A Deeper Blue: The Life and Music of Townes Van Zandt
ing to the writer Robert K. Oermann, the Twelfth and Porter show was billed as “the return of the lost sheep to the songwriting fold,” adding that Townes was “surely one of the lambs who has wandered astray. Indeed, he practically defines the personality of the ne’er do well tunesmith.”3 The sense of this being a momentous night was intensified because Harold Eggers had arranged for the show to be recorded for a possible live album.
Apparently, among his ventures at the time, Eggers was trying to promote Willie Nelson’s daughter Susie as a singer, and he had the notion that he could somehow involve her in the current recording project with Townes and his band. Hence, he set up the evening’s recording in a peculiar way. “They put me and Townes’ guitars on the same track,” White recalls. “It should have been Townes’ voice on a track, his guitar on a track, my guitar on a track, and Donny on a track,” White says. “How else would you do it? But because Little H wanted to have a separate track for Ms. Nelson to sing on, me and Townes’ guitars got put on one track, and it eliminated our ability to mix them. The counterpoint and stuff that we were doing was buried.”
White overdubbed some additional guitar tracks later, but he had mixed feelings about the final recording. Because the new Tomato label was already having financial difficulty, however, with Kevin Eggers falling somewhat into the shadows, the recording ended up being shelved until 1987, when it was released on the small Sugar Hill label as
Live and Obscure
.4 Of some note is the fact that, for the first time, the “executive producer”
credit on the release went to Harold F. Eggers Jr., with the added credit that the record was manufactured under license from something called the Eggers Group Inc. Eggers later stated that
Live and Obscure
was “the first album put out with myself as co-owner with TVZ.”5
Another big name in the audience at Twelfth and Porter that night was Cowboy Jack Clement. “Jack really liked the act and proposed bringing us into the studio as a trio, as an ensemble, and just sitting us down in a circle playing these tunes, and he’d turn the tape on. Basically doing in the studio what we had No Deeper Blue
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done that night, just adding a bass and drums,” White recalls.
This sounded like an excellent plan to Townes, who had no other viable recording irons in the fire and was happy to work again with Clement.
A few months later, Townes, Mickey, and Donny were back in Nashville, where they stayed for about two weeks working on the first basic tracks for the record at Clement’s Cowboy Arms Hotel and Recording Spa. Nashville pro Jim Rooney was the recording engineer, and the record’s de facto producer. “This is Jack’s approach to producing,” White says. “He had this little xeroxed sheet that he gave us all. There were about eight bulleted items; the two that I remember were ‘No headphones’ and ‘Remember, it only takes three minutes to cut a hit song.’” Clement spent minimal time in the studio after that, leaving the nuts and bolts of the recording to Rooney. Clement’s approach, however—to have the musicians “sit around in a circle and play the songs”—
was undertaken and accomplished. Among Townes’ records, Clement remembers
At My Window
as “the best one I was ever involved in.”6
As he had in the past, Clement again surrounded Townes with Nashville studio pros. Roy Huskey Jr. was recruited to play upright bass, and Kenny Malone played drums. Townes had recorded tracks with Huskey’s father for his third album,
Townes
Van Zandt,
and he was again pleased to be working with con-summate professionals who were also warm, friendly people.
The simple recording process went reasonably well. “We put Roy and Kenny behind [sound] baffles,” White recollects; “We were never more than about five or six feet apart.” White overdubbed some lead guitar parts—on “Buckskin Stallion Blues,” for example—but most of the recording was live, with the regular exception of Silverman’s flute and sax parts. “Once we started playing, Donny immediately bailed out on the concept, because there was just no room for error,” according to White. “Mickey Raphael was hanging around, and I said ‘hey Mickey, we got one for you,’ which was ‘Snowin’ on Raton.’ Everything was done hot, and Mickey did an overdub.” Nashville veteran Chuck Co-200
A Deeper Blue: The Life and Music of Townes Van Zandt
chran was also “hanging around” and added some tasteful piano lines to several tracks.
As White remembers, “Townes was trying to get the opportunity to record these songs the way he wanted. Unfortunately, from my perspective, I think that Townes by this time had started to lose his edge, certainly on his guitar playing. And his singing wasn’t quite as committed as it had been. His voice sounded better, a little older, but he didn’t have quite the commitment in his voice that he had had, say, for
Our Mother the Mountain
.”
