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Though the songs of Townes Van Zandt have been oft covered over the past three decades, on September 9th one of the greatest songwriters of the previous century will be honored with a full tribute album. The fifteen track Poet: A Tribute to Townes Van Zandt will feature Van Zandt's inimitable songcraft covered by musicians and songwriters including Willie Nelson, Lucinda Williams, Emmylou Harris, John Prine, Guy Clark , Steve Earle, the Cowboy Junkies, Robert Earl Keen, Shaver, the Flatlanders, Nanci Griffith , Asleep at the Wheel's Ray Benson, Delbert McClinton, newcomer Pat Haney and Van Zandt's son, Justin Van Zandt.
During his thirty plus years of writing and performing, Van Zandt was something of an Orson Welles figure, a troubled genius, who found reams of critical acclaim that he was never able to translate into record sales; the exceptions being in the form of hit covers by Emmylou Harris and Don Williams ("If I Needed You" in 1981) and Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard ("Pancho and Lefty" in 1983). But Van Zandt's alcohol-fueled gypsy lifestyle and his gift for fusing dark, soul-baring poetry with an ear for the blues of Lightnin' Hopkins and the heart of Hank Williams earned him a substantial following, even prompting his friend and former student Steve Earle to proclaim, "Townes Van Zandt is the best damn songwriter in the whole world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say it." On January 1, 1997, Van Zandt suffered a fatal heart attack at age fifty-two.
The tribute was produced by Fred Foster (Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Roy Orbison), and was recorded in Austin and Nashville over the past two years. Poet features songs that spotlight the breadth of Van Zandt's stylistic range from ballads (Benson tackles "If I Needed You" previously covered by Doc Watson as well as in a hit duet by Don Williams and Emmylou Harris), to road songs (Cowboy Junkies' "The Highway Kind) to the stream of consciousness (Keen takes on the poker narrative "Mr. Mudd and Mr. Gold") to his ethereal masterpiece, "To Live Is to Fly," which Guy Clark tackles for the second time on record.
While the majority of the acts on board have put a Van Zandt song to record before, the Cowboy Junkies are particularly familiar with finding their way around his songs. In 1991, Van Zandt and Junkies songwriter/guitarist Michael Timmins played song-swap on the band's Black Eyed Man, which featured the Junkies covering "To Live Is to Fly" and "Cowboy Junkies Lament," a tune he wrote for the group. Timmins also penned "Townes Blues," for Van Zandt.
"A friend was on his way back from Australia and he stopped by Toronto and had this compilation tape of Townes that he stumbled across," Timmins says of his introduction to Van Zandt's work in the early Eighties. "This tape, that was just it. The voice is phenomenal and his delivery is just superb. We have a great memory of going to see him in Atlanta, on one of our nights off and we were blown away. A few years after that we were getting ready for the Caution Horses tour and thinking about who we wanted to open for us and thought, 'Well, Townes Van Zandt would sure be great,' not really thinking it was possible. And he said, 'I'd love to do it.' He was great and gracious and we became bigger fans after touring with him for three months."
Though the Junkies are familiar with Van Zandt's catalogue, Timmins says song selection can be tough, which is why the band is also planning an entire album of Van Zandt covers, possibly as their next release through their Web site. "You obviously try and find a song that you connect with in some way, and find an approach that gives it a different perspective," Timmins says of the band's method. "The songs are so strong lyrically and there's so much that you can do with them, that even if you screw with the music side of it, it doesn't matter. The hard part is that there's so many songs to choose from with Townes."
Track listing for Poet: A Tribute to Townes Van Zandt:
Guy Clark, "To Live Is To Fly"
Nanci Griffith, "Tower Song"
Billy Joe Shaver, "White Freightlineer Blues"
Cowboy Junkies, "The Highway Kind"
Emmylou Harris, "The Snake Song"
Ray Benson, "If I Needed You"
John Prine, "Loretta"
Lucinda Williams, "Nothin'"
The Flatlanders, "Blue Wind Blew"
Robert Earl Keen, "Mr. Mudd and Mr. Gold"
Steve Earle and the Dukes, "Two Girls"
Willie Nelson, "Marie"
Delbert McClinton, "Pancho and Lefty"
Pat Haney, "Waitin' 'Round to Die"
J.T. Van Zandt, "My Pround Mountains"
ANDREW DANSBY
(May 30, 2001)