One of my favorite new albums discovered this year1 is Steve Earle’s tribute album to the late great Townes Van Zandt [wiki].
“Townes (2CD LTD Deluxe Edition)” (Steve Earle)
In a certain mood, Townes Van Zandt songs are like no other songs, with their melancholy poetry and blurred edges of a life lived to extreme. Van Zandt was the sort of artist who devoted his whole being to his music, at the expense of his body, his comfort, and his family.
Joe Hagan wrote a piece about Steve Earle’s relationship with Townes Van Zandt in a recent issue of Rolling Stone, but unfortunately, as far as I know, the article is not available online. I have a scanned PDF I could send you if you want, but here are a few paragraphs transcribed from my dead-tree edition:
Steve Earle and the Ghost of Townes
The country rocker almost died emulating his damaged mentor, Townes Van Zandt. On a new tribute album, Earle looks back. By Joe Hagan[From : Rolling Stone Issue 1079]
[quote]
IN 1972, STEVE EARLE OVERHEARD A man talking about a birthday party being thrown for Texas country legend Jerry Jeff Walker in Austin, where Earle was living. He crashed the party and, around 2 a.m., in walked the tall, lanky form of Townes Van Zandt, wearing a white buckskin jacket with fringe on the arms. “He started a craps game and lost every dime that he had, and that jacket,” recounts Earle.
…
From Van Zandt, Earle absorbed poetry, literature, fingerpicking styles and a sophisticated lyric sensibility, all while getting into legendary misadventures. Once, while visiting Van Zandt at his cabin in rural Tennessee in the late Seventies, Earle was bragging about his burgeoning gun collection when Van Zandt, exasperated with his young acolyte, loaded a single bullet into his .357-caliber Magnum, spun the revolver, pressed it against his temple and pulled the trigger. Earle was horrified – and angry. He “beat the hell out of” Van Zandt and left. “It was the only time I ever got physical with him,” he says. “It took me a long time not to be angry about it.”
According to legend, Van Zandt came by to check on Earle during the height of Earle’s heroin addiction, asking him if he was using clean needles. When Earle said he was, Van Zandt replied, “OK, listen to this song I just wrote.” “And that was the first time I heard ‘Marie,'” says Earle. He covers the song on Townes.
I sincerely hope that Steve Earle either finds a way to release these audio anecdotes, or works them into a film or a book, or something.
Earle recorded the album in his Greenwich Village apartment, working 11 hours a day for a week. With the “record” button on, Earle maintained a rolling, Van Zandt-inspired meditation, relating impromptu stories and stray recollections about his mentor. The recording engineer, Steve Christensen, told Earle he felt like he was “listening to something I shouldn’t be listening to,” because it seemed so personal. Which is when Earle says he “realized that’s what the criteria is, that’s how I don’t fuck this up.” (He hasn’t figured out yet what he’ll do with the recorded anecdotes.)
If you have never listened to Townes Van Zandt, you are in for a real treat, as a lot of his back catalog is available on CD. I’d suggest dipping your toe with a greatest hits package, and then jumping right into the box sets. There is a quite decent film called Be Here to Love Me (a documentary composed of snippets of Townes Van Zandt) available at Netflix or Amazon, I’ve blogged about it before.
“The Late Great Townes Van Zandt” (Townes Van Zandt)
“Our Mother the Mountain” (Townes Van Zandt)
“Texas Troubadour” (Townes Van Zandt)
“Townes Van Zandt – Be Here to Love Me” (Margaret Brown)
- I use that peculiar phrase because I don’t necessarily care if an album was released recently: just if it is new-to-me. For instance, other favorites from this year so far – Louvin Brothers, Dukes of the Stratosphere, The Heliocentrics, blah blah blah [↩]