Townes Van Zandt Overview

Steve Earle, the renowned country music rebel, once said of his early mentor: "Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole wide world, and "I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that." A... [more]

Steve Earle, the renowned country music rebel, once said of his early mentor: "Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole wide world, and "I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that." A bold statement -- but in certain regards, Van Zandt's influence stretches as far as Dylan's. Guy Clark, Kelly Willis, Joe Ely, Emmylou Harris, Butch Hancock, Steve Fromholtz, Lyle Lovett, Gillian Welch, Merle Haggard, Nanci Griffith, Willie Nelson, the Cowboy Junkies, Lucinda Williams, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore are but a few of the disciples Van Zandt produced. Most of these cats recorded, or at the very least played, his songs. A figure who attracted a cult following, Van Zandt spent most of his life traveling a circuit around Nashville, Houston, Colorado, and the border towns of Mexico. Depending on where he was in this cycle, he might make some dough playing a few nights at Houston's Old Quarter, a bar owned by his friend Rex (from whom "Rex's Blues" takes its name). Or he might stop at one of the roadhouses along Interstate 10, play poker all night in the back room, and step out into the glaring Southern dawn only to turn to one of his buddies and ask if he wanted to roll dice or cut cards. Sometimes he'd get on a horse and ride into the Rockies for weeks at a time, writing his penetrating meditations into song. Then he'd show up in Nashville ready to drink a pint of bourbon for breakfast -- which would merely serve as the foundation for a full day's boozing. Van Zandt's lyrics mirror his life as gambler, rambler, wanderer, outlaw, drinker, cowboy, and desperado. (He was born into old money, but struck out to play guitar and thus chose poverty.) In "Waitin' Round to Die," he sings, "I don't know where this dirty road is taking me. Sometimes I don't even know the reason why. But I guess I'll keep a-gamblin', lots of booze and lots of ramblin'. It's easier than just waitin' round to die." However tough these lyrics seem at first, they betray a certain resignation; it's a belief that the road, the next town, the universe itself, ultimately holds no answers. In the liner notes to his albums, Lola Scobey wrote, "Townes carries the terror and the sorrow of a sensitive man who has looked into the abyss and seen...the abyss." Accompanied by his guitar, Van Zandt's voice underscored his lyrics with a brutal honesty. He laid his heart and all its contents bare: the loneliness, dreaming, longing, and wondering. Like Dylan, he was a consummate poet -- unlike Dylan, he rarely indulged in surrealistic gymnastics. Van Zandt finally achieved widespread recognition in 1983, when Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard recorded "Poncho and Lefty." A whole generation of songwriters rushed to explore this overlooked vein of gold, which had lain hidden in the musical coulees of Texas. Their discovery of Van Zandt helped spark a folk/songwriter renaissance in Texas, with artists like Nanci Griffith recording his "Tecumseh Valley" for hungry audiences. Townes died in 1997 of massive heart failure. In an odd stroke of fate, he died the same day his mentor Hank Williams had 44 years earlier. Van Zandt was only 52, but the hard life had taken its toll. He could hardly hold his guitar without shaking; his voice had lost much of its pitch and power; he was no longer writing the gut-wrenching lyrics of earlier years. His final words probably would have gone something like his song "To Live's To Fly": Goodbye to all my friends it's time to go again think of all the poetry and the pickin' down the line. [show less]