16 BERKELEY BARB, June 30-July 6, 1978 A Rumor In His Own Time

by Michael Goldberg standing of the hopelessness of existence. Yet he can appreciate the small joys that sed to be, I was gonna solve make life worth living. And so many of the world's problems," said his songs express those joys. "Loretta, I Townes Van Zandt. "I was she's a barroom girl/Wears them sevens gonna keep the sun from burn­ ownes Van Zand on her sleeve/ Dances like a diamond ingu out by writing a particular song and shines/ Tells me lies I love to believe." playing it up towards the sun." Because of his career failure, heavy Townes Van Zandt is a Nashville-based drinking and dirt poor existence, Van folksinger. He is best known for a witty and Zandt is seen by those familiar with his telling ballad, "Pancho and Lefty," that work to be somewhat of a tragic figure. Emmylou Harris recorded and which was Confronted with that observation, he the highlight of her album, Luxury Liner agreed with some reservations. "It might (Warner Bros.). be true. I mean it's just living pretty fast "Pancho and Lefty" is the tale of two I guess and being semi-crazy. That repu­ men, one becomes an outlaw, the-other a tation I got from being in and out of the coward who never takes a risk. The song hospital a few times. Just going looney." depicts the hopelessness of either course. Asked if that still happens, he said, Townes ends it like this. "Now the poets "Well, days off it happens a lot. If you're tell how Pancho fell/Lefty's livin' in a playing night after night and all of a sud­ cheap hotel/ The desert's quiet and Cleve­ den you got a day off, nowhere to drive land's cold/ So the story ends we're told/ to. So you and the boys get a jug and sit Pancho needs your prayers it's true/ Save in the room and get blissed and all of a a few for Lefty too/ He just did what he sudden you get crazy." had to do/ Now he's growin' old." The son of a wealthy Fort Worth oil Townes Van Zandt's ability to poignantly family, Van Zandt first turned on to the capture the existential dilemma in simple idea of being a musician when Elvis verse should have enabled him to become played on the Ed Sullivan show in 1956. a popular folksinger of his generation. But "Seeing Elvis on Ed Sullivan was the first Van Zandt became a folksinger towards time I realized that playing the guitar the end of the Sixties when folk music went was even something people did for money. out of fashion. It has never come back into Before that I just thought people played fashion and subsequently Van Zandt is, as guitar for fun and then had a job. Then it Tom Waits likes to say, "A rumor in my snapped, that was his job." own time." When he got out of high school he also, Though he has recorded seven albums, "got through all that teenage identity most of them were for a small obscure crisis, I just came out of it a folksing­ label, Poppy Records, and almost nobody er." Van Zandt entered the Houston folk heard or bought them. Van Zandt is known scene in 1968, playing with folksingers only to those who scrupulously study liner like Jerry Jeff Walker and Guy Clark. notes for the songs he contributed to al­ 'The folk boom ended about 1966," he bums by Hoyt Axton, Doc Watson, Emmy­ said. "When I got there it wasn't like it lou Harris and others. For the small used to be. Used to be ten folksingers a pockets of folk music fans located around night, place full seven nights a week. the country who were hip to Van Zandt in Everybody would get $10 a night. But the late Sixties, he remains a well-kept those places have been gone for years. secret nobody has managed to reveal to The prices for folksingers went down." the general public. Now, however, Van Zandt has a brand Sitting in an empty dressing room at the new album, Flying Shoes, released by Great American Music Hall, Van Zandt Tomato Records. Tomato is also re­ looked tense and nervous. Like Anthony leasing all of his previous Poppy albums. Perkins in "Psycho" or De Niroin 'Taxi And, buoyed by the notoriety that Emmy­ Driver," he seemed to be a time bomb lou Harris' cover of "Pancho and Lefty" ready to explode -- the ordinary man who has given him, Van Zandt is touring the one day picks up a hatchet and murders country for the first time in nearly 10 Townes Van Zandt: "The terror and sorrow of a sensitive man who has looked into the five children in cold blood. Yet despite abyss and seen ... the abyss." years. Accompanied by a fiddle player frazzled nerves, he claims to have mel­ and a lead guitarist, he is finally becom­ lowed some. "Now man,""he said, "Ijust ing more than just a fading rumor. go out and play. I figure you can change $30 a month. The cabin is fairly inaccessi­ album, is indicative of Van Zandt's per­ Van Zandt says that even in these dis­ things in your own brain and a few other ble down miles and miles of often muddy ceptive writing: co/ rock V roll times, he occasionally brains who are listening at a particular road. An outhouse stands behind the cabin. finds young kids asking for advice about time but you can't stop the world in its It's an isolated existence in which Van Days up and down they corhe being a folksinger. "When somebody asks tracks. That's what I became a folksinger Zandt, on occasion, "receives" a song. Like rain on a conga drum me how to do it, I just tell them, you just for, to alter the course of the universe." "I never think about what I'm gonna Forgot most, remembering some have to be willing to starve and blow Far from changing the universe, Van write or how I'm gonna write it,"he says, But don't turn none away everything else but folksinging off. I mean Zandt, instead, shrank his personal world. lighting his third cigarette in 15 minutes. Everything is not enough if you have to make a decision about how For the past four years he has been a "It's always like. . .(he makes a sound And nothing is too much to bear to go about it, forget it. I mean it's sup­ recluse. Tales of his death occasionally like lightning striking a tree). . .and Where you been is good and done posed to grab you and drag you and give leaked north from his home in Austin, there's a line. I put it down and whatever All you keep is the getting there you no choice whatsoever." Texas. Poppy Records folded in the early it's about, that's what the song is about. To live's to fly And was that the case for him? Seventies and Van Zandt didn't pursue an­ It's here's a line, here's the song. It just Low and high "I resisted for a while, just because other label, choosing instead to hole up in appears from the video of my brain in So shake the dust off your wings I didn't know what was going on. I didn't Colorado for a time and then in Austin. the finished form. Bukka White said they And the sleep out of your eyes. know there was such a thing as being a He lived in a slummy trailer court in came from the sky." folksinger. But I didn't resist it for long. Austin and didn't perform outside ofTex- Last year Live at the Old Quarter, One writer once said of him, 'Townes Because it's the wild side of life. You're as. Even his local appearances in funky Houston, Texas suddenly made its ap­ carried the terror and the sorrow of a always on that side of life, which is Austin and Houston dives were infrequent. pearance on a new label, Tomato Rec­ sensitive man who has looked into the where I'd be anyway. But this way I play Van Zandt was (and is) a heavy drinker ords, formed by the man who once ran abyss and seen. . .the abyss." His songs the guitar, instead of being 100 percent and he earned meager wages helping an Poppy. 'To Live Is To Fly," from that and delivery are infused with an under­ wild." elderly blacksmith. "It was hard times in Texas," he slurred. "No money. Playing for $40 or $50 and splitting it among.fO friends and everyone barely getting by. .HAVING FUN. .NOT Tobacco Road. Tortilla Flat type of 1 AM HAVING FlNAllV HAVIN& times." FVN- I oven FUM-. One of the Houston dives Van Zandt ..t NOT HAVING ..6(z- f played was an infamous brick 18' by 36' t AM NOT FUN- bar called the Old Quarter. In the summer HAVING of'73, he made an appearance there which HAVING FUN drew an overflowing crowd. Though in­ \ AM MOT- ebriated to a degree few non-Texans can comprehend, the audience managed to keep their participation to a low level, leaving the performing to Van Zandt. He was in great form that night. Accompanying him­ self on acoustic guitar, he sang all his great songs and the whole performance was recorded. But the years passed and no album was released. Two years ago Van Zandt moved from Texas to Tennessee. He found an old one- room cabin, 20 miles south of Nashville on an 800-acre farm, that he now rents for