A Deeper Blue (26 page)

remembers. “Instead of me being this nuisance, I had earned my way into the circle.” Later that day, J.T., “trying to ride out the good impression I had made on him earlier,” heard a bird singing and casually asked Townes what kind of bird it was. Townes replied harshly, “That’s a mourning dove, you little idiot! Don’t you know you shot its fucking soul mate?” J.T. was hurt and startled by his father’s intensity. “He was all saliva and veins, off the deep end,” J.T. says. As Fran recalls, “J.T. called me in the middle of the night to get him out of there.”

Townes spent most of 1979 on the road in support of
Flyin’

Shoes
, while Cindy remained behind in Franklin. Townes’ still-healing arm and diminished ability to play the guitar caused the 1979 tour to be remembered as the “broken arm tour,” but Ruester, Gray, and Cody were a dependable support group, both musically and as friends. Townes’ drinking was getting worse, but it was always worse at home than on the road. At one point that year, when he was home with Cindy, he instructed her to chain him to a tree in the yard so he would not be able to get any more booze. “I thought, ‘well, okay, get ready to get yourself chained to the tree.’ So he had a big old chain and a lock and I did it. I told him to give me the key, and I’ll leave. And I left in his truck. Ooohhh, he was mad.”

She left him with a half-pint of vodka and a can of orange crush. “I came back about four or five hours later, after he’d well finished his half-pint and had been sitting there for two hours,”

she recalls. “He was mad. He said, ‘Give me the key.’ I threw him the key to the chain to unlock himself and I ran. I went running
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A Deeper Blue: The Life and Music of Townes Van Zandt
down that driveway and down the creek and I hid up there in the woods. He came racing down the road in his truck, fishtail-ing sideways. It was scary.”

Cindy tries to sum up their Nashville experience: “Townes was able to support himself with the gigs. I always had to take care of the money, to make sure he didn’t just give it away, or gamble it away, and eventually I was having to babysit him, someone who was older than me. But he had lots of opportunities that he just didn’t take. He could have pushed some of his songs. We were wanting Waylon Jennings and people like that to do maybe one of his songs, or Johnny Cash. But he’d say, ‘If they want to do one of my songs, they can come see me.’ He wasn’t gonna go to them.”

Townes offered his own summary to a contemporary writer, declaring that “The kinda songs I play—poem songs, story songs—are not what you’d call a particularly accepted mode of art these days. Then, too those people in Nashville consider me a weird recluse who they’ve heard of but who never comes to land. I’ll come into town, like, five minutes and give ’em a tape and disappear. But still, most of those Nashville folks won’t do a waltz. Won’t do a ballad. Won’t do things in a minor key. Nashville’s just not geared for minor keys.”22

Townes Van Zandt.

PHOTO BY JIM MCGUIRE, COURTESY OF NASHVILLEPORTRAITS.COM

Townes performing, early 1972.

COURTESY OF THE PHOTOGRAPHER, ANDREW STERLING.

Townes and Fran’s wedding, Houston, Texas, 1965. From left: Fran’s
parents, Fran, Townes, and Townes’ parents, Dorothy Townes Van
Zandt and Harris Williams Van Zandt.

COURTESY OF FRAN LOHR.

Townes with Guy

and Susanna Clark,

Nashville, Tennessee,

1970s.

COURTESY OF

GUY AND SUSANNA CLARK.

Pickin’ on the porch, Nashville, Tennessee, 1970s. From left: Townes,
Susanna, Guy, and Daniel.

COURTESY OF GUY AND SUSANNA CLARK.

Townes and Cindy,

Houston, Texas, 1970s.

COURTESY OF DANNY ROWLAND.

Townes with Mickey White.

COURTESY OF JET WHITT.

On the road, late 1970s. From left: Danny “Ruester” Rowland,
Townes, Owen Cody, and Jimmie Gray.

COURTESY OF DANNY ROWLAND.

Amigos, fellow songwriters:

Richard Dobson and Blaze

Foley, Nashville, Tennessee,

1980s.

COURTESY OF LYSE MOORE.