Townes Van Zandt, depressing schizo drunk or sublime songwriter?

i love "nothin'".

"Lay down your head poor boy
feel how the ground does move
hear how them drivers sing."

this clip gives me the for-real chills:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTGKzWDakK8

I guess I'll do downtown and see/ What downtown can do for me....

they've reissued a bunch of his stuff on vinyl. gotta pick those up.

I need some help trying to figure out what's up with the diff versions of the Townes Van Zandt album from 1969. I have the Tomato vinyl and a CD reissue on Sunspots -- they are the same. I recently heard the reissue on Fat Possum, and that one sounds like a different recording of the same songs. I've been scouring the internet for info, and I haven't come up with anything.

Help!

Good luck. TVZ has one of the most diluted catalogs of all. Issues, reissues, different configurations, scattared live shows, in prints, out of prints, it's a real mess.

Believe it or not, I figured it out. It's not a discog issue, actually. The Fat Possum reissue I heard was a digital version. Whoever coded/uploaded the thing somehow confused four re-recordings from his first album (“For The Sake Of The Song,” “Waiting Around To Die,” “I’ll Be Here In The Morning” and “Quicksilver Daydreams of Maria”) with the older versions.

I'm glad this is settled. I fancy myself having a fairly decent understanding of Townes' discog, and this fuck-up was giving me fits! Plus, I'm obsessive, so I couldn't let it go.

I'm no pro but I thought the "real" debut was also known as For The Sake Of The Song, and that he rerecorded some of the songs but not all for another record a couple of years later that's called Townes Van Zandt.

xpost

yeah, euler otm.
for the sake of the song is the weaker album though, largely because of the production imho.

x-post

Exactly.

Basically, I heard a digital version of the third album, Townes Van Zandt, that for some reason or another contains the original versions of those four songs from For the Sake of the Song. And yes, the third album is far superior to the first.

i'm not always in the mood for townes, but goddam this 1973 live recording is sounding like the greatest thing in the world. http://rootstrata.com/rootblog/?p=5449
focused (sober?), brutal, glorious.

Nice find, d/l now

dude sounds at the top of his game here.

Live at the Old Quarter, his best album, was also from '73.

I just discovered that Townes was set to record an album with Steve Shelley and Two Dollar Guitar for Ecstatic Peace the month before he died, shame

but yeah thanks tyler, listening now

I can also recommend Rain on a Conga Drum, Live in Berlin recorded in 1990 and released in '95 Great cover of Dead Flowers amongst many originals.

yeah, thanks for this

his unaccompanied 1969 Carnegie Hall concert (released as A Gentle Evening with Townes Van Zandt is one of my favorite recordings of his, and the sound quality is maybe superior to that of his studio work. the mid-song banter is funny because as casual as confident as he comes across in his music, there's an obvious disconnect between performer and audience, viz:

heckler: enunciate your words
Townes: enunciate my words? enunciate y'own words!

Townes: I guess there are more bigots here than winos...
*nervous laughter from the audience*

for really early stuff I'd recommend a collection of demos from 1966 titled In the Beginning and a concert from the same year titled Live at the Jester Lounge. the most interesting material on the former is a couple of electrified desert blues-rock tracks ("Hunger's Child Blues" and "Black Widow Blues") that make me wish he'd stuck with that style for an entire album.

I just discovered that Townes was set to record an album with Steve Shelley and Two Dollar Guitar for Ecstatic Peace the month before he died, shame
yeah there was a bit about this in the tvz doc from a few years back. sounded like bummer sessions all around.
haven't heard the 1969 carnegie hall show, i'll have to track it down.

& yeah i love old quarter too, but this one might be better?

thanks for this, tyler. great performance. I suppose the sound quality lets it down a little, i.e. in comparison with Old Quarter.

yeah Old Quarter is a little cleaner and probably a better set list, but no better as far as performance/banter

Saw him @ Old Town School of Folk Music in ~1995 and it was embarrassing and sad. He did not finish a single song and he literally fell off his stool. Had Haven't given his albums much attention since, but know I should.

yeah, never saw him play, but those last years do not sound pretty.
old quarter is great, probably my fave townes recording, but i like the variations on this recording, glitches and all. old quarter sounds kind of relaxed, playing to the hometown crowd, whereas this one seems like he's got something to prove.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXJPVRw3hmk

search the gothy songs ("The Hole", "Marie", "A Song For") and sentimental songs ("Katie Belle Blue", "Lover's Lullabye", "Billy Boney and Ma") on No Deeper Blue, his final studio album. destroy a few unenthusiastic blues-rockers like "Goin' Down to Memphis" and "BW Railroad Blues" and destroy some of the gloopy, incongruously modern (what works for Trisha Yearwood doesn't necc. work for TVZ) backing tracks. his concerts from that era may have been sad and embarrassing, but he comes across as sharp and focused in the studio even though his voice is barely more than a monotone.

