THE SADDEST OPTIMIST
(Townes Van Zandt, March 7 1944 – January 1 1997)

If it had been up to Teunis van Zand, the great-grandfather of Townes van Zandt, Texas might still be independent. An emissary for the new country called Texas, he traveled to France to raise funds for the emerging republic. His great-grandson Townes and his buddy Steve Earle continue(d) to represent the spirit of true independence. Under the Texas ‘Lone Star’ complete opposites get intoxicated in fraternity at the weirdest places. Where the Confederates were ordered to regroup; where the Bushes found their peace; where ‘flatbed trucks’ drive around with scary gun-racks; and where card-carrying NRA members and serial shooters get their rocks off from bell towers. More than ample fodder for country singers and songwriters in the Americana genre can be found in the streets of the Armadillo State.

Ever since my first 1988 trip to Austin I’ve been in love with Texas and have since befriended many of its great creative spirits. Willie Nelson, Louis Meyers, David Waddell, Robert Rodriguez, Hayes Carl, Jimmy LaFave, Patricia Vonne and Townes van Zandt. Music is the obvious heartbeat of Texas. And the road between Austin and Nashville its umbilical cord. The guys you talk to in Nashville today, you’ll see playing in Austin tomorrow. Vice versa, too. And then there’s always that rumor swelling that Willie will throw a surprise gig around the corner….

Everyone I know in Austin has had a spell with Townes. The depressed and depressive troubadour, assisted by his personal demons Gambling, Booze & Heroine, tried everything to stay away from fame. His life seems a span of dark moments and hilarious incidents, enough for scores of books and a couple of movies and documentaries.

Young Townes was diagnosed as a 'schizophrenic-reactionary manic-depressive,' hospitalized and put through a program of insulin shock treatment, which unfortunately erased a lot of his earliest memories. In essence that made him into a loner and emotional drifter. He only felt comfortable living dangerously ‘on the road’ and kept himself slightly sane writing about things he experienced, and his state of mind, in a very detached way.

He didn’t care about material matters and gave away what wouldn’t fit in his suitcase. And often he would leave the club after a gig giving his pay away to homeless and panhandlers. I remember being called to haul him from the sidewalk in front of Austin’s beautiful Driskill Hotel just before a SXSW showcase. Seeing him pass out at Berlin Independence Days, when Peter Rowan sang “Mexican Airforce” at Quasimodo, in front of the very stage where we planned to launch Townes the next day. Wonderfully melancholic are my memories of his ’91 European trip. We said our goodbyes one Sunday afternoon, after I handed him 7000 dollars in cash. ‘Jeanine will love this, it’ll be the first time ever I’m bringing money home’, Townes sighed in his undercooled drawl. But just before he boarded the plane, our hero got drunk at the casino and his stash vaporized. Townes had a thing for gambling but was actually the worst gambler ever. He told me that the only person he could beat at it was Guy Clark. Coming home emptyhanded, Townes was tied by wife Jeanine to a tree in front of the house with a sign around his neck telling passersby: ‘I Am A Junkie and a Drunk’.

When we organized the Singer Songwriter Marathon in the Netherlands, first week of January 1992, with Townes, Guy Clark, Alex Chilton, Eric Anderson and others, I was proud of how well Townes behaved and stayed away from excessive drinking. On stage he seemed more disciplined than ever. My stomach turned, however, when at the end of Townes set at Amsterdam’s Paradiso, closing a series of sold-out history-making shows, Guy Clark stepped on stage with a bottle of whiskey and force-fed Townes back into alcoholism.

Townes Van Zandt died on my birthday, January 1, in 1997. I was so angry! But then again, Townes was a man of surprises. Not all equally funny. And of horror stories. The one about Bianca DeLeon seeing his toe wiggle in the morgue is the most morbid. And I know three versions of Townes tempting Steve Earle into a game of Russian roulette (cocking a loaded pistol to his own temple). Townes told me he needed space and Steve and his wife out of the house they all shared. Steve claims a complete different version, in which he comes out the bravest. But I also faintly remember a third in which Steve and his wife were nursing a delirious and pretty ailing Townes.

Bianca de Léon, erstwhile drug mule and now Americana singer, once told me that in a haze of drugs in the middle of the seventies she convinced Townes to get married. She left him to make the necessary preparations and when she returned to the hotel, she found Townes dying from an overdose. She dosed herself some more to get the strength to drive Townes to the hospital. The doctor in charge declared our hero dead on the spot and he was put on ice in the mortuary. Bianca insisted to see him one more time and then noticed his big toe wiggling, the one with the label with his name on it. She started screaming and got a doctor to reanimate Townes. When Bianca finally left the hospital, she was too stoned to drive. She curled her car around a tree and woke up with an IV in her arm in the bed next to her lover.

Our poet laureate repeatedly defied the grim reaper when he showed up in a haze of booze or at a heroine OD, but ironically Townes eventually expired from the complications of a broken ankle. Had he lived a little more of a regular lifestyle, the world would probably have recognized Van Zandt as the greatest poet that Texas ever birthed. Although Emmylou, Dylan and Willie all took a shot at his “Pancho and Lefty”, his real fame only came posthumously.

