Spiritual Plants & Past N9NE Records present
Billy Loves Willie
40 Days. 40 Nights. Asheville.
A 40-day love crusade in the Blue Ridge — music, mountains, plants and one honest question — counting down to the last legal night.
Clock to current federal law
Until the last legal night · Dec 11
If Washington moves the deadline, we move the clock.
What is this?
Three words on a billboard in Billy Graham country.
Billy Loves Willie. Three words on a billboard in Billy Graham country, beside a picture of Willie Nelson singing with a joint in his hand. We mean it.
The board, exactly: BILLY LOVES WILLIE. startwithiloveyou.com That is the whole board. Three words and one URL — no product shot, no slogan, no sponsor logos. We took them off on purpose so nothing explains it away. The sponsors live on this site, not on the highway.
Not funded, directed or authorized by Billy Graham's family or ministries, or by Willie Nelson. No permission was asked. Craig Rose is a fan of both — and Franklin Graham is invited to come talk, listen and share his lens on any of the forty days.
Yes, this is controversial — on purpose
The most branded man of faith in America. And the wildest disrupter of it just moved to his town.
Billy Graham is Asheville. His name is on the expressway, the training center, the parkway, the Cove. He was the outlier of his own generation — integrating his crusades when it cost him money, going on television when the church called it vulgar, standing beside presidents and prisoners in the same week. He did not win people by agreeing with them. He filled rooms with people who hadn't decided yet.
Craig Rose — the name every Christian in America knows as Craig Gross — is the outlier of this generation. The pastor who took a booth at the porn convention, put Jesus Loves Porn Stars on a Bible cover, named actual human beings instead of categories, and has said the same five words the entire time: start with I love you. Now he lives here.
The Final Countdown
The rules are changing. What happens next?
America built this marketplace in public. We are not going to let it disappear in private. Forty nights of music, mountains, plants and one honest question — then we keep going anyway.
01 · Today
Many products fit today's hemp definition.
Adults buy hemp-derived drinks, gummies, tinctures and other products under the laws of some states.
02 · Changing
Congress already changed the federal definition.
Under current law, the new definition begins November 12 and many products sold today would no longer count as hemp in their present form.
03 · Unknown
Washington may move most of the deadline.
The Senate voted for December 11. The House has not approved it. Congress may delay, rewrite, regulate — or let the current law take effect.
This is not "the day hemp dies." Industrial hemp remains. Some compliant products remain. State law is separate. The focus is what happens to the current intoxicating-hemp marketplace — and the people who built it.
The Soul of the Campaign · Not a Sponsor
Love is the posture. The plant is the question. The clock is running.
The Posture
Start With I Love You
How you walk into the room, and the URL printed on everything.
startwithiloveyou.com ↗The Private Question
Cannabis Is Spiritual
The evergreen inner room, and the track you play.
cannabisisspiritual.com ↗The Public Clock
The Final Countdown
Forty days, forty nights, one changing law.
What we hand everyone
Take the tract. Play the track.
An eight-page mini-zine folded from one 11 × 17 sheet — a Billy Graham tract designed by an underground record label. Everybody gets one, whether they consume cannabis or not. Alongside it: that day's question card, and a four-minute audio ritual with Craig, Kenny and rotating artists.
A scavenger hunt for the soul
You didn't find a website. You found the door.
Start With I Love You is the playful public door into all of this — carried by shirts, vans, secret shows, songs and plants. You never needed the whole map. You only needed one clue: love is a practice.
Clue 01
The Van
If a van stopped you on the street and you scanned the code, you already found one door. This is the other side of it.
Clue 02
The Shirt
Four words on a chest: WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE. Forty nights of people asking each other in person instead of online.
Clue 03
The Song
Music reaches the feeling system before the explaining mind catches up. Every night here opens with the same eight notes.
Clue 04
The Plant
Reverence, relationship, ritual. The plant was never the point. It was the excuse to gather.
Clue 05
The Land
131 acres at Shope Creek. The website is the map. The land is the destination.
Clue 06 · Hidden
The One We Won't Print
There is a sixth clue. It isn't on a shirt and it isn't on the van. Curiosity is the whole qualification.
Credit where it's due · 1986–2026
We didn't name this. Europe did.
In 1986 a Swedish rock band wrote a song about leaving Earth and accidentally wrote the theme music for every deadline, every ninth inning, every last call in human history. This year it turns forty. Our countdown is forty days. We are not going to pretend that's nothing.
1986
The song drops. Sweden. Big hair, bigger keys.
40 YRS
2026 is its fortieth year on this planet.
40 DAYS
Which is exactly how long we have left.
1 RIFF
Everybody on earth already knows the intro.
"We're leaving together — but still it's farewell."
They sang about heading for Venus not knowing if anyone would miss them. Forty years later a federal rule is about to send an entire industry somewhere it's never been, and the same question applies: will anybody notice we're gone? So the riff opens every night. A local band covers it at least once. And on day forty it plays one last time, at volume, with the room singing the part nobody knows the words to.
Not affiliated with Europe. Enormously indebted to them.
The artist we are actually promoting
Kenny McCormick IV. They Call Me Trinity.
He came to Shope Creek the first time as a retreater. He came back as an artist, and said the sentence that named a whole documentary. Now he is launching a record across forty nights in Asheville. Everything else on this page is a room. Kenny is what happens inside it.
"The first time I came to this space, I was a retreater. This time, I felt like an artist."
— Kenny McCormick IV, final circle, Camp Mary
The Through Line
Kenny plays across the forty nights — not one slot, a residency. Songs land in different rooms, in different orders, in front of different people.
The Album
They Call Me Trinity launches inside the countdown. Three names, one man, a record about who you are allowed to become when nobody is asking you to pick a lane.
The Film
He is the emotional spine of The Deer Trail — the retreater who came back as an artist, and the voice that named the documentary.
A 40-day cultural revival in the Blue Ridge
Mountains in the morning. Music at night.
Not a protest. A 40-day receipt. Each night opens with the same eight notes and a question nobody has to answer the same way. Come for the music. Stay for the question.
Thursday · Arrival
The Door Opens
Music. The first eight notes. A room of people who haven't decided yet.
The Field · The Inner Journey
Mountains in the Morning
Readings, wellness, the plant as question. Conversations that don't begin with a price.
The Land · The Outer Journey
Music at Night
Live sets, campfire storytelling, artists trading songs across rooms.
Sunday · Integration
Stay for the Question
Reflection. Departure. The question everyone now carries home.
Oct 31
Starts
Dec 11
Ends
Forty
Nights
The Documentary
The moment a vision outgrew its birthplace.
The forty nights are also the launch of The Deer Trail — the documentary that began as a film about a retreat and became the record of something larger. The campaign carries the film into the world; the film carries the people, the conflict and the search for a permanent home.
Explore The Deer TrailThe Hollow Bone Initiative
Camp Mary was the gathering. Asheville becomes the experiment.
Billy Loves Willie is the public door. Behind it is the larger Asheville vision: connecting Shope Creek, The Field, artists, elders, regenerative enterprise, technology, gathering spaces and the Hollow Bone Initiative into something larger than any single property or event.
Two commitments hold it together: move the collective beyond fear, and shift the nature of exchange to be more like nature. The revival is where those commitments meet the street.
Take Action
Come for the music. Stay for the question.
Watch
Learn the issue in plain English.
billyloveswillie.com/#forty ↗
Answer
Tell us what you believe.
billyloveswillie.com/#witness ↗
Act
Contact the people writing the rules.
billyloveswillie.com/#act ↗
Host
Turn on the clock in your city.
billyloveswillie.com/#host ↗