Original subtitles

The

Let me read you this other one, okay?

Yeah.

I got the melody of this one.

Window, please watch the sun go.

Hope that the stars know it's time to shine.

Daydream, be born on dark wings.

Let every sky sing this song of mine.

That's nice, huh?

Uh-huh, yeah.

Is that all you've written on it?

No, no, a bunch more, but I lost another page.

At my window.

Watching the sun go, hoping the stars know it's time to shine.

Daydreams aloft on dark wings, soft as the sun streams at day's decline.

I don't envision a very long life for myself.

Like I think my life will run out before my work does, you know.

I've designed it that way.

Well, you know, I was living up in Lubbock then.

I was just out driving around, and I see this long, tall, scarecrow-looking guy carrying a guitar.

out on the, way out on the edge of town.

He said he had just come from San Francisco

recording a record, and he was heading back to Houston.

And so I took him on the other side of Lubbock,

out where I used to catch rides at,

out by the old Pinky's liquor store.

And he said, you know, thanks a lot,

and he reaches in his backpack.

I kind of look in the backpack and it like there not any clothes in there It nothing but albums So he carried these albums all the way across the desert back to Houston and reaches in and gives me one

I was a little surprised.

I'd never met anybody who'd actually

recorded an album before.

And I take the record back to Jimmy Gilmore.

We put the record on and we're just mesmerized by it.

Ends up we play that record over and over for weeks.

It made us rethink what we were doing and what a song was all about.

I used to wake and run with the moon.

I lived like a rake in a young man.

I covered my lovers with flowers and wounds

My laughter the devil would frighten

The sun she would come and beat me back down

But every cruel day had its nightfall

I'd welcome the stars with wine and guitars

Full of fire and forgetful

I was taking my pride

In the pleasures I'd known

I laughed and said I'll be forgiven

But my laughter turned round

Eyes blazing and said

Friend, we're holding away

I buried my face, but it spoke once again, the night to the day we're abinding.

And now the dark air is like fire on my skin, and even the moonlight is blinding.

Now the dark air is like fire on my skin

And even the moonlight is blinding

Aloneness is a state of being whereas loneliness is a state of feeling It like being broke and being poor Like I feel aloneness all the time And loneliness I hardly ever feel it during the day

But sometimes, you know, like in motels,

I've written a lot of songs during the day,

because in a motel room,

there's not much difference between the day and the night.

And the door's closed and the big rubber curtains are shut,

just like night.

Live from Music City, USA.

It's Nashville now.

Our guests tonight are bluegrass great Bill Monroe and Towns Van Zandt.

You know, I've heard Towns Van Zandt referred to as a cult figure.

and I suppose that means that

though he is not well known,

enough people know about him to make him famous.

I was talking to a fellow a while back who's a big fan of yours,

but he said, I can't find any records by him.

Are there records by you available at the moment?

Well, they're hard.

My wife has them all and my mom had them all.

I see.

And they're operating out of the back of the truck

in the parking lot? Well I hope not. Okay, have they been taken out of circulation?

Pretty much, they're hard to find. That's the reason he was complaining. First of all,

this is a little toast for Townes Van Zandt, who we're here to discuss today, and or cuss.

Some of the songs are very sparse and they don't spell out everything to you.

They allow you to use your imagination and be sucked in.

And Poncho and Lefty is a perfect example.

What?

Oh, I felt that.

What was it?

I think it was me or someone asking what that was about.

He said, I don't know.

And I honestly believed him that he didn't know who Poncho or Lefty was.

In my mind when I'm singing it, I have an idea, I imagine who I think, you know, I'm

Poncho and Haggard's Lefty.

Living on the road, my friend, was going to make you free and clean.

Now you wear your skin like iron.

Your breath as hard as kerosene you know and I could think that was me We haven played Poncho and Lefty in If I Needed You yet Got to get on with it Are they by me Eh

I wrote Pancho and Lefty, I know that.

Did I write If I Need You?

I think you did, yes.

If I needed you.

Oh, yeah, I remember.

It was in my sleep.

Well, if you don't think you wrote it,

just send the royalty payments on to me.

You know, that's mostly what I care about.

They got the address correct.

I'll play a...

I'll play a medley of my hip.

Hey, I'll turn this.

A medley of your hip?

Hey, it's my pie.

You got a little white hat on this side.

What a matter.

I put your man over here.

living on the road my friend was gonna keep you free and clean now you wear your skin like iron

and your breath's as hard as kerosene you weren't your mama's only son but her favorite one it seems

She began to cry when you said goodbye

Sank into your dreams

Is this on the camera?