 According to Mickey Newbury, Townes was ‘somebody who looks a little like Hank and even writes like Hank probably would have written. But I tell ya', I think Townes is better. I consider him in the same category as Dylan and McCartney". Van Zandt's songs were a major influence on Newbury’s work and Mickey claimed that that inspiration was passed along to tunesmiths like Kris Kristofferson. ‘With the market flooded with all-too-often mediocre singer-songwriters, it would be very easy to overlook Townes Van Zandt. But it would be a mistake because he is one of the very best. Townes' quiet, unassuming voice and guitar come across like a fresh prairie breeze. If there would be any justice in this world, he'd be a star, not just the property of a tiny band of followers who count his records among their most prized possessions. Townes' songs are evocations of the American earth; deeply loving, free of fashionable sneers, yet almost oppressively sad’ wrote Jerome Green in Rolling Stone.

In Austin, Texas, one speaks of the derelict, rambling and rowdy Townes Van Zandt with the respect reserved for icons. Steve Earle loudly voiced that he would “stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots” to tell him that Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world”. And some twenty years later, Steve Earle once again delivered a similar statement and underlined that great quote with a beautiful homage to his bemourned friend in the form of the album “Townes”.

I’ve seen some incredible Steve Earle shows but only met the man twice. Once through his dope dealer, legendary bass player David Waddell. And once I hung out with Los Super Seven at Austin’s best kept Mexican secret, Las Manitas. Joe Ely, Rick Trevino and Steve Earle were featured vocalists. I also met some of the wives of the reputed serial marrier. Theresa, an A&M Records A&R executive, with their baby at the fitness room of the Four Seasons. Allison Moorer, wife number seven, guests on the “Townes” album. Sometimes our lives are linked by songs. I named my label Corazong around the time Steve’s “Corazon” album came out. And the Dutch band Taneytown that I signed at the beginning of this century, took its name from a song of that same album.

There’s a lot that makes Steve Earle the ideal ‘voix interpret’ of Townes’ songs. They both called their sons J.T., Justin Townes van Zandt and Justin Townes Earle. Steve and Townes, both poets and rebellious bards, outspoken, honest to the bone. Roughed up and polished down to the core while on the road forever: “Living on the road my friend was gonna keep you free and clean. Now you wear your skin like iron, your breath's as hard as kerosene”. Keeping it shy of frills made Steve’s “Townes” a masterpiece. The arrangements are sparse and leave space for your own countermelodies and to imagine your own background vocals. Steve sings “Pancho And Lefty” just for himself, doesn’t sound like he’s worried about us understanding every word, just wanting to sing it the way it’s ringing in his head, the way he would have sung it to Townes in person.

Emmylou Harris has been singing “Pancho And Lefty” since ’68, ’69. Rodney Crowell taught her the song but didn’t know the words and chords himself. It paid a lot of Townes’ bills. There’s been a lot of versions since. From Willie to Dylan. But Steve’s is one of the most personal ones. His version of “No Place To Fall” is done as a slow waltz with an accordion intro and once again, Steve Earle sounds like he lived that life and… yes, he did! “Time, she's a fast old train: she's here, then she's gone, and, she won't come again”.

Lightnin’ Hopkins learned Steve and Townes to sing the blues. When Steve tackles Townes’ “Lungs” it sounds desperate and lonesome. Even more lonesome and desperate than the original. “Well, won't you lend your lungs to me? Mine are collapsing. Breath up the time that’s passing. Pray the day ain't poison. Stand among the ones that live in lonely indecision”. And “Wisdom burned upon a shelf. Who'll kill the raging cancer. Seal the river at its mouth. Take the water prisoner. Fill the sky with screams and cries. Bathe in fiery answers…. Just keep your injured looks to you. We'll tell the world we tried”.

Townes van Zandt and his buddy Steve Earl blur the lines between folk and blues. It’s soul music. Barren soul music. We’re listening to a desert. Skulls and bones dried in the sun. Tumbleweeds forlorn twirling around. And only then your eye falls on the bright little flowers that now seem to be all around you. The most beautiful melody Townes ever laid down belongs to “Marie” and it pretty much sums up all of life’s despair: “Unemployment said I got no more checks and they showed me to the hall - My brother died in Georgia some time ago, I got no one left to call - Summer wasn't bad below the bridge, a little short on food that's all - Now I gotta get Marie some kind of coat, we're headed down into fall - I used to play the mouth harp pretty good, hustled up a little dough - But I got drunk and I woke up rolled…. It's my own fault I suppose”.

