There's no way Lukas Nelson can avoid the question: What's it like to walk in his father's imposing shadow?
He's figured that the best way to answer the question is with a question.
"Really? Is it a long shadow? I don't think so," he said recently, speaking by phone from his tour bus outside San Diego. "I think as long as the shadow is, I don't mind being in it if it means being closer to him, because he's a good friend of mine as well as my dad."
It's not so much that you could spot Nelson on the street and peg him for the son of country music legend Willie Nelson.
But when he starts to sing with his band Promise of the Real on Tuesday night at Desert Diamond Casino, there will be no denying his DNA. He has Willie's nasally twang, mixed with hints of Dylan around the edges. There's a streak of rebellion that masks a genuine tenderness in music that dips into all things Americana: old-soul country, roots rock and flashes of heart-thumping rockabilly.
"They're going to compare me. I'm going to sit here and keep playing," said the 23-year, the second to youngest of Nelson's seven children.
Lukas Nelson said he didn't initially set out to follow his father's track. As a kid growing up in Hawaii he entertained fantasies of being a professional skateboarder, an Olympic swimmer, a Jedi warrior, a fighter pilot and a monk.
"But I think the celibacy part of being a monk turned me off," he said with a laugh.
But music has been part of his life since childhood. When he was 11 years old, he wrote his first song, the ballad "You Were It"; his dad recorded it on his 2004 album "It Always Will Be." He learned to play guitar at 12 and dove into the guitar greats like Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
At Loyola Marymount in California, he majored in classical guitar.
"I love classical music and I listen to Brahms and Chopin and Wagner. I listen to Mozart and Beethoven and all that kind of thing," he said.
A few semesters in, he dropped out of school to pursue music full time. In 2009, his band released its debut EP and soon found itself on the road, opening for luminaries including B.B. King and the Dave Mathews Band.
His show here Tuesday, opening for his father, comes a month before his band releases its eponymous second album. Nelson, who also will play rhythm guitar in his dad's show, said he wrote much of it while the band was on his dad's Country Throwdown Tour last summer.
He described the album as "very personal."
"It was kind of a reflection of where I was at at that time, the inner demons I was facing at the time," he said.
When asked about the demons, he brushed off the question, saying they were the same demons everyone struggles with.
"Being in a transitional period of my life and being unsure where you're at in terms of your relationships and your mind," he said. "It all contributes to what music is coming out and what you're writing."
Being on the road with his father gives Nelson a chance to bond with a man who has been a professional mentor and a personal friend, he said.
"It's really the only time we get to hang with each other is when we're out" on tour, he said. "We get to jam and play with each other. It's all great, it's all good."
"I'm in a pretty content spot, just taking one day at a time and really enjoying every day," he added. "Time to breathe through every moment; be as present as possible. The less I think about the past and future, the more attention I give to what's going on and the smoother things flow."
If you go
• What: Willie Nelson and Family in concert, with Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real.
• When: 7 p.m. Tuesday.
• Where: Desert Diamond Casino Diamond Entertainment Center, 1100 W. Pima Mine Road.
• Tickets: $45 to $85 through www.ticketmaster.com