The production of
At My Window
was well conceived and well executed, the sound clean, the arrangements straightforward and appropriate—leaning gently toward the best contemporary country sound—and the musicianship superb. The songs themselves are a mixed bag, with some disarmingly strong new material (especially “Snowin’ on Raton” and “The Catfish Song”; to a slightly lesser extent “Blue Wind Blew” and “Still Lookin’
for You”), some more mundane new songs (“Ain’t Leavin’ Your Love,” “Gone, Gone Blues,” and “Little Sundance #2”), and some old songs, including a third revisiting of “For the Sake of the Song” and new versions of two major songs from the
Seven
Come Eleven
sessions that were being released for the first time: the laconic, Robert Frost-inspired “At My Window” and the beautiful, strangely perfect “Buckskin Stallion Blues.”
Danny Rowland remembers the seed of “Snowin’ on Raton”
being planted during a long drive from Colorado to Texas, through the Raton Pass overnight, to make it to the next gig.7
“Snowin’ on Raton” is one of Townes’ best songs—if not
the
best—from what by this point can be called his “late” period.
The song seems to explore a poetic question; something like, when the beauty of life and love are gone, will the memory sustain you in eternity?
The chorus—a simple melody cast on a framework of finger-picked blues chord changes—and the elegant movement of the words, stands as one of Townes’ most moving, haunting statements: “It’s snowin’ on Raton/Come morning I’ll be through them hills and gone.” Townes, transient, will move on; eter-No Deeper Blue
201
nity will not notice. As in other significant songs throughout Townes’ canon to this point—notably, “Highway Kind”—the road is a dominant image here, Townes’ old friend, for better or worse. Again the feeling is of the resignation and acceptance that comes at the end of life’s journey, when you’re almost “through them hills and gone,” and silence is all that is left.
“When I first heard it, it just bowled me over,” David Olney says of the song. “It’s a beautiful song. It’s like a real folk song.
There’s a line in it, ‘Tomorrow the mountains will be sleeping/
silent ’neath a blanket green and blue.’ Well, to me, when you think of snow-capped mountains, it would be a blanket of white.
And I think that’s visually probably what he saw, but
emotionally
, the blanket was green and blue.” Olney also notes how the personal touch in the song is similar to that in some of Townes’
other songs. “The verse about mother and little brother, that reminds me of ‘Rex’s Blues.’ I didn’t notice until I was singing both songs that they both mention brother and sister and mother and baby, or little darlin’. They’re like recurring characters.”
“The Catfish Song,” like “Flyin’ Shoes,” originated by the side of the Harpeth River in Frankin, Tennessee, and has as its central image the murky depths of a riverbed. Also like “Flyin’ Shoes,”
the changing seasons figure prominently, and the course of a relationship is likened to the course of nature. The mood of the song is tender regret, of dreams and even memories lost, but tempered with the comfort of being a part of nature. But it is implicit that the singer isn’t planning on being around much longer, and he’s leaving his hopes at the bottom of the “dirty old river.”
Like Van Zandt’s live recording project that year, the fruits of these studio sessions wouldn’t see the light of day until 1987.
In fact, for months after the initial sessions, Clement continued to add tracks to the tapes, remix tracks, and otherwise work on
“finishing” the record. He shopped the project to a number of small labels, including Rounder Records, before the North Carolina label Sugar Hill Records picked it up and released it. As White recalls,
At My Window
“regenerated a little bit of enthu-202
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siasm on Townes’ part. He’d added to his body of work, which he’d wanted to do for a long time; he felt good about the new songs; he got good reviews.” He adds: “Butch Hancock told me that’s his favorite Townes album. It’s really Townes.”
Not long after the
At My Window
sessions, Guy Clark asked Townes to come along with him, John Stewart, and Peter Rowan on a brief tour of England and Scotland, including joint gigs in clubs and theatre-sized halls in London, Wolverhampton, Stock-port, York, and Perth. It was on this tour that Townes began to develop a love of the British Isles and the British people that brought him back to England, Scotland, and Ireland numerous times in the next few years. He also became aware that he had a large audience outside of the United States, and that the road through Europe—an unexpected extension of the road he had been traveling all these years—might be the road that would carry him where he needed to go.
Back in Austin, on the afternoon of June 26, 1986, Townes Van Zandt and Bob Dylan chanced to meet. As Larry Monroe tells the story, Dylan was shopping in Electric Ladyland, a costume shop on South Congress. Monroe and his daughter were there, and they saw Blaze Foley come into the store and go into the room where Dylan was shopping. Some moments later, Foley appeared at Monroe’s side and said, “Bob Dylan is outside talking to Townes. Come on, I’ll introduce you to him.” By the time they got outside, as Monroe wrote, “the drifter had escaped.”
Foley told him that “he had walked up to Dylan, introduced himself and said Townes was out front. Dylan had wanted to meet Townes, and they had immediately gone outside. Blaze had seen me on the way out and had come back in to get me after he introduced Dylan to Townes.”8
Peggy Underwood remembers that both Blaze and Townes—
who were near the end of a days-long drinking campaign at the time—were very excited by the meeting with Dylan. “Dylan definitely knew who Townes was,” she says. “There was some talk of recording something, but it never happened.”9 Mickey White No Deeper Blue
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recalls a vague connection with Dylan mentioned by Kevin Eggers some time before. “Kevin told me years ago, back in the seventies, that Dylan was real interested in Townes and was proposing something,” White says. “But, you know, I think Townes would have been real uncomfortable doing that with anybody, much less Bob Dylan.”
Susanna Clark agrees. “Townes was funny,” she says. “Bob Dylan was a big fan of Townes. Every time Bob Dylan came to town, his people would call the house and say, ‘There’s a backstage pass ready for you at the Dylan concert.’” She also recalls hearing that Dylan’s “people” extended overtures to Townes.
“They would call, and Dylan would want to write with Townes.
Townes never did accept that invitation. He didn’t write with people very well.” Susanna also notes that Townes was inherently
“not impressed” with Dylan’s stature, although he admired his writing. As she recalls, “Townes kind of made a joke. He said that when he ran into Bob Dylan on the street, Bob Dylan said,
‘Oh, I have all your records.’ And Townes said, ‘Apparently.’”
Toward the end of the year, Jeanene began looking for a place to live in Nashville. Once again, the Austin environment was prov-ing too toxic for Townes; it was too hard for Jeanene to keep him reasonably sober there, especially while raising a small child.
In addition, she was interested in seeing Townes pursue the career opportunities that she figured would be knocking in Music City. She knew Townes’ history in Nashville, but she believed that it was the place to be. “It was a big choice in his life right then,” Townes’ friend Lyse Moore remembers. Moore, a Texan, had moved to Nashville from Houston, where she had been an owner of the folk club Anderson Fair. “But he told me he was going to go to Nashville with Jeanene. That’s what Van Gogh would do, he said. He was really in his Van Gogh period.”10
That Halloween, the Van Zandts—Townes, Jeanene, and three-and-a-half-year-old Will—moved from Austin to 313
Town Park Drive, Nashville, near the airport outside of town.
Lyse Moore recalls that Jeaneane “made the trip up with Will
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A Deeper Blue: The Life and Music of Townes Van Zandt
and a girlfriend of hers, and Townes followed in a few days. She had had a vision of a yellow house, and she found one by the airport.” Townes renewed his acquaintance with his old friend Bob Moore (no relation to Lyse Moore), with whom he had been close since he lived in Franklin. Bob observed that Townes joked about his new Nashville home, “saying that he had the perfect place to live; he was right by the airport and there were two liquor stores—he called them ‘LSs’—and a mental hospital all within walking distance.”11
Lyse Moore credits Jeanene with making the right move in leaving Austin and coming to Nashville. “I did not like Jeanene at first. I didn’t like where she was from, I didn’t like what she did, but she earned my respect through time…. She got him out of Austin. He was about to go down there; he would have just drunk himself to death. He was sitting around the house with his entourage of drunks and folks that he’d have fetch and do things; it was sort of embarrassing to watch.”
Townes continued to tour heavily throughout 1986 and into 1987, including a number of shows sharing the bill with Guy Clark, and some with David Olney. He played the prestigious West Virginia
Mountain Stage
live radio program, hit both the Winnipeg and Edmonton folk festivals in Canada, and returned to Europe for gigs in England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Netherlands in the fall.