The Transient Townes Van Zandt
The quietest moment of the 70s was captured at a Townes Van Zandt concert. It’s a specific second on Live at the Old Texas Quarter, Houston, Texas: the outro of “Poncho & Lefty,” and Townes’ bare warble singing the line ‘I suppose…’
The moment is tactile, like a dry wind dying over a vast stretch of land. On Live…, Townes was performing at a familiar venue along a well-worn Houston circuit of bars and coffee shops, to listeners likely familiar with this material. But there was something particularly sobering about “Poncho & Lefty” this time around. Perhaps the audience at the Old Quarter hears something new in the legend of Poncho – something about Townes, or about themselves.
The listener is positioned to cheer for the cowboy Poncho, in line with a long legacy of classic Western movie arcs. The lines between good and evil are stark, as much as white and black. The protagonist is supposed to emerge. But Poncho is sold out by Lefty and delivered a premature death, not at the height of the hero’s journey but somewhere below the summit.
Poncho’s story has a wrongness about it, but that doesn’t necessarily jump out in the song’s studio release on The Late, Great Townes Van Zandt. The jauntiness of this version’s instrumentation paints the story in a bittersweet tone, not necessarily much more imposing in its presentation than the song’s famous covers. And perhaps this is what we hear on Live…: a patient performance, stripped to the bone instrumentally, rendering the song all the more resonant. But something else transpires among the audience at the Old Quarter, some trepidation.
Where Townes Van Zandt jumps out in the narrative of “Poncho & Lefty” exemplifies why so many writers have leaned on the word “troubled” when reflecting upon Townes’ life. “Troubled” is accurate to Townes; it is also reductive, just in the way that any of us could have our story told only through one lens and be remarked upon as “troubled.” In Townes’ case, his story was often told from the angle of the addiction which rode with him through his life. But “troubled” doesn’t accurately portray the dynamic tone of Townes’ songs, or his story.
Even among just a handful of his classics, Townes’ songs are romantic and yearning and capture something uniquely youthful, and other tales show Townes to be weathered beyond his years. The tone of Townes’ writing pulls wildly in different directions, his songs’ eclecticism being their greatest consistency. What truly connects Townes’ songs is the author who seemed so alive and living as to conjure such visceral images of triumph and trials.
Pictures of Townes spanning his life wield a similar range of impact. In his youth he wore the expression of a man who saw life’s highway stretching out far before him and felt its eager pull beneath his feet. Pictures from toward the end of his life have an air of finality about them that’s difficult to draw one’s eyes from.
Townes’ shows by this point were inconsistent; Townes was routinely too inebriated to get through any of his songs, and at other times came through with a clarity and an intrigue that rarely seemed lost on any in his audience.
What makes Live… essential to the Townes legend is not necessarily any pin we put in “Poncho & Lefty,” but in the many moments that make up the album’s atmosphere. It’s in the sharp contrast between the somber finale of “Poncho & Lefty” and the dick joke Townes opens the next track on, in a moment that seems similarly reflective of the person Townes is remembered to be. Townes’ performance at the Old Quarter reveals his many sides more evenly than his studio albums were capable of, with its palette of eloquent tributes to friends, humorous juvenilia, and the songs his lovers heard their stories in.
By contrast to the sparsity of Live…, Townes’ studio albums were frequently produced to a fault, evening out the nuanced mood of his music in a style that didn’t reflect Townes’ dynamic writing. The more explicit loss was Townes’ guitar. Townes’ tender fingerpicking was often buried beneath unnamed session musicians and now-dated sound design. His songwriting always cut through, but the issue of overproduction cropped up throughout his discography, and mishandling by his (mis)manager can only be partially blamed. Townes himself seemed, at times, rather ambivalent towards the studio environment.
Townes apathy surrounding the arrangement of his albums – not a disregard but a general disinterest – suggested the studio didn’t fit into his vision of his artistry. Townes certainly took issue enough with select tracks, re-recording and re-releasing them for two or even three albums. But quotes from Townes’ studio sessions indicate he still often felt his finished product was adequate, but rarely better.
Recording his songs seemed a means to an end, only as important to Townes as a paycheck. But given Townes’ propensity to literally throw his entire earnings from shows to the destitute, or gamble the dollars away before the next, it could be said the only reason Townes’ material was ever recorded was because of an industry who thought they could profit off of his craftsmanship.
Live… came to light for different reasons. Although the tapes from the Old Quarter shows languished for a couple of years in industry hands, the initial idea was brought about by friends and peers. Those who encouraged Townes to record a live album had themselves bore witness to the power Townes wielded with an audience, had themselves felt the momentary joining of souls between artist and listener that could only occur live.
Townes quest as he travelled through life was to write the song that would earn him the moment of communion. Townes even admitted he might have written the song he required (“Snow Don’t Fall,” for the curious). But it was too delicate for him to play live, and so he needed to write the song that would shake God’s throne for a second time.
Townes said that if he could touch the soul of just one listener, then he would be satisfied by his life’s work. For decades, Townes was pulled unrelentingly down the road towards that potential stroke of perfection. By his own admission, he felt this goal was always just out of reach. This is the best explanation I’ve come up with for Townes’ apathy towards the studio, as the studio isn’t pertinent to the craft of songwriting, only to the way it’s commercially packaged.
Townes shared the sentiment less than a year before his death that he had never written what he needed, somehow encapsulating the career of one of the greatest contemporary singer-songwriters with a feeling of imminent failure. Townes was 51 at the time. His father died at 52. In Townes’ mind, these facts were related. It could be said that Townes lacked optimism by this point in his life.
Over the years, the many sides of Townes’ character seemed to be lost in one another. His life, the road, the tours, by some point they had all blended together into a causeless martyrdom. All those years of moving forward seemed to bear down on him; the once balanced emotions in his songwriting grew outpaced by the existential and the bereft, as heard on his last recorded sessions.
Townes’ singular charisma made him friends everywhere he went, but Townes seems to have turned to his friends just as a means of staying a touring musician. He never elected to become a family man for his children, or his wife, never putting down roots somewhere stable. Perhaps staying still wasn’t in his nature. His desire to touch hearts with his music became a sort of desperation, believing what he sought was somewhere out there, but that his only chance of finding it was on the road.
No longer the young man who once saw the road, the sky, and the Earth stretching out before him, Townes by this point was a transient man, constantly walking forwards, but with the road turning in on itself, running him in circles like a man trapped along a Möbius strip. It’s unclear when he did, or if it was ever conscious, but by some age Townes seems to have decided upon the horizon as his only draw in life, and never ceased moving towards it.
By Townes’ own standard, he never wrote the song that would bring him into communion with his audience, and never saw his moment without guise. No pastoral metaphor from his discography was vital enough to elicit what he needed, no tribute was romantic enough, no tale was profound enough. But luckily for his fans, the moment where Townes saw a hint of greatness and began moving forever towards it was recorded. It’s that second on the live version of “Poncho & Lefty:”
‘I suppose…’
Anecdotal references were pulled from the book A Deeper Blue: The Life and Music of Townes Van Zandt by Robert Earl Hardy.