“I’ll Always Pick You” – Willie Nelson Posts Tribute To His Beloved, Trigger, The Guitar He’s Played Since 1969

The rest of us mere mortals can only hope to have half as good of a relationship with our significant others as Willie Nelson has with his guitar, Trigger.

There may not be a more famous guitar in the music world than Willie Nelson’s trusty Trigger. The living country music legend has played the same Martin six-string since 1969. And the story of how he originally got it – and how much he paid for it – only adds to the lore that surrounds Willie Nelson.

While Willie was still cutting his teeth in the industry in the late 1960s, his go-to guitar was ruined by a drunk and disorderly fan. Willie was playing gig at the John T. Floore’s Country Store in Helotes, Texas, and suddenly was in need of an instrument to go up on stage with. Nelson without a guitar is like peanut butter without jelly… they’re fine separately, but there’s some real magic that happens when they’re together.

As the story goes, Nelson caught wind of a beautiful Martin guitar nearby that was for sale for $750. That might not seem like a lot for a guitar in the modern day, but back in 1969, that was equivalent to over $5,500. Safe to say that it was a steep price for Willie to pull the trigger on (pun intended), but he did it, and boy oh boy what an investment it turned out to be.

If you spread out the investment over all these years later, his trusted, reliable guitar comes out to be about a $13 a year investment. And that’s not even figuring in the countless songs that Nelson has penned and played with trigger, undoubtedly bringing in a much larger return on investment.

The fateful day that Willie Nelson bought the guitar, he named it after Roy Roger’s horse “Trigger,” and from that moment on, the country singer made sure the instrument wasn’t ever too far out of reach. Nelson even saved it from a house fire that destroyed every one of his belongings… except for Trigger and a pound or so of weed that the “Red Headed Stranger” had stashed away.

Clearly, Willie Nelson has a love for his guitar that’s been in his life across six decades. So much so that he and his team jumped in on a recent “How many months have you been together?” trend on TikTok. The social media team hilariously asked “months?” as if to say that a relationship that only a few months old is nothing compared to Willie’s connection with Trigger (they’ve known each other for 56 years).

The video went on to show Willie Nelson pictured with Trigger in the 2020s, 2010s, 2000s, 1990s… you get the point. Nelson and Trigger have been together a long, long time, and this tribute to their connection is about as romantic as it gets: