Townes Van Zandt
John Townes Van Zandt was an American singer-songwriter. He wrote numerous songs, such as "Pancho and Lefty", "If I Needed You", "Snake Mountain Blues", "Our Mother the Mountain", "Waitin' Round to Die", and "To Live's to Fly". His musical style has often been described as melancholic and features rich, poetic lyrics. During his early years, Van Zandt was respected for his guitar playing and fingerpicking ability.
Much of Van Zandt's life was spent touring bars, music clubs, colleges, folk venues, and festivals, often lodging in motel rooms or the homes of friends. He suffered from drug addiction and alcoholism, and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. When he was young, the now-discredited insulin shock therapy erased much of his long-term memory.
In 1983, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard covered and popularized Van Zandt's song "Pancho and Lefty", reaching number one on the Billboard country music chart. Van Zandt's influence has been cited by countless artists across multiple genres and his music has been recorded or performed by Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, Alison Krauss, Merle Haggard, Norah Jones, Emmylou Harris, Counting Crows, Steve Earle, Whitey Morgan, Rodney Crowell, Robert Earl Keen Jr., Nanci Griffith, Guy Clark, Wade Bowen, Gillian Welch, The Be Good Tanyas, Richard Buckner, Pat Green, Colter Wall, Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle, Jason Isbell, Calvin Russell, Natalie Maines, Jason Molina, Michael Weston King, Kevin Morby, Stephen Duffy, Doc Watson, Cowboy Junkies,Kurt Vile, Terry Allen, Frank Turner, Rowland S. Howard, Tindersticks, Cave In, Amenra, Charley Crockett, Tyler Childers, Lost Dog Street Band, The Brothers Lazaroff and Marissa Nadler.
Van Zandt died on New Year's Day 1997 from cardiac arrhythmia caused by health problems stemming from years of substance abuse. A revival of interest in Van Zandt blossomed in the 2000s. During the decade, two books, a documentary film, and numerous magazine articles were written about him.
Biography
Early life
Born in Fort Worth, Texas, into a wealthy family, Van Zandt was a great-great-great-grandson of Isaac Van Zandt and a great-great-grandnephew of K. M. Van Zandt.Townes' parents were Harris Williams Van Zandt and Dorothy Townes. He had two siblings, Bill and Donna. Harris was a corporate lawyer and his career required the family to move several times during the 1950s and 1960s. In 1952, the family relocated from Fort Worth to Midland, Texas for six months before moving to Billings, Montana.
At Christmas in 1956, Townes's father gave him a guitar, which he practiced while wandering the countryside. He later told an interviewer that "seeing Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan Show was the starting point for me becoming a guitar player... I just thought that Elvis had all the money in the world, all the Cadillacs and all the girls, and all he did was play the guitar and sing. That made a big impression on me." In 1958, the family moved to Boulder, Colorado. Van Zandt remembered his time in Colorado fondly and often visited it as an adult. He later referred to Colorado in "My Proud Mountains", "Colorado Girl", and "Snowin' on Raton". Townes was a good student and active in team sports. In grade school, he was found to have a high IQ, and his parents began grooming him to become a lawyer or senator. Fearing that his family would move again, he willingly decided to attend the Shattuck School in Faribault, Minnesota. He scored 1170 on the SAT in January 1962. His family soon moved to Houston, Texas.
In 1962, he enrolled at the University of Colorado Boulder, wrote poetry, and listened to records by Lightnin' Hopkins and Hank Williams. In the spring of his second year, his parents flew to Boulder to bring Townes back to Houston, worried about his binge drinking and episodes of depression. They admitted him to the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, where he was diagnosed with manic depression. He received three months of insulin shock therapy, which erased much of his long-term memory. Afterwards, his mother said that her "biggest regret in life was that she had allowed that treatment to occur". In 1965, he was accepted into the University of Houston's pre-law program. Soon after, he attempted to join the Air Force, but was rejected because of a doctor's diagnosis that labelled him "an acute manic-depressive who has made minimal adjustments to life". After Townes's father died in January 1966 at age 52, he quit school and went on the road for the first time having been inspired by his singer-songwriter heroes to pursue a career in playing music.
Early musical career
In 1965, Van Zandt began playing regular shows at the Jester Lounge in Houston for $10 per night. After the Jester closed, he began to regularly perform at Sand Mountain Coffee House. In these Houston clubs, he met fellow musicians Lightnin' Hopkins, Guy Clark, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Doc Watson. His repertoire consisted mostly of covers of songs written by Hopkins, Bob Dylan, and others, as well as original novelty songs like "Fraternity Blues." In 1966, Harris Van Zandt encouraged his son to stop playing covers and write his own songs.At one point around 1968, Van Zandt was roommates with 13th Floor Elevators singer Roky Erickson. Erickson suggested that he audition as the Elevators' new bassist, even though he was a guitarist who had never played bass before. When Tommy Hall found out he never played bass, he kicked him out of the audition.
