Under the name, “Stokes Nielson and The Lost Trailers”, the trio soon got support from Billy Block of Western Beat Entertainment, and by the end of Nielson’s junior year the band was playing regularly at The Exit-In, opening for acts like Marty Stuart, Derek Trucks of The Allman Brothers, and Robert Earl Keen. Then, Lee and Nielson released a thousand copies of “The New Age Cowboy”, one of which landed in the hands of Willie Nelson.
“Willie getting the album, and really “getting” what was going on with the music was a big deal. I don’t think at that point we were really thinking about doing anything other than graduating and getting regular jobs.” Lee says. “I mean, I love music, and I knew that I wanted to be able to do music more than anything else; but I’m not sure that I thought that would be a possibility for us.” That changed when Willie Nelson asked the Trailers to come out and play his 4th of July Picnic in Texas, and then subsequently asked The Lost Trailers to support him at a sold-out show at The Classic Center in Athens, GA.
“Well,” Nielson says, “That was the point where we knew we might have a chance to do this as a living. The response we got was great, and suddenly I was getting letters and e-mails from places like California and Canada, which I thought was pretty strange, cause we’d only played a number of shows, and those were in Texas, Tennessee, and Georgia. It turns out, people were burning copies of “The New Age Cowboy”, giving it to friends, and it was slowly circulating around the country. Napster helped as well, because people started putting Trailer songs on their database. Also, I felt that if Willie liked The Lost Trailers, then there was a chance that a lot more people would like the music, too. So, I asked Ryder if he would be willing to join the band, because his involvement was crucial, and really go out and show folks our music. I knew that with his strong vocals and keys, combined with a pretty extensive catalogue of songs that I had already written, that we would at least be a decent band. He said that we would have to get the other Passport albums done before we went out on the road, and I thought that was a good idea.”