Well, I'd like to introduce myself.

I'm Townes Van Zandt, and this is my dog Geraldine here.

Geraldine, come here. Geraldine.

Good dog.

Back out here in the light.

Now this is my girlfriend, Cindy, here.

Smile at the camera.

Okay, now, we're gonna first walk around to the backyard.

Would you like a drink?

Okay.

I have one.

Would you hold the gun?

No.

I remember when we were doing the movie Songwriter,

and they told me that Towns was in the audience out there,

and I asked if I could introduce him from the stage.

Before I was singing, I said,

hey, we have a guy out there who's a songwriter.

Songwriter.

And when he stood up,

up and knew immediately that it hadn't happened to him before or enough because

because he was so proud. I saw him do stuff man when he was just perfect

perfectly at ease, relaxed, just not fucked up, just high.

Just having fucking 1965 Hill, Phil Hippie fun high.

Playing his fucking heart out, you know?

Songs that just took your breath away.

That's our job, is to try to hit that mark.

I suppose most families have somebody who can get away with things nobody else could

get away with just because of who they are and their personality.

And in our family, that was Townes.

I think it bothered him in a lot of ways that he didn't grow up hungry.

He grew up with mom and a dad who both loved him when he cared so much about people who

hadn't had those things.

I think that was difficult for him to deal with.

Towns' first name is actually his mother and my mother's main name.

Their last name was Towns.

And grandfather made some big contributions, was a philanthropist.

And we don't exactly go blurting it out.

But I think he was inwardly proud.

I don't think Towns was spoiled, really, because I don't think Towns ever cared about it.

He was given lots of opportunities, as we all have been,

but I don't think they made any kind of an impression on Towns at all.

Here we have the annual of our senior year, 1962, at Shattuck.

There he is as the platoon sergeant in B Company, looking pretty good for Towns.

The shoes are not too badly shined, rifle butt's about the right position.

Here's Towns' senior picture.

He's gotten his sideburns trimmed a little bit, hair's not too badly over the years,

But he did manage to write syndicate on his collar,

indicating that he's still a member of the counterculture.

Other pictures of Townes, here he is, number 15,

right in the middle of the football picture Pretty good wide out good hands good speed He was a pretty darn good athlete Played a little baseball a little wrestling From one old junkie to another hang loose

see you this summer, bring money.

All I can remember is that underclassmen

discovered glue sniffing.

A few of us seniors tried it.

We'd never heard of it before.

Put it on a gym sock and roll it up and stick it in our mouth

and breathe through it.

Towns really got into it to the point where we'd take away

where we take away his socks.

Here we are in the lit section, which is kind of the,

oh, the humor section of our annual.

And here's a picture of Towns down here on the bed with a sock.

The caption says, you rat, you took the last tube.

I don't play this song very often.

It's called My Proud Mountains.

This is about Colorado.

Well, my home is Colorado, where there are proud mountains tall.

Well, the river's like gypsies, and her black canyons fall.

Well, I'm a long way from Denver

But a long way to go

I'll lend an ear to my singing

Oh, I'll be back no more

Towns had a pair of jeans on, no shoes, no socks.

No shirt.

And we walked into a formal dance,

and we just kind of lined up in front of the punch bowl,

and we got our little cups, and we walked back up.

And the actives in the Sukum Newhouse started giving shit

about being a horrible pledge and an asshole and everything else.

And so Towns pulled out his pledge pen out of his pocket.

He stuck it in his skin, pinned it, and there was a little trickle of blood going down.

And he just, he didn't say a word.

He just walked up to the active that was giving him the most crap, and he just stared at him.

Music This is a song by the name Merchant Bueller

It destroyed a minute of life

And I made this song thank God

Just all my friends got so worried about me

Figured I was just on the edge of dying, you know

What were you doing?

Oh, just wild, crazy things

Being drunk all the time, drinking Bally High wine

20% wine all the time

Locking myself up for like a week on the end

in my apartment, taking the phone off the hook,

listening to Lightning Hopkins a lot,

and early Bob Dylan.

That's when I started playing.

Instead of just strumming the guitar,

I started picking notes.

You know, I seen that mean old twister come in.

Oh, lightning started getting free.

Have you read the story about him falling out

of a four-story window on purpose?

That was about that time.

This corner unit right here, that's where we were having the party, and he jumped off of that.

I don't think anybody knows why he did that.

I decided I was going to lean over and just see what it felt like all the way up to approaching when you lost control and you were falling.

And I realized that to do it, you know, I would have to fall.

I started leaning back really slow and really paying attention and fell, you know.

