Townes Van Zandt

I was cleaning out some old stuff on my TiVo when I ran across an old episode of Austin City Limits. The show was a tribute to Townes Van Zandt, filmed in 1998, with Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Klein Bearkat Lyle Lovett, Guy Clark, Rodney Crowell, Nanci Griffith, Steve Earle, Peter Rowan, producer Jack Clement, and Van Zandt's oldest son, John T. Van Zandt.

Music has the ability to pierce the soul, at least for me, more than any other medium. I was watching Steve Earl play "Fort Worth Blues," a song he had written shortly after Townes died on New Year's Day 1997, and the camera panned over to Nanci Griffith, and there were tears streaming down her face. I watched the rest of the show the same way. The songs were phenomenal, and the musicians were some of my favorites. Townes was a songwriter's songwriter, and musicians are still recording his music. Norah Jones has included several . One of the funniest things on the show was a friend of Townes that quoted him as saying "there's only two kinds of music. Blues, and zip-a-dee-doo-dah". That kind of sums up the moods of his songs, many of which were dark and brooding, but even the more upbeat songs had an undercurrent of loneliness.



Photo by Scott Newton for Austin City Limits