I came to Nashville in 1984 to be a songwriter. After failed attempts to write commercial songs I just quit. This past year (2023 )I discovered Townes and he’s inspired me to write again and not worry about commercial boundaries. He moves me, changes me ,challenges me and inspires me ! I listen to him everyday.
Good luck Tim, the world needs soulful heartfelt music that will never make you enough money. Do it anyway, we need it now more then ever. Come to Terlingua if nothing else works out !
When i began writing poetry, I was writing with no aspiration of sharing with a single other soul than my own. When a woman finally convinced me to share at an open mic, the audience was blown away. When I left, I went home and for 3 months I kept trying to write with the audiences's reaction in the front of my mind. The result was writers block. Nothing I wrote felt right. One day, I stopped myself and reminded myself of who I was. I started writing again what I felt. Not what I thought folks wanted to hear. I have since published 4 books. well over 600 poems between them all. Write as though the darkened room will be your only audience. Let your heart pump the life that courses through your soul, and you can't go wrong.
You know that Steve Earle said that Townes van Zandt was the best song writer ever and he would stand on Bob Dylans coffe table and say so. When Townes was asked what he thought about what Steve Earl had said, Townes replied, I have met Bob Dylan and have seen his body gaurds and I don't think Steve could get within a mile of his coffe table.
Later on Steve Earl said he was misunderstood when he said that. Regarding Townes and Dylan, its known that Dylan asked him a few times to do a song together, but Townes politely refused, not wanting the fame he will get being around Dylan.
I dunno if anyones gonna see this but i just wanna say that im not an american, im all the way from the east side of asia, i really enjoy his songs, i have an old mind and givin my all in this soul of being american, thank you Townes, u inspired and made joy of an 18 year old, i'll visit texas one day, i promise
I stumbled upon Townes shortly after my wife left me. I can’t stress how important it is when you’re deep in heartache to find something out there that resonates. The way this man wrote and performed helped me process my profound grief like nothing else.
I met Townes after he and a few friends drove their car off of the top of Independence Pass in the middle of the night in a snow storm and dropped several hundred feet down off the edge. Some friends of mine discovered them by tracks going off the side of the road. This was way before cell phones, so some of my group hung out with them while others went down the hill for help. It was morning before help arrived, and Townes and his group ended up staying with us for a few weeks - good times.........
Finding this man's music probably saved my life when I stumbled upon it several years back. Beautiful pain that sucks you in long enough to remind you that you are not the only person who hurts. Townes was great and is so very underrated and under-appreciated. I'm so happy more people have begun to find him.
Thanks for summarizing my thoughts. I am ASHAMED I have just discovered TVZ; but I'm going through my first real heartbreak @ 54....and this collection I've made of his songs just might have saved my life tonight.
"Shall I cast my dreams upon your love, babe? And lie beneath the laughter of your eyes... " - Townes Van Zandt, a helplessly romantic partisan of beauty until the bitter end.
That guy in the audience yelling "Wooo!" after Townes says 'babe' always makes me smile. Something about the whole Texas macho stereotype getting obliterated by a simple, perfectly placed line gets me every time.
I play a lot of vinyl records at our cabin. I experiment, drift, gamble with new artists etc. But at the end of the night when the beer cans are empty, I always return to Townes. He is my north star.
I met Townes In NYC in the late 70's he was there for a meeting with a record company I was instructed not to let the man drink for the two hours he was to stay in my apartment before his meeting. Needless to say that did not fly with Mr Van Zandt I had to go out and get a couple quarts of beer and we had a lovely time together. At the time I knew only his song Poncho and Lefty he was a superb song writer.
This is the song that I played and played and played after my beloved died. Telling myself that I would get through it. By morning I would be through those hills and gone. So four years later.. it was a such a comfort.
The Walt Whitman of American songwriting. He always painted a beautiful picture of experiences, or of time & place that not everyone has been but can relate to. Who can't appreciate the Man for what he spent his whole life trying to do?
Bob Dylan and Townes Van Zandt are both amazing song writers, the only difference is, Townes did it all while not giving a shit if he was famous or not.....Townes is THE American song writer. Then there is everyone else.
