The
Texas music community suffered a major blow on New Year’s Day when Townes Van Zandt, the dean of
Texas songwriters, passed away at his home in Smyrna, Tennessee, a few miles
outside of Nashville. A heart attack, no doubt brought on by years of living
the quintessential drifting troubadour life, ended the brilliant, Fort
Worth-born musician’s career at age 52. A driven artist, he entered that life
willingly, leaving behind a wealthy oil family to model himself on Lightnin’
Hopkins and Woody Guthrie.
It’s difficult to put into words what his death means to Texas music. Despite
his slight appearance, the poet with the dark, haunting eyes — and soul to
match — towered over even the biggest giants of Lone Star songwriting. Since
his 1968 debut, For the Sake of the Song, up until 1994’s No Deeper
Blue, Van Zandt created an immense body of work that would inspire Steve
Earle to proclaim, “Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world
and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.”
Even the most mainstream of country fans know Van Zandt, via Willie Nelson and
Merle Haggard’s cover of his “Pancho & Lefty,” which they took to Number
One in 1983, while in the rock & roll world, Neil Young, Mudhoney, and the
Cowboy Junkies all sang his praises.
Griff Luneburg, who booked Van Zandt for nearly 15 years at the Cactus Cafe,
called the Chronicle from Nashville after Van Zandt’s funeral, saying
one could understand Van Zandt’s importance by “who played at his service. They
were all Texans and they were all influenced by Townes. Steve Earle played,
Lyle Lovett, Nanci Griffith played a Townes song, Emmylou Harris… well, she’s
not a Texan, but she was one of Townes’ earliest supporters, cutting `Pancho
& Lefty’ the first time. He was a major influence on all those people.”
Luneberg says Van Zandt came to consider the Cactus his home club, adding that
“he only missed one gig in all those times. He was stranded on his houseboat on
Lake Travis with a broken arm in ’84. Nobody called, and Mickey White showed up
— his guitar player — and everybody’s waiting around, and we said, `Well,
guess he’s not showing up.’ So Mickey played some Townes songs, and we played
Live at the Old Quarter over the P.A., and everybody just stayed. Lyle
Lovett showed up and got up there and played `Flying Shoes,’ and then we played
more Townes music on the stereo, and nobody asked for their money back.
“He was so gracious to people. He had no ego, and was really generous with his
fans, he would go out and talk to them after the show. He never wanted the
adulation. He appreciated it, but it wasn’t that important to him. You know
that Steve Earle quote? Townes was always kind of embarrassed by that. He said
`Hey, Bob Dylan would never let Steve Earle get close to his coffee table.'”
This article appears in January 10 • 1997 and January 10 • 1997 (Cover).