From ’68 through ’89 Townes was recording for Kevin Eggers. Like Townes, Kevin is a man of many talents and many problems. A visionary who after Poppy Records and Utopia Records established the unique Tomato Records label in 1975 as breeding ground for musical talents from the ‘global village’, seamlessly marrying marketing of blues, jazz, classical and roots highlights in a way that no other label has ever succeeded. At the same time Kevin was living a complicated life, unable to keep his personal problems away from the business and thus upsetting many of his friends, associates and artists. Million-sellers Phillip Glass and Robert Cray left Tomato after one release. Jimmy LaFave started vomiting when asked why he didn’t release anything within ten years from signing with Tomato Records. Townes, when talking with me about his love-hate-relationship with Tomato Records owner Eggers, once to his own relief remarked: ‘Kevin’s not a bad guy. If him and me would be sitting in a boat making water, he would probably offer me to stand on his shoulders... Although, come to think of it, he would probably insist to stand on mine!’

From ’88 to sometime in 1990 I was President of The MusicWorks, at that time the holding company for Tomato Records. Kevin Eggers told us he decided to overhaul the complete works of Townes Van Zandt and start working on a 64 song 4-CD boxed set of Townes in duet. We were amazed at the magnitude of Kevin’s imagination but also couldn’t figure out whether this was indeed the genius idea that would astonish the world or whether it was a scam to raise money. About a quarter million dollars were transferred in tranches to New York and Texas banks to support the work in progress. Rumor had it that Willie Nelson, Freddie Fender, Kris Kristoffersen and Emmylou Harris were contributing their voices to duets with Townes. But Kevin, although raving about the sessions, never played any of the tapes to us. Producer Steve Mandell and Townes himself seemed bound to a vow of silence, a vow that eventually strangled Mandell.

Throughout the years I became more and more convinced that these sessions never took place and that the alleged sessions at the Fire Station in St. Marcus and Willie’s Pedernales Studios had only been an excuse to relief investors from funds. There was a glimpse of hope when Willie Nelson mentioned that he was asked for permission to release the tracks that he was featured on, but that was the only time ever that it looked to me like the thing was real.

In 2001 Harold Eggers Jr., Kevin’s brother and long-time roadie for Townes, gave me a copy of “Texas Rain”, a single album on Tomato Records with a selection of only 11 songs out of the 64 that I expected. Number 12, “Marie”, a duet with Willie Nelson, came as a great surprise since Townes had told me that he had only written this song after his divorce from Kevin – so how could it be part of this? Looking at the other 11 songs I wonder “Why?” Tomato Records was once famous for its overpaid artwork by Milton Glaser and extensive liner notes by the likes of Pete Welding, Rob Bowman and Robert Palmer. The day before "Revelation In The Courthouse Park" by Harry Partch premiered at Lincoln Center double-CD boxes had to be bought because the extensive booklet unexpectedly didn’t fit into a single jewel-box package. The very liner-notes of “Texas Rain”, however, fail to give us any information whatsoever. While writer John Kruth tries to imitate the famous Tomato liners by Bowman and Palmer, there’s not even one bit of useful information amongst his babble. And what about the artwork? Instead of creating a shrine for Townes’ legacy Milton Glaser has delivered a travesty of all his previous Tomato designs, as if in revenge for unpaid bills... Or maybe his eyesight was no longer what it used to be? Anyway, the cover art lacks any taste at all. It’s embarrassing...

Despite my disappointment and annoyment, I enjoyed almost every song. The classic “If I Needed You”, with Emmylou Harris. An incredible “Pancho and Lefty” with Tejano veterans Rubin Ramos, Doug Sahm, Augie Meyers and Freddie Fender joining Townes. The same guys make “Daydreams of Maria” a borderline (read: Rio Grande) delight. Ever since Paul K. pointed out “Marie” to me, that song has never failed to amaze me. And now here it is with Willie Nelson, the man who brings any duet he does with anyone to unheard dimensions. A cool “Two Girls” with Freddie Fender. Kevin hired Kathy Mattea for “At My Window” before anyone ever heard of her. And then there’s “Kathleen” treated in an Elvis kinda way with the Chromatics doing background humming à la the Jordanaires.

If Kevin wouldn’t have spent most of the money on two Mercedes, useless in New York City, and his two wives, the planned 4-CD-box might have been the defining monument for that great heartfelt and roadworn Texas Poet. But Eggers didn't even spent money acquiring a decent picture of the bard. Adieu to a monument that could have stood shoulder to shoulder to Dylan’s “Bootleg Series” and the Band’s “Last Waltz”. It would have been a great tribute to the man who Steve Earle called ‘the best songwriter in the whole world’, who was styled 'the Van Gogh of lyrics' by music business trade magazine Billboard and described by the New York Times as a writer whose songs feel ‘almost torn from the flesh'.

If there is an after-life and if I ever would meet Townes out there, I got only one question to ask: Townes, with all the desolation and desperation you sing about and all the personal misery I recall, how come my last memory of you is that of an optimist with that beautiful smile on your face?

P.S. Townes was the biggest threat to his own success. Kevin Eggers was the second biggest. Listening to the Tomato Records catalog I'm embarrassed. Maybe “Flying Shoes” withstood the test of time. But the rest of the Tomato/Poppy releases, including “Texas Rain”, no! If you want to hear the Townes that was dear to me, how about “No Deeper Blue” on SugarHill Records or the records that Kevin's brother Harold Eggers jr. produced, especially “Road Songs” and “Documentary” (both available on Germany's Normal Records).