And I landed four stories down, just flat on my back.

I remember the impact, exactly where it fell at Lord.

Turn your trip that other way.

One of the biggest things that bonded Towns and myself together in this friendship

is that a lot of our life is parallel.

His family has a county named after him.

My family has a county named after us.

We both were born in Fort Worth, Texas.

And we both went to the same mental hospital and had the same shock treatments.

We had had a party all night and there were people laying all over the rug and here and there and this bang on the door

And I thought, uh-oh, this is Mr. and Mrs. Van Zandt,

and they came to get him.

Not using nothing.

And they went home and got what at that time

was the best medical advice they could find.

They were told he was suicidal, that they had to do something right away.

They put him in Galveston Hospital.

It was the UT branch in Galveston.

His family really felt like he needed help,

and the doctors were telling them that that was where they could get the best treatment.

They put Towns into insulin shock.

He was there for, I think, almost three months.

The doctors had told him, now this lady that's coming in is your mother.

Now that's pretty incredible, not to even be able to recognize your own mother.

He was still quite charming, but I could tell that he was different.

It was mainly because the treatment was hoping to burn the memory out.

And as a result of that, he never had images of his childhood anymore.

He said that the only way that he remembered his childhood was by words, stories people told.

So it didn't bring back pictures.

He recreated those over time, but it didn't feel like his own stories anymore.

Yeah, when you come out of those shock treatments, it braces everything in your mind.

So to this day, I have a terrible memory.

But I might have had one.

I can't remember if I had a good one or a bad one before that.

Imagine just having huge blocks of who you are wiped out.

Sorrow and solitude, these are the precious things, and the only words.

I told you my mom had a real gift for taking things the way they were.

But the year she died, she told me if she could change one thing in her life, she would

not have given permission for Towns to have those treatments.

And I know they regretted it, and I know it cost Towns a lot of who he was.

I was in the seventh grade and I had just moved from Boulder, Colorado.

My parents had just moved.

I moved with them to outside of Chicago, Illinois.

And I was the new kid in the seventh grade.

And somebody heard that I played the guitar.

So a bunch of guys dared me to play the guitar, the sock-off.

That was the first time I ever played for anybody that wasn't in my family or a good friend in the basement.

My mother had to drive me, and I played four songs.

All the girls screamed, and I forgot the words.

And I left, went back outside, got in my mother's car, and went home.

And the next day at school, I was a hero.

I fell in with all the best girls and guys.

This is the only folk song I ever researched.

I learned this from my grandmother.

She told me she'd learned it from a friend of hers, and I went and met her.

She was about 105 years old.

and she learned it from her brother who was 110,

and I went and met him, you know,

he lived north of Fort Worth, and he'd learned it from me.

And it's called, it's called the Dollar Bill Blues.

Well, if I had a dollar bill, yes, I believe I surely will.

Go to town and drink my fill early in the morning.

Little darling, she's a redhead thing.

Man, she makes my legs to sing.

Gonna buy her a diamond ring early in the morning.

This is Mr. and Mrs. Towns Van Zandt.

First picture taken.

I'm glad to see he's smiling.

This is quite a picture.

It looks like I'm totally in charge and dragging him.

Actually run into the limousine that his parents had gotten for us.

That was the days where a little beaver and stuff were on television,

so it seemed like it was expected.

I think I got married thinking the white picket fence and roses.

His parents set us up in an apartment.

They paid the bills for us to have our rent and our car payment,

but we had to provide our food and entertainment.

And so that when Towne started singing at the Jester in the Sand Mountain You know he was going to work Friday and Saturday night to make us a little money to have party money and to be able to eat

Well, the 60s in Houston was like LSD was still legal.

Matchbox of marijuana was 20 years.

It was just crazy.

We were in our 20s full of piss and vinegar and adrenaline and drugs,

and you'd try anything.

That was about the time that the Times They Are Changing came out, which is a collection of very serious, you know, songs that make your mind work with a guitar and a, you know, vocal.

We had two walk-in closets, so we really had a really nice apartment for that time.

And one walk-in closet you could barely walk into, but Towns decided to make that his music studio.

And he would sit in there for hours, just hours.

He'd have to remind you it was dinner time, getting to come out.

And that was when he wrote Waiting Around to Die, which was the first song which, you know,

I was 20 years old, newlywed, and waiting around to die wasn't exactly what, you know, I was expecting a love ballad or something.

Sometimes I don't know where this dirty road is taking me.

Sometimes I don't even know the reason why.

But I guess I keep a gambling, lots of booze and lots of rambling.

Well, it's easier than just waiting around to die.

