Townes Van Zandt: Highway Kind

Subject: Townes Van Zandt: Highway Kind Wed Apr 09, 2008 4:46 pm

“Well there ain't much I ain't tried
Fast livin'
Slow suicide
Then a-runnin' in a place to hide
Just looking for you”

“Still Lookin’ For You” TVZ

That is how the American version of Townes Van Zandt “Highway Kind” opens up, a song that is the falling of a twilight that unfolds into a rich dark tapestry of night. You won’t find “Pancho and Lefty” (Townes most famous song) on “Highway Kind” you won’t find the funny bright eyed Texas Troubadour from the 70’s. What you have is a collection of mostly live songs recorded at the last year of Townes life. They are stark and bleak, hard and harsh. They are beautiful the way the desert is beautiful, they call to you like an old man telling a sad memory for the last time.

Hank Williams may have been the King of Country Music, but Townes Van Zandt was it’s Dark Prince.

Many people have heard the name, but few know the man. Townes is a legend in Country Music, but to call him Country would be a mistake. Like Tom Waits, Neil Young (even though Neil is Canadian we claim him as ours), Townes was a true American Original. Townes was Townes, closer to folk music than anything else, but dark, very very dark. His trials and tribulations with Alcohol and Drugs are best documented some place else. Check out the “Be Here To Love Me” documentary. Suffice to say he was a perennial outsider, a real life drifter who lived on the road and whose appetites where his undoing, much like Johnny Thunders. Much Like Johnny Thunders, Townes had a repertoire of songs he played, signature pieces that influenced generations of players to come after them both.

Released in 1997, the same year Townes died, on Sugarhill Records “Highway Kind” is an often over-looked gem. If you are at all familiar with Townes studio recordings, most made in the 70’s, then you know he had a very gentle sort of voice. That is not the case here. The voice rolling out of your speakers is one that pops up out of the grave on some moonlit night. You can hear the bones in his voice. It is uncomfortable, because you can hear it is the voice of a man who is not long for this world, a man barely 50. A choir of bones with a whiskey and cigarette accompaniment.

Those 70’s recordings are also many times ruined by the notion of the day that you had to have “Strings” Orchestral Strings, dripping sugary nonsense all over everything. Townes got caught in that trap.
But not here, his guitar playing is losing its fluidity, almost struggling to get from string to string. Sometimes getting lost along the way. Those strings are a bell tolling on the dimming of the day. “Highway Kind” is a sort of last testament to Townes genius before Alcohol claimed his life. He died Jan. 1st, 1997, same day as Hank Williams.

“Highway Kind” covers material from all phases of Townes career, with a couple of covers and traditional songs thrown in as usual. Here are some highlights,

“Still Looking For You”: A song about love and it’s loss unlike anything you have ever heard. The recording is so raw and so primitive, I am reminded of recordings of early 30’ Delta Blues. The sense of heartbreak is so overwhelming it can be unbearable. Maybe the single best vocal Townes ever laid down, period. This essay started with the main lyric, here is a bit of the chorus:

“Looking low and looking high
Looking far and looking wide
Try to tell myself that I tried, but it just ain't true
Nah, it just won't do
I'm still looking for you
Still looking for you.”

“Dublin Blues” is a cover of a Guy Clark song. Townes and Guy were friends since the early 70’s, so close was Townes to guy’s wife, no matter what shape he was in he called her ever morning like clockwork. Using the same voice as “Still Lookin’ For You” Townes voice rings out in rusty iron tones, the voice of an old soldier too tired to fight. Sung from the perspective of a man who is drowning at the bar.

“I wish I was in Austin
In the Chili Parlour Bar
Drinkin' Mad Dog Margaritas
And not carin' where you are

But here I sit in Dublin
Just rollin' cigarettes
Holdin' back and chokin' back
The shakes with every breath

Forgive me all my anger
Forgive me all my faults
There's no need to forgive me
For thinkin' what I thought
I loved you from the git go
I'll love you till I die
I loved you on the Spanish steps
The day you said goodbye

I am just a poor boy
Work's my middle name
If money was a reason
I would not be the same

I'll stand up and be counted
I'll face up to the truth
I'll walk away from trouble
But I can't walk away from you

I have been to Fort Worth
I have been to Spain
I have been to proud
To come in out of the rain

I have seen the David
I've seen the Mona Lisa too
I have heard Doc Watson
Play Columbus Stockade Blues

I wish I was in Austin
In a Chili Parlor Bar
Drink Mad Dog Margarita’s
Not Caring Where you are”

“Dublin Blues” Guy Clark

“Blaze’s Blues” is a song about the legendary Austin Singer-Songwriter Blaze Foley, who was gunned down in the 80’s. Blaze had just bought a new guitar when he died, and eerily he promised it to Townes should something happen to him. He was dead a few weeks later. Blaze though had pawned the guitar, and the pawn ticket was in the pocket of the jacket he was buried in. Townes and some buddies got Blaze dug up to get the pawn ticket (true story, Townes tells it on Live at Union Chapel 1994) The song was written on that Guitar.