it sounds like someone went overboard with noise-reduction on the version of the 1973 Minneapolis concert that tyler posted. guitar and vocals sound clean but unpleasantly muffled to my ears. by contrast, someone posted the entire set on youtube, and the sound quality is much clearer despite a little tape hiss:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDQy8dshmoU

beautiful

OK, so there I was in the PDSA Charity Shop in Paisley, feeling pretty pleased with myself that I'd just discovered the Glen Campbell, 'Capitol Years' comp. for £1 (tho I must admit disagree with a lot of the choices on that album, what was Bob Stanley thinking?), just about to pay for it when I notice something called 'Texas Troubador' by Townes Van Zandt on the counter. £1.50. Which, my American confreres, for a box set of the first 7 Townes Van Zandt albums + some outtakes + some live songs is pretty laugh-out-loud ludicrous. Brand new too!

wow tyler. this is fantastic. thanks!

Eating my heart out, Tom D.

The video of Marie posted above is a good example of why I find it quite difficult to listen to later TVZ, despite myself. His early (live) playing is, for me, characterized by very clean, precise guitar picking -- either finger-picking (Pancho & Leftie) or flat-picking (Mr. Mudd & Mr. Gold). He was no guitar innovator, but a talented picker. I play finger-style guitar myself and have always admired TVZ's accuracy -- I can pick and sing Pancho & Lefty, but not quite as clean as (early) Townes.

So I wince slightly at later recordings, as I hear so immediately that he lost so much of his playing skills -- even though he still sounds great to mere mortals such as me and, no doubt, others.

Though he's still pretty solid here. Man...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qpcu7rDHAo

He was really weak at the end, based on my own recollections. Interestingly, I was at the TVZ birthday celebration at the Cactus Cafe just a few months ago watching the immortal Butch Hancock and several of TVZ's old pals / bandmates, and no one even tried to pretend that his final years weren't just a total wreck. Pretty sad, considering how much they all clearly loved the guy.

i think he didn't really bottom out artistically until 94 or 95. honestly it sounds like maybe some of the folks around him were enablers. a little too worshipful of him to take extreme measures to keep him from the bottle. but maybe it was too late by that point.

anyway i'm partial to the flyin' shoes LP. production a bit slicker than previously. but title track is just a perfect version of an old hoary blues cliché. the only "version" i know that's as poetically right is sterling brown's:

i don't know which way i'm travelin--
far or near
all i know fo' certain is
i cain't stay here.

ain't no call at all, sweet woman
fo' to carry on---
jes' my name and jes' my habit
to be Long Gone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLWo0oyDp1A

I just saw Kurt Wagner of Lambchop and Cortney Tidwell do a TVZ tune live in Nashville. I don't know what it was. All his stuff sounds the same to me. I don't not enjoy it but on the other hand I don't really care about it one way or another. I think he's among the most overrated artists of all time. I've attempted to like it and have listened to quite a bit of it, including some of those live records. It all sounds like writing-exercise writing to me.

Lyrics of Poncho and Lefty are among the best all-time for a country tune IMO

As Emmylou Harris likes to say, she's sung that song hundreds of times and still doesn't know what it's about.

haha I find some consolation in that

wait what? isn't it sort of clear?

cf. $1,000 wedding btw.

Please explain the lyrics of "000 Wedding".

Re: "Pancho and Lefty," there are several readings (none of which Van Zandt confirmed), including:

1) It's about Pancho Villa (though this Van Zandt did actually deny)
2) It's about two brothers, a good son and a bad son
3) It's about two bandits, one of whom, Lefty, rats the other one out
4) Pancho and Lefty are the same person

how does 4 make sense

It's like the Double Life of Veronique...

#3 is obvious, therefore that's what it's about, afaic. If he'd only ever written that song and "Tecumseh Valley" he'd still be worthy of legendary status imo.

this is on its way next year:
Townes Van Zandt – Sunshine Boy: The Unheard Studio Sessions and Demos 1971-1972 (Omnivore) – As musicologist Colin Escott writes in his liner notes for the upcoming Omnivore Recordings release of the late Townes Van Zandt’s Sunshine Boy: The Unheard Studio Sessions and Demos 1971-1972, “The art of Townes Van Zandt reveals a little at a time. Every hearing brings forth something you can’t believe you missed all the other times, or something that rings even truer today than way back when.” Omnivore will give listeners more to discover in Townes Van Zandt when the 28-song, two-CD set is released on February 5, 2013. The recordings that comprise the set have been hidden away in the vault since their initial recording and are now presented with the cooperation of the estate. Omnivore is pleased to finally be able to present, after many years in the works, a two-CD set of previously unavailable music from the Texas singer-songwriter’s classic albums High, Low & In Between and The Late Great Townes Van Zandt. One disc features outtakes and alternate takes/mixes of tracks from the sessions for those LPs; the other highlights solo demos. The set offers a window into the work that went into those two brilliant recordings, from a time when Van Zandt was at the height of his songwriting powers.

looks like Sunshine Boy is physical CD only

it is so good

Surprised by the horns (?) on 'Where I Lead Me'

Alternate Pancho (1972) sounds so warm. Those lyrics belong in a literary anthology.