Look at any album from the 70s through the 1980s.... Townes Van Zant is gonna be there...that's how I discovered him years ago and thanks to RU-vid I get to discover the man again ♥️
Wow. That is a bit condescending toward everyone else's taste. I agree Townes was great. I still give John Prine a huge amount of credit for his abilities too. No apologies.
I grew Up sourounded by Townes in Houston Texas…He has been flowing Alll thru my bloodstream Since i was a Child.Townes is The Kind of Guy Ya Never Forget.
Townes was doing this song once and was having trouble and Blaze Foley got up and sang a few verses with him and then sat back down when he had it...classic
Great to hear that younger people are discovering Townes. I am 66 and was there at the beginning. When I first saw him perform, I was so moved by this man's music that the next day I went out and purchased a cheap used guitar and spent all my days learning to play just so I could eventually play his songs. Took some years and days of practice but I reached my goal and now I pick up the ol' guitar and play his songs. An inspiration to many. RIP, my good friend. Yours was a life, however truncated, well lived.
I used to play alot of Dylan, I haven't learned any more songs of his in a while, I've learned about 15 Townes songs and a couple Blaze Foley songs in the last 6 months. I can't find lyrics I like to sing more than Townes'
My all-time fave Townes song - like all his music beautifully layered. First time I heard this I dragged out the old atlas and found Raton. Great music is always a discovery.
Years ago, I worked and lived in Trinidad. I traveled between Trinidad and Raton more times than I can count. The pass can get pretty nasty in winter. This song brings back many memories.
Love this, really moves me - Towne s had that vulnerability and longing in his voice, a sense of great hurt and loneliness, channelling the spirit of Hank Williams. His words are like poetry too, what he conveys in such simple language.
Lyrically, Townes had a way that thumbed his nose, threw the finger and laughed in the face of conventional hit makers. You hear it in all of his songs but this is a really good example of it. Deep AND wide.
I used to drive from Amarillo, where I grew up, to my Uncle Jigg's house on Colorado street in Trinidad. Many dark nights I got caught in a snowstorm on Raton Pass.
There are only two things I regret, and one of them is I never went to listen to Townes - just around the corner here in the south of the Netherlands, our little Texas. Hopelessness that sounds so beautiful... ;(
I heard Butch Hancock do this one in Austin in 1981, coming off my carpentry job and knocking back a longneck in the bar of the old Alamo Hotel, and I would not trade that time for anything.... It took two wrecking balls six months to knock that hotel down, but these songs will be here forever.
Drove through that pass on my way from Lubbock to Pueblo. A pretty desolate place. Wish I knew of this song back then, I might have looked at the landscape differently. What a great song writer.
Truly sublime. “Until quite modern times all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it-believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive, but could merit, our approval or disapproval, our reverence or our contempt.” CS Lewis
I ran that road and you can feel that song it is one of the most powerful songs about struggling in life and the beauty of the roads with the weather changing . Robert Earl King does this version too and it’s great .
I remember meeting the Great Steve Earle in Jacksons Hotel in Co Donegal ROI and he was everything i always thought he was and i asked if he had seen Townes lately and he just said ya i seen him and he is just the same as he always was. I diden't take to much from that. RIP Townes never will you leave me .........
I've listened to this song so many times that I think I may have even been an instigator of the Dylan / TVZ discussion in these comments 12+ years ago, on a now deleted account. I'm almost in my 30s now and this song comes into my mind all the time.
Hi jthinc23, Townes is a relatively recent discovery for me. I fell head over heels for him about a year ago and haven't been able to listen to anything since! I wish I would have had him in my wild, wild hitchhiking days.
Like many open, bleeding hearts he saved others but couldn't save himself. What other person could walk in their shoes, knowing that life wants to rub him out. A good man is not understood or well loved, until he's gone. Life is cold.
I drove from Chicago to Santa Fe January 1997. As I drove through Raton, Cowboy Junkies were singing "Townes' Blues" and the line "Townes is in the back lounge cursing at them bones He says, 'Ain't this fool ever heard of Raton'" came on as I drove through. I found out he died when I got to Santa Fe. The same thing happened as I drove from Santa Fe to Chicago later that year.
Ha that's funny, I hitched across, well, up, that time, listening mostly to Townes some years back and it fit so perfectly with everything in my life, and I'm guessing that's what you mean too.
