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Rating: It is truly surprising how no one, absolutely no one, knows this great poet of song.
“Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the world; I would say it in front of Dylan with my boots on his table”. Steve Earle once said this; the tone of that sentence was certainly provocative, but it is even more incredible with how much cold indifference people, even now, do not pay the slightest attention to the poetry and genius of this immense songwriter, just because ignorance reigns supreme among us. His work forms one of the vital backbones of American music, of an importance comparable to that of Dylan, Neil Young, or Leonard Cohen. He has produced at least twenty masterpiece songs that elevate him to the ranks of the greatest word artists ever to exist. Born in Texas to a very wealthy oil family, he decided to make his own life. He bravely turned his back on the comforts of an easy bourgeois life; instead, he decisively chose the path of toil, sweat, pain.
A writing that is pure and simple poetry, accompanied by a razor-sharp voice that encompasses the sufferings and melancholy of an entire existence. An introverted, lonely soul, incapable of smiling; his face a mask of pain. It is truly impossible to listen to his album if the sun is shining outside the window.
Van Zandt was the most desperate and sweet artist ever heard in modern music. His isolation, his life distant from everyone and everything, that distant and forgotten song of such a sad story that it hurts the heart, represent the highest point of resignation and cruelty of spirit ever felt in modern music. Beyond De André and Cohen, his is a despair without end, lasting an entire life and without the slightest hope of serenity. Van Zandt died of a heart attack, alone like an abandoned dog; at fifty-seven, he left us with a production of inestimable value and the testimony of a life of immense pain. He was a man truly tormented by the malaise of living: he would disappear for long periods swallowed by tremendous depressive crises. In the darkest solitude, he attempted suicide several times and lived for years in the dense woods of Tennessee, in a wooden house he built himself.
Deep and severe. His acoustic guitar and his voice; breaking syllables with luminous precision, dripping bitter honey in grave registers. The pure and crystalline country, marvelously merging with the blues of the fathers and the best folk tradition. Our Mother The Mountain is his most mature and powerful album, adorned with afflicted violins and sweet guitars; one of the highest and most noble manifestos of the true meaning contained within the most genuine country tradition. His is the best vision of this style, second only to that of the unparalleled master Hank Williams. But in this case, the pupil comes so close to the master that Our Mother The Mountain gives the impression of being an investiture directly from heaven: it truly seems that the spirit of Hank Williams is sitting next to him, just as he sings these beautiful pieces. Furthermore, throughout the album looms the ghost of another great master of the past: the great father of folk and Dylan, Woody Guthrie.
Kathleen, the second track of the album, lets us entirely savor what has been said so far. The track is severe and austere but at the same time of a harrowing melancholy. The other emotions that this piece manages to convey cannot really be explained in words. It is a sweet and at the same time chilling shiver. Along the same line, we find the soft and desolate Like a Summer Thursday, splendid in its melody that truly takes you far away. One thus encounters one of the most beautiful songs ever written: Our Mother The Mountain, magnified by that enchanted flute that elevates it to an otherworldly dimension. Second Lovers Song is instead a relentless manifesto of the depression that continuously afflicts him. But it is halfway through this already splendid album that Van Zandt gives us his two greatest jewels: first St.John The Gambler, a caressing and melancholic ballad that touches directly the listener's heart if they have a heart for music. And then, one of those songs that is worth an entire career or an entire life: Tacumseh Valley, sung with a voice drenched in tears, standing out on an absolute melody, elusive yet real, pierced by the entry of a harmonica that inevitably stays inside.
Tacumseh Valley knows no rivals, having the same weight and importance as Visions of Johanna by Dylan, Suzanne by Cohen, or Ambulance Blues by Neil Young.
This review is not flattering. It honors an unjustly unknown artist, forgotten even by critics. I hope it will be useful for you to discover and love a true genius, misunderstood and forgotten for too long.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
02 Kathleen (02:47)
By townes van zandt
It's plain to see, the sun won't shine today
But I ain't in the mood for sunshine anyway
Maybe I'll go insane
I got to stop the pain
Or maybe I'll go down to see kathleen.
A swallow comes and tells me of her dreams
She says she'd like to know just what they mean
I feel like I could die
As I watch her flying by
Ride the north wind down to see kathleen.
Stars hang high above, the oceans roar
The moon is come to lead me to her door
There's crystal across the sand
And the waves, they take my hand.
Soon I'm gonna see my sweet kathleen.
Soon I'm gonna see my sweet kathleen.
05 Our Mother the Mountain (04:21)
By townes van zandt
My lover comes to me with a rose on her bosom
The moon's dancin' purple
All through her black hair
And a ladies-in-waiting she stands 'neath my window
And the sun will rise soon
On the false and the fair
She tells me she comes from my mother the mountain
Her skin fits her tightly
And her lips do not lie
She silently slips from her throat a medallion
Slowly she twirls it
In front of my eyes
I watch her, I love her, I long for to touch her
The satin she's wearin'
Is shimmering blue
Outside my window her ladies are sleeping
My dogs have gone hunting
The howling is through
So I reach for her hand and her eyes turns to poison
And her hair turns to splinters,
And her flesh turns to brine
She leaps cross the room, she stands in the window
And screams that my first-born
Will surely be blind
She throws herself out to the black of the nightfall
She's parted her lips
But she makes not a sound
I fly down the stairway, and I run to the garden
No trace of my true love
Is there to be found
So walk these hills lightly, and watch who you're lovin'
By mother the mountain
I swear that it's true
Love not a woman with hair black as midnight
And her dress made of satin
All shimmering blue
07 St. John the Gambler (03:06)
by Townes Van Zandt
When she had twenty years she turned to her mother
saying Mother, I know that you'll grieve
but I've given my soul to St John the gambler
tomorrow comes time leave
for the hills cannot hold back my sorrow forever
and dead men lay deep 'round the door
the only salvation thats mine for the asking
so mother, think on me no more
Winter held high round the mountains breast
and the cold of a thousand snows
lay heaped upon the forests leaf
but she dressed in calico
for a gambler likes his women fancy
fancy she would be
and the fire of her longing would keep way the cold
and her dress was a sight to see
But the road was long beneath the feet
she followed her frozen breath
in search of a certain St John the gambler
stumbling to her death
she heard his laughter right down from the mountains
and danced with her mothers tears
to a funeral drawn a calico
'neath the cross of twenty years
To a funeral drawn a calico
'neath the cross of twenty years
08 Tecumseh Valley (04:57)
The name she gave was Caroline
Daughter of miner
And her ways were free
And it seemed to me
That sunshine walked beside her
She come from Spencer across the hill
She said her Pa had sent her
'Cause the coal was low
And soon the snow
Would turn the skies to winter
She said she'd come to look for work
She was not not seeking favors
And for a dime day
And a place to stay
She turn those hands to labor
But the times were hard, Lord, and the jobs were few
All through Tecumseh valley
But she asked around
And a job she found
Tendin' bar for Gypsy Sally
She saved enough to get back home
When spring replaced the winter
But her dreams were denied
Her Pa had died
Word come down from Spencer
So she turned to whorin' out on the streets
With all the lust inside her
And it was many a man
Returned again
To lay himself beside her
They found her down beneath the stairs
That led to Gypsy Sally's
An in her hand when she died
Was a note that cired
Fare thee well
Tecoumseh valley
The name she gave was Caroline
Daughter of miner
And her ways were free
And it seemed to me
That sunshine walked beside her
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