Alternate 'You are Not Needed Now' tempo and performance is a step down from the original but nice to hear the different phrasing on the vocal -- makes the lyrics a bit clearer.

this clip gives me the for-real chills:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTGKzWDakK8

― M@tt He1ges0n, Tuesday, June 17, 2008 7:28 PM (5 years ago)

still a great clip, and now ILX has evolved to the point where it can be embedded into the thread and slow everything else down!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTGKzWDakK8

and i have devolved to the point where i just fuck up and leave words out of sentences and use some words twice and make typos on the words that somehow make it into the sentences intact and post videos twice

watched "Be Here to Love Me" last night ("Heartworn Highways" was not available) after hearing about this guy for years but never really investigating much. I like that song "Tecumseh Valley". And man so many crazy stories in this movie, alternately depressing and really funny. I can listen to this stuff and see the craft and the work in it, I can marvel at the technique but as with a lot of Leonard Cohen I get pretty bored with the gloomy guy n his acoustic guitar approach, it just doesn't hold my interest. But oddly it seems like when his stuff was more orchestrated or supported with fleshed out arrangements it kinda undermined what he had going on, you can tell it doesn't always work. Which puts me at odds with his catalog, unfortunately. ah well.

i totally love townes, our mother the mountain through the late great is a pretty astonishing run. live at the old quarter, houston, texas is also incredible, what a treat it would've been to see those shows.

not all his stuff is gloomy!!! he has plenty of cheerful and hilarious songs imo. cohen (despite also being funny) is way gloomier.

i agree w/ your point about the orchestrations, especially on the first two albums, but imo the arrangements and support work out really really well on high low and in between, the more organic-sounding country-folk support on that album is way better than the dramatic strings on our mother the mountain.

"You are not needed now" is my go to

I've only heard the first four to be clear

been digging his version of who do you love recently

In terms of poetry / lyrics, I think his top three are Pancho and Lefty, To Live is to Fly, and Tecumseh Valley

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XyiBMdb42U

i'm sitting on my porch listening to my live at the old quarter record through an open window while drinking shitty american domestic beer. it feels v good

Cigarette machine's upstairs

The Texas Troubadour box seems to be all good. All the late 60s &early 70s stuff plus the '78 Flying Shoes.

Is there a decent book biography of him? Nearly picked the one I saw locally up until I read reviews of it whic were rubbish

uncle ben's perverted rice

i wish more classic live albums had jokes. a knock knock joke or two would've taken frampton comes alive to another level.

"ahh they took my girl too"

live at the old quarter is tremendous

i'm sitting on my porch listening to my live at the old quarter record through an open window while drinking shitty american domestic beer. it feels v good

― dynamicinterface, Friday, May 13, 2016 7:15 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

jealous

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iS45gE5Mlf8

lol nice. and don't be jealous, i quite literally meant sitting on my porch, i just moved in and have no furniture and i'm sure you can get some rolling rock if you really want. also my neighbor is v obvs smoking weed and not offering me any. it all still feels v good tho

Playing TVZ at the coffee shop / bar. Never want to leave

Queensboro woman, don’t you smile on me

Putting the Texas Troubadour box on shuffle for hours at a time is one of life's great pleasures

feeling golden, burning crimson 'til the darkness falls

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNO3jxoaz80

"filmin' ma mail!"

Wow. What is that from?

Heartworn Highways, a vintage doc about fringe Country Singer-Songwriters.

I saw the former once at the Bottom Line opening for Jimmie Dale Gilmore, it was mildly excruciating. Only just now startiing to appreciate the latter.

Can't find a listing of that show but did find this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ujF2sZP8O0
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/27/arts/for-a-moody-poet-of-folk-an-unmournful-tribute.html

I only recently tumbled to the fact that Smokey in The Big Lebowski was played by Jimmie Dale Gilmore.

!

And, of course, the final song in that film is Townes's cover of "Dead Flowers."

A true genius and one of my favorite songwriters of all time. When you listen to his music, the best of it unadorned and simple as can be, you can practically hear the history of the American west and the impressions the land and the places he lived made on him: Texas, Colorado, Minnesota, Tennessee. Super depressing to read about his addiction and mental health issues but they were part and parcel of what he achieved as a songwriter.

“Miss carousel” on at the bar

Poncho on at the bar

That’s a good bar

Seen a bunch of of Townes vinyl reissues lately

There used to be a bar over in East Downtown called "Miss Carousel" but now it's called something non-Townes related.

The Be Here To Love Me doc is on Youtube, not sure if the link works for every territory but does for the US

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BADaK_1VfnI

Poncho on at the bar

― calstars, Saturday, 8 February 2025 02:46 (yesterday) link

That’s a good bar

― Indexed, Saturday, 8 February 2025 13:54 (yesterday) link

just wish it had a roof

He's got his poncho on, won't get too wet