Orville Peck shouts out 'little gay Texan cowboys and cowgirls,' Willie Nelson at ACL Fest

“So not only did Willie Nelson want to do a song with me,” Orville Peck told Zilker Park on Sunday at Austin City Limits Music Festival. “He wanted to do a song about gay cowboys.”

The rising country star shouted-out his recent duets album “Stampede” and the Austin legend. Then he dedicated “Cowboys Are Secretly Fond of Each Other” to “all the little, gay Texan cowboys and cowgirls.”

Willie, 91, was just present in spirit. 

More: Willie Nelson and Family to play free 'Austin City Limits' Birthday Bash at Long Center

“He almost sounds like Johnny Cash. He’s got it down,” a shirtless dude said between Honda stage songs. He’s right—the country star opines with a golden baritone.

“What’s a boy to do? Hit the road with a dollar or two? Haunted by what he knows he can’t do?” he sang on “No Glory In the West.”

That’s great writing without the guy’s newsworthy backstory. Got me in my feelings, welling up. Intentional tears. 

He told ACL that the first rule of an Orville Peck concert is, “If at any point you feel like crying, you have to cry.”

Right, the back story. He’s an openly gay Dior model from South Africa who wears a Lone Ranger-style mask in public. It affords him peak vulnerability to, say, speak to ACL patrons about why he canceled a tour amid depression prior to “Hexi Mountains.” It’s a song about the experience. 

He donned a red-and-yellow, sparkly vest. He was backed by five, relatively understated by contrast, musicians who ripped. 

“Maybe you’ll learn to live with what’s inside your head,” he sang. 

That one got me too.