“I gotta guitar all my own
I gotta quarter for the telephone
I ain't headed down this highway all alone
One two three and maybe four
Honey, they're knockin' on my door
I know you're gonna miss me when I'm gone

Got no daddy but I got a ma
Think she lives in arkansas
Maybe I'll go see her some old day
It ain't like she'd really care
It ain't like she'd pay no fare
But I might just blow on through there anyway

Headed down to alabam
Cause some trouble if I can
Aw, buddy, would you like to come along?
It's a place I never been
And you know I could use a friend
They say they'll give us twenty bucks a song

I gotta guitar all my own
I gotta quarter for the telephone
I ain't headed down this highway all alone
One two three and maybe four
Honey, they're knockin' on my door
You know I'm gonna miss you when I'm gone”

Blaze’s Blues” TVZ

“The Ballad of Ira Hayes” is a song written by Peter Lafarge. It is the absolutely true story of Ira Hayes who was a Puma Indian from Arizona, and one of the men who raised the the flag at Iwo Jima in that famous American Image. He died drunk a few years later, after falling into a mud puddle maybe 3-4 inches deep. He was too intoxicated to lift himself up.

“Highway Kind” was written in 1972 and to hear that recording, you would never recognize this one. The lyrics are a masterpiece:

“My days, they are the highway kind
They only come to leave
But the leavin’ I don’t mind
It’s the comin’ that I crave.
Pour the sun upon the ground
Stand to throw a shadow
Watch it grow into a night
And fill the spinnin’ sky.

Time among the pine trees
It felt like breath of air
Usually I just walk these streets
And tell myself to care.
Sometimes I believe me
And sometimes I don’t hear.
Sometimes the shape I’m in
Won’t let me go.

Well, I don’t know too much for true
But my heart knows how to pound
My legs know how to love someone
My voice knows how to sound.
Shame that it’s not enough
Shame that it is a shame.
Follow the circle down
Where would you be?

You’re the only one I want
I never heard your name.
Let’s hope we meet some day
If we don’t it’s all the same.
I’ll meet the ones between us,
And be thinkin’ ’bout you
And all the places I have seen
And why you where not there.”

The US Version on Sugarhill has 14 tracks, the German version on Normal Records has 16 tracks. One being a great version of “At My Window”.

“Highway Kind” is to Townes Van Zandt what “Tonight’s the Night” was to Neil Young. Here you get a glimpse of one of America’s Greatest Song-Writers at the very end of his life, forcing is broken body and voice to ring out as long as they can. I think it is a great introduction to Townes, even if some consider it a sad memoir of disintegration.

I hope you give it a try. I will leave you with two more lyrics, in my humble opinion they are the best Townes ever wrote.

“I come from a long line
High and low and in between
Same as you
Hills of golden
Hails of poison
Time’s thrown me through
And I believe I’ve come to learn
That turnin’ round
Is to become confusion
And the gold’s no good for spending
And the poison’s hungry waiting

What can you leave behind
When you’re flyin’ lightning fast
And all alone?
Only a trace, my friend,
Spirit of motion born
And direction grown.
A trace that will not fade
In frozen skies
Your journey will be
And if a shadow doesn’t seem much company
Who said it would be?

There is the highway
And the homemade lovin’ kind
The highway’s mine
And us ramblers are getting the travelling down
You fathers build with stones
That stand and shine
Heaven’s where you find it
And you can’t
Take too much with you
But daddy, don’t you listen
It’s just this highway talkin’

All things at are alive
Are brothers in the soil
And in the sky
And I believe it
With my blood
If not my eyes
I don’t know why we can’t
Be brothers here
I know we should be
Answers don’t seem easy
And I’m wonderin’
If they could be”

“High Low & In-Between” TVZ

From “Rex’s Blues” TVZ

“There ain’t no dark till something shines
I’m bound to leave this dark behind”

Cowboy Poetry & Hillybilly Haiku to be sure…