this track. And they kind of just made this amazing masterpiece out of just this demo that Waylon had made.

So that’s gonna be in the film and eventually on a companion piece album that we’re gonna put out.

For such a behind-the-scenes guy, do you think he got a kick out of being the center of attention for this film?

Oh, definitely. And he looked a lot like my dad, so a lot of times he would be walking out on the stage before the show would start and people would think that he was my dad and the whole crowd would go wild and he would kind of just linger on the stage a little longer and soak up the applause.

He really, I think, did enjoy the attention.

Do you think his legacy is still alive? Do you still think people still tell stories about Ben on tour buses?

Definitely. There’s so many people that are saying, “oh, you should have interviewed me, I got stories.”

So like, yeah, there are all kinds of stories about him because he was working for like 70 years in the music industry. So there’s many people that have Ben stories, there wouldn’t have been a way to keep it under an hour and a half.

So like, yeah, and I think that it is our job to keep his legacy alive. And not just him, but just like putting a spotlight on the people who transport the spotlight that are usually behind the spotlight.

What else do you want people to know about Ben in this film? I mean, what are you excited for them to learn?

He’s really funny. I think it’s a really enjoyable film to watch, mainly, in part, because Ben is just such a hoot. He’s so fun to watch and so fun to hang out with and so I just want people to get to know him. And also just that, yeah, he would say things like, “we ain’t got time for romance, time to keep the show on the road.”

Like he was just such a great guy and his 100th birthday is coming up on May 19 and so we got together with the National Day Calendar to create National Roadie Day. So this May 19 is going to be the first annual National Roadie Day.

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