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Rating: Townes Van Zandt never invented anything.
He is the miner who gently carries on the work of his fellow brethren, the gold seeker who insists on extracting from the earth the last remnants of extinct precious metals.
But he is also a heretical miner, devoted to that demonic god who sells eternal songs at the price of life itself. And, as a gold seeker, he lacks the pragmatism of someone who has not found wealth but has not lost the ability to smile and walk on the earth; rendered blind and almost insane, abandoned in his cabin, he continues to dream of rivers whose sands are gold, lead, blood, skulls, and suffering tibias.
The tools of the trade are always the usual: a river of inspiration from whose source one can distinguish, in the mist, the mouth; a six-string pickaxe with which to extract lost dreams, loves burned too quickly or left too long to infect the soul; and pianos with healthy and tartar-stained teeth, half-drunk slide guitars that slip weeping like narrators of the spirits of distant lovers, discreet and solitary fiddles or gathered in violent armies.
Townes' songs have the rare ability to console the afflicted, even in their absolute lack of hope ("Well, many of the songs, they aren't sad, they're hopeless"); their strength is the same as valleys at the onset of winter: the search for a form of beauty difficult to see, buried among leaves chasing each other through crevasses and hidden in the bones of deer resting after misfortune, can only lead to wanting to trim away the superfluous, to work the soul like flint and rid it of too much stone, of too much difficulty in loving, of too much ignoble spiritual misery.
With "The Late Great Townes Van Zandt" Townes has left at least three immense songs. "Snow Don't Fall", a ballad about the death of a beloved woman, soaked in tears in its heart-wrenching sincerity; "Pancho and Lefty", where the ancient friendship between two outlaws is mixed with betrayal, narrated with pity and delicacy, without the arrogance of the fierce moralist inquisitor; one glimpses, distant but clear, the asymmetrical friendship between Townes and Steve Earle and the two paths they then found themselves on: success and fame for Earle, despair, poverty, alcoholism, loneliness, and unwavering dedication to music for Townes.
And finally "Silver Ships Of Andilar", the perfect counterpart to "Snow Don't Fall": while the latter, an intimate poem, is based on few words and the relationship between two lovers separated by the grave, "Silver Ships Of Andilar" is a song of epic collective breath, similar to "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" in its literal structure and to the Soviet epics of Mario Rigoni Stern regarding its subject.
"Her eyes did laugh
Her lips did sing
Her legs did roll
My soul to bring
Her hair did curl
And her thoughts unfurled
Like birds upon
The wings of spring"
( from Snow Don't Fall)
A poet with pierced hands, a craftsman with a soul strewn with painful wooden splinters, a miner who pays with his life the attempt to bring himself to life: Townes Van Zandt.
Fort Worth, March 7, 1944 - January 1, 1997
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 No Lonesome Tune (04:21)
I ain't gonna sing no lonesome tune
Ah, babe, I'm a-commin' soon
I cannot believe I stayed so long away
But a man must look around
And you're the sweetest thing I've found
Your lost high roller's rollin' home today
My daddy said to me
son, it's hard as you will see
To find someone upon whom to rely
In the kitchen mama sneezed
And he grinned big as you please
Said bless you and a tear come to his eye
I did decide that very day
That I would like to live that way
And now I know I just been wastin' time
It's with you that I should be
If you feel the same 'bout me
I'm headed home along the straightest line
02 Sad Cinderella (04:15)
By townes van zandt
When the bandits have stolen your jewelry and gone
And your crippled young gypsy, he's grown tall and strong
And your dead misconceptions have proven you wrong
Well then, princess, where you plannin' to turn to?
When your magazine memory has spun you around
And you realize your lovers were just painted clowns
And outside your window you start hearing sounds
Where they're building a cross for to burn you
When all your bright scarlet turn slowly to blue
Will you stop and decide that it's over?
When your teardrops go sour and no longer fall
The splash cross the virgin that lives down your hall
And spends all her nights with an ear to your wall
Well then, what will you have you can offer?
When the firedancers finish and leave you alone
With nothing but embers and sacks full of stone
That hang round your neck, slicing through to the bone
Will there still be place for your laughter?
As your shattered illusions come a-tumblin' home
And all of the butchers you've nourished have grown
And they are suddenly able to leave you alone
And they run like slaves that are set free
When your questions are answered and your pleading is done
And your mind starts to screaming that you ain't the one
That once dwelled within you, will you turn, will you run
Then princess, will you come home and get me?
05 Honky Tonkin' (03:44)
Well if your baby leaves you,
And you got no place to go,
Come and see me darlin',
And bring along some dough.
(Chorus)
And we'll go honky tonkin, honky tonkin
Honky tonkin, honky tonkin
We'll go honkin tonkin 'round this town.
If you and your old man,
Have a fallin' out,
Well you come and see me darlin,
And we'll go steppin' out.
(chorus)
I'm headin' out to the city,
To the city fair,
If you wanna do the boogie babe,
You can meet me there.
(chorus) x2
06 Snow Don't Fall (02:27)
By townes van zandt
Snow don't fall
On summers time
Wind don't blow
Below the sea
My loves lies
'neath frozen skies
And waits in sweet
Repose for me
Her eyes did laugh
Her lips did sing
Her legs did roll
My soul to bring
Her hair did curl
And her thoughts unfurled
Like birds upon
The wings of spring
My love I need not see
To know she cast her glance at me
Snow don't fall
On summers time
Wind don't blow
Below the sea
My loves lies
'neath frozen skies
And waits in sweet
Repose for me
07 Fraulein (02:42)
Far across the blue water lives an old german's daughter
By the banks of the old river rhine
Where i loved her and left her but i can't forget her
I miss my pretty fraulein
Fraulein, fraulein, look up toward the heavens
Each night when the starts start to shine
By the same stars above you, i swear that i love you
You are my pretty fraulein
<instrumental interlude-"country fiddle">
When my memories wander a-way over yonder
To the sweetheart that i left behind
In a moment of glory a face comes before me
The face of my pretty fraulein
Fraulein, fraulein, walk down by the river
Pretend that your hand's holdin' mine
By the same stars above you i swear that i love you
You are my pretty fraulein
08 Pancho & Lefty (03:40)
Living on the road my friend,
Is gonna keep you free and clean
Now you wear your skin like iron,
Your breath as hard as kerosene.
You weren't your mama's only boy,
But her favorite one it seems
She began to cry when you said goodbye,
And sank into your dreams.
Pancho was a bandit boy,
His horse was fast as polished steel
He wore his gun outside his pants
For all the honest world to feel.
Pancho met his match you know
On the deserts down in Mexico
Nobody heard his dying words,
Ah but that's the way it goes.
All the Federales say
They could have had him any day
They only let him slip away
Out of kindness, I suppose.
Lefty, he can't sing the blues
All night long like he used to.
The dust that Pancho bit down south
Ended up in lefty's mouth
The day they laid poor Pancho low,
Lefty split for Ohio
Where he got the bread to go,
There ain't nobody knows
The poets tell how Pancho fell,
And Lefty's living in cheap hotels
The desert's quiet, Cleveland's cold,
And so the story ends we're told
Pancho needs your prayers it's true,
But save a few for lefty too
He only did what he had to do,
And now he's growing old
09 If I Needed You (03:44)
By townes van zandt
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 pain
In 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 two
The 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
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