If you’ve been playing attention this week, the music of Townes Van Zandt has come up a few times. Well, okay, maybe only once. On…Tuesday? Or was it Wednesday? Guys, I’m pretty sure I’m losing my memory.
I said the other day that if you took the ten best Townes songs and put them together in one place you might have the greatest singer/songwriter record ever made. Then I put myself to the test to see if I could compile such a selection. I think I have. Unfortunately for you I kind of have scruples, so I’m not going to post 10 mp3s here for you to listen to. At most you’re going to get three. The rest of the onus is on you to find the songs and hear them for yourself.
Also, I feel like I need to keep drinking in order to sleep through the night these days, so I’m gonna forego explanations for all the songs (who cares WHY they’re the best, they just are!) and focus more on brevity. So I can go out and drink. Got it?
The Ten Best Townes Van Zandt Songs
10. Lungs [MP3] – Fuckin’ great song. That last little verse, a little bit of a sneer sneaking through, “And I for one, and you for two / Ain’t got the time for outside / Keep your injured looks to you / We’ll tell the world that we tried.”
09. Tower Song – YouTube Link – Delta Momma Blues contains two songs that appear on this list (this, and “Rake”), but one could argue that “Nothin'” might also belong on this list. “The wind blows cold outside your door / It whispers words I’ve tried before / But you don’t hear me anymore / Your pride’s just too demanding.” Beautiful words, beautiful instrumentation, and that haunting voice. Perfect.
08. Why She’s Acting This Way – YouTube Link
07. For The Sake Of A Song – YouTube Link – From Townes’ first studio album. Overshadowed by the brilliant “Waiting ‘Round To Die”, but combined with the more upbeat “Tecumseh Valley” you could argue that there are three phenomenal MUST HEAR songs on that album (which is also called For The Sake Of A Song, by the way).
06. Kathleen [MP3] – As I mentioned the other day, I’m a sucker for well-arranged strings, and this song has a beautiful arrangement.
05. Be Here To Love Me – Sometimes I think this song is a bit of a joke (lines like “you and I both know it’s only the warm glow of wine” sound a bit tongue-in-cheek, and the chords are so upbeat) but there’s still a plea involved — whether said in jest or not — that is as memorable as it is brilliant. “Hold me and tell me that you’ll be here to love me today.” It’s honest, it’s vulnerable, and let’s face it, we’ve all made the same plea to someone before.
04. Flyin’ Shoes – His voice sounds so weary. I love the little flourishes, the little piano and mandolin parts really shine through the loneliness and sorrow.
03. Waiting ‘Round To Die – YouTube Link – Probably his best song if you were to take a straw poll of fans who don’t like “Pancho & Lefty,” but it’s not my favorite.
02. If I Needed You [MP3] –
We hear multiple people explain that they thought that Townes was the best song writer they’d ever seen/heard/met. But at no point in Brown’s film does anyone attempt the kind of close reading that one gets, routinely even, with Dylanologists. From my perspective, that’s the weakest point of the picture. We get to hear the songs, sometimes by Townes, other times by Lyle Lovett, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson & Merle Haggard – we even learn a little about how they feel about them (Harris and Townes’ first wife both say that If I Needed You was written “for” them, an explanation at odds with Van Zandt’s own.) If you look at the actual lyrics –
If I needed you
would you come to me,
would you come to me,
and ease my pain?
If you needed me
I would come to you
I’d swim the seas
for to ease your painIn the night forlorn
the morning’s born
and the morning shines
with the lights of love
You will miss sunrise
if you close your eyes
that would break
my heart in twoThe lady’s with me now
since I showed her how
to lay her lily
hand in mine
Loop and Lil agree
she’s a sight to see
and a treasure for
the poor to find– they’re quite simple. While they tend toward certain patterns, they’re not at all rigid in their structure. Thus the ABBC format of the first quatrain is not repeated in the second, which is BABC. The next two stanzas both contain two quatrains, but now the rhyme scheme has become more regularized – AABC. Only in the final stanza do we find a second rhyme – the last line of each quatrain. What this scheme really sets up, tho, is a critical pause that occurs at the end of the third line in each quatrain. Listening to recordings of either Van Zandt or Harris, it often sounds as if two short lines lead to a longer third, e.g., to lay her lily hand in mine, and that ambiguity – to my ear at least – is the key to this song’s measure. Also worth noting are the number of syllables per line here – a number that in the song itself means that shorter lines possess words that will extend over the music. Each stanza contains six five-syllable lines, and two shorter ones. It’s worth noting where in the three stanzas these condensed lines fall, again in a pattern that is both intentional & not systematic. Above all else, this is a text dominated by one-syllable words, a device that harkens back to poets like Larry Eigner & Lew Welch. In these 24 lines, just ten words have two syllables and none have more. The only moment of difficulty, to even call it that, is the reference to two persons, Loop and Lil, never mentioned otherwise in the song. A final – and my favorite – touch is the use of the word or syllable for, which occurs exactly once in each stanza, always at a critical point. That’s a tiny detail, but it says a lot about Van Zandt’s formal imagination, which is hardly as haphazard as we’ve come to expect from popular song. Did this come to him in a dream as he claimed? We should all be so lucky.
01. Rake – I wrote about “Rake” the other day and explained why it’s my favorite. The lyrics are SO dark. There’s a lot of ugly self-reflection going on here. And yet it’s a hauntingly beautiful song whose musicality can very easy draw your attention away from the subject matter. It’s a perfect portrait of Townes in that for all the narrator’s sins that pile up over the course of his life, they catch up with him in the end and lead to his demise. It’s a shame Townes was such a tortured soul. He really was one of the greatest songwriters to ever pick up a guitar.