The Jester is where I first ran into Towns and Guy.

It was a place where everybody played there.

Carolyn Hester, Guy and Towns and Leighton Hopkins, Janis Joplin.

Towns was kind of inquisitive of how I was really on the road,

living out of my suitcase and doing the traveling thing.

And I said, you know, you kind of have to make your decision.

Is this going to be something you do all the time, I think?

Or you can't...

It has to be there all the time to really get the most out of it.

At first, he was avoiding this other life.

I think he was afraid of it

because he decided he wanted to go in the military.

But because he had been in the hospital,

they wouldn't accept you in the military

unless the doctor signed off that you mentally okay The doctor did exactly the opposite and in fact wrote him wrote a letter that he should never be accepted that he was a manic depressive that had

made minimal adjustment to life. Well 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.

The doctor had also written in this note

that he needed to just wander for a while

and find himself.

So that was like,

when I read that,

it was, you know,

what is this doctor saying?

Where I lead me, I will travel

Where I need me, I will call me

Well, I'm no fool, I'll be ready

God knows I will be

And in the meantime, make a little money

And buy a little mercy

You couldn't be a songwriter and stay home.

You had to be out playing songs for other people,

staying up for six days at a time, you know.

You were walking away from the 9-to-5 world.

You were creating, and that was your business.

And the rest of it, you know, you could leave to somebody else.

I know just how Towns felt,

because to me it was the liberation of a free fall.

It saved my life.

There was one point when I realized, man, I could really do this.

But it takes blowing everything off.

It takes blowing your family off, money, security, happiness, friends.

Blow it off.

Get a guitar.

And go.

I haven seen my mother I talked to her twice now I talked to her once on Mother Day And up until then I hadn talked to her since last July I left town for California and told her I phone her you know in a week

And I just didn't. That was the last I talked to her.

This song, you know, not a shirt on my back, not a penny to my name, can't go home this away.

That kind of feeling just took over.

I got it into my head. Some kind of vague thing about making it, you know,

before I was in touch with any people again.

I have friends of mine who are amazing.

They can take a hundred songs, brand new songs,

and say, that one's a hit, and go out and cut it and make it a hit.

I'm more attracted to people who make unique, distinct bodies of work.

You know, Amit Erdogan, my friend, said something I think is the truest thing.

I think it's the truest thing.

Somebody asked him, what is the music business like?

He says, you get up in the morning, you brush your teeth,

you take your shower, you put your clothes on,

you have breakfast, you put on your hat,

and you go look for a genius.

You know, well, Townsend was a genius.

Crazy person rummaging.

This is the best of.

Right?

For the sake of the song?

That was the first one that came out in 60, I think.

Kevin was a little burnt out with New York.

He said, tell you what, I'm going to get Billy my chauffeur.

We're going to take a Cadillac limousine to San Francisco,

then down to Malibu, Sunset Studios,

and we're going to do the album there.

Our albums always entailed some...

It was part of our living.

We got a house in Malibu.

We were young, good-looking guys, free and doing our work, you know?

work you know and the album went really well one time we had a party with like 40 hippie girls and

guys and friends and musicians all that all on acid in the you know swimming in the ocean you know

i mean it was fantastic play a couple more this is a blue song can't play a set without playing

blues song. It's a lightning-hopkins song.

He was playing at the Oak Quarter for $10 a night in 69, 68, and then he

recorded Our Mother of the Mountain, and it was just an instant underground success.

And then he just became like, then he had all these gigs, all of a sudden he could play

anywhere he wanted to, he could have booked himself 365 nights a year.

And so, yeah, I was there when he just kind of took off like a rocket.

I've been running with a fast class of women

And they have caused my little car to ruin

I remember going to see him play at the old quarter

And some girl in the front just got so into it

She just ripped her blouse off

You know, which is an amazing thing to see

It's an amazing thing to see anytime, I suppose

but at a folk concert, it's unheard of.

My start and won't start this morning

I hope ain't nothing wrong with my little machine

Mechanics said your car's alright, kid

You've just been burning bad gasoline

Town said that I was his sanity

that if I was back home,

that he always knew that he could escape this other life.

If I was part of it, he felt that he could drown.

The longer it was that we were apart,

the more he was not coming back.

A couple of times when he came by to CJT

or that he would just call me out of the blue,

he would say, you know, sanity's further away.

It's weird, I've thought about it in a bunch of ways.

On one hand, I think it's a real brave move to put everything else aside

and pursue the one thing that you're just mad about.

But on the other hand, if you've got a personality

susceptible to addiction, then it's a real good excuse

and it feeds