Profile in Music: Townes Van Zandt

Marking his passing on this day in 1997.

Townes Van Zandt might have been a great songwriter but he doesn’t quite rate with our featured player yesterday, Hank Williams (but then who does?). Townes idolized Hank, however, but maybe carried that a bit too far as they died on virtually the same date (Dec. 31 vs. Jan. 1), 44 years apart. And where Hank at times had a sense of humor about his likely demise—e.g. “Long Gone Lonesome Blues”—Townes was, so to speak, deadly serious, as on “Waitin’ Around to Die” (amazingly, and prophetically, the first song he ever wrote). Twenty-six years ago, Townes “last ride” was home from the hospital, and then he died in his bed, not in the back seat of an iconic baby blue Caddy on the way to a gig.

Whatever the direct cause, he was, like Hank, a victim of hard living/drinking/drugging but at least he reached his early 50s. Like Hank, he inspired tribute songs but only a few compared to Williams’ dozens or hundreds.

I never met Townes, but at my first gig, the legendary Zygote in NYC in 1970, we assigned John Swenson (later a kind of legend himself as a music writer) to interview him between shows at the Bitter End folk club. Swenson showed up to find that not a single customer had arrived for the first show (though Townes had at least two well-regarded albums out by then) so they walked around the Village and chatted waiting for the second show.

I did meet Townes’ oldest son, J.T.—nice guy who looked like his dad—at a tribute show at (fittingly) a “poetry bar” off the Bowery. We were standing in line outside the grimy men’s room.

I could go on, but it’s a holiday, so give me a break. I’ll just leave you with a few Townes tunes, since most of you have probably not heard more than a couple of them to date. Enjoy (if that’s the right word) and then subscribe, it’s still free….

Bob Dylan, in this 2022 book The Philosophy of Modern Song, where he profiles Townes’ most famous (though not best) song, “Pancho and Lefty”:

One way to measure a songwriter is to look at the singers who sing their songs. Townes van Zandt has had some of the best—Neil Young, John Prine, Norah Jones, Gillian Welch, Robert Plant, Garth Brooks, Emmylou Harris and hundreds of others. Another way to measure a songwriter is—are their songs still being sung? Townes’s are. Every night—in small clubs, in lonely bedrooms and wherever the brokenhearted watch the shadows grown long.

Lyle Lovett sang Townes’ haunting “Flyin’ Shoes” at his funeral.

Here’s Townes’ live version of “Pancho and Lefty.”

In his book, Dylan notes that hit covers of that song by Willie Nelson & Merle Haggard (and then a TV movie based on it) and others put enough money in Townes’ pocket to allow him to keep “poisoning” himself. Here Bob covers it live in a TV special with Willie.

One of my true (if even more obscure) favorites, “High, Low and In-Between”

Townes “For the Sake of the Song.”

Guy Clark, another close friend and housemate, also sang at Townes’ funeral, joking (but not really) that like others he knew this day was coming soon: “I booked this gig long ago.” Here he covers “To Life Is to Fly.”

“Rake” would have been most writers’ best and most brutally honest song but it was just one of many for Townes.

But he sometimes found a lighter lovin’ mode. Norah Jones with “Be Here to Love Me.”

Townes’ with strings but still hauntingly himself: “Kathleen”

One of the greatest, if most depressing, songs ever—and maybe best one on homelessness—was “Marie.” In the recent movie Blaze about Townes’ pal Blaze Foley, Charlie Sexton (as Van Zandt) blows Blaze and the movie away with this song. Below here is Willie Nelson’s definitive version.

Townes often wrote about his time in a mental hospital as a teen, as here in “You Are Not Needed Now.”

Next to “Pancho and Lefty,” this might be his most covered song. Here he is joined by Nancy Griffith on “Tecumseh Valley.”