In 1968, Van Zandt met songwriter Mickey Newbury in a Houston coffee shop. Newbury persuaded Van Zandt to go to Nashville, Tennessee, where he was introduced by Newbury to the man who became his longtime producer, "Cowboy" Jack Clement.
Van Zandt cited Lightnin' Hopkins, Bob Dylan, and Hank Williams and such varied artists as Muddy Waters, The Rolling Stones, Blind Willie McTell, Tchaikovsky, and Jefferson Airplane as having had a major impact on his music.
1970s
The years between 1968 and 1973 proved to be his most prolific era. Van Zandt released six albums during the time period: For the Sake of the Song, Our Mother the Mountain, Townes Van Zandt, Delta Momma Blues, High, Low and In Between, and The Late Great Townes Van Zandt. Among the tracks written for these albums were "To Live Is to Fly", "Pancho and Lefty", and "If I Needed You". These songs eventually raised Van Zandt to near-legend status in American and European songwriting circles.In 1972, he recorded tracks for an album with a working title of Seven Come Eleven, which remained unreleased for many years due to a dispute between his manager Kevin Eggers and producer Jack Clement. Eggers either could not or refused to pay for the studio sessions, so Clement erased the master tapes. However, before they were deleted, Eggers sneaked into the studio and recorded rough mixes of the songs on to a cassette tape. Tracks from the aborted Seven Come Eleven debacle later surfaced on The Nashville Sessions.
In 1975, Van Zandt was featured prominently in the documentary film Heartworn Highways with Guy Clark, Steve Earle, Steve Young, Gamble Rogers, Charlie Daniels and David Allan Coe. His segment of the film was shot at his run-down trailer home in Austin, Texas, where Van Zandt is shown drinking straight whiskey during the middle of the day, shooting and playing with guns, and performing the songs "Waitin' Around to Die" and "Pancho and Lefty." He was the only person in the film to play directly to the camera, and, according to Steve Earle, "stole that entire film." His soon-to-be second wife Cindy and dog Geraldine are featured in the film.
In 1977, Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas was released. The album showcased Van Zandt solo at a 1973 concert before a small audience, and less elaborately produced than many of his early records. The album received positive reviews, and is considered by many to be among the best albums that the songwriter ever released.
In the mid-1970s, Van Zandt split from his longtime manager, Kevin Eggers. He found a new manager, John Lomax III, who set up a fan club for Van Zandt. Though the club was only advertised through small ads in the back of music magazines, Lomax immediately began to receive hundreds of impassioned letters from around the world written by people who felt touched by Van Zandt. Some of the letters described how his material often served as a crutch for those who were dealing with depression. In 1978, the singer fired Lomax and re-hired Eggers. He soon signed with Eggers' new label, Tomato Records. The following year, he recorded Flyin' Shoes; he did not release another album until 1987's At My Window. Despite critical acclaim, he remained a cult figure. He normally played small venues but began to move towards playing larger venues during the 1990s. For much of the 1970s, he lived a reclusive life outside of Nashville in a tin-roofed, bare-boards shack with no heat, plumbing or telephone, occasionally appearing in town to play shows.
1980s–1990s
Several of Van Zandt's compositions were recorded by other artists, such as Emmylou Harris who, with Don Williams, had a No. 3 country hit in 1981 with "If I Needed You," and Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, the pair taking "Pancho and Lefty" to No. 1 on the country charts in 1983. Van Zandt had a small cameo appearance in the video for the song. In his later years, he recorded less frequently, his voice and singing style altered in part because of his drug addiction and alcoholism. However, he continued writing songs, such as "Marie" and "The Hole".According to Susanna Clark, Van Zandt turned down repeated invitations to write with Bob Dylan. Dylan was reportedly a "big fan" of Townes and claimed to have all of his records; Van Zandt admired Dylan's songs, but didn't care for his celebrity. The two first met during a chance encounter outside a costume shop in the South Congress district of Austin, on June 21, 1986. According to Johnny Guess, Dylan later arranged another meeting with the songwriter. The Drag in Austin was shut down due to Dylan being in town; Van Zandt drove his motorhome to the cordoned-off area, after which Dylan boarded the vehicle and requested to hear him play several songs. In May and June 1990, he opened for the Cowboy Junkies during a two-month-long tour of the United States and Canada, which exposed him to a younger generation of fans. As a result, he wrote the song "Cowboy Junkies Lament" for the group, with a verse about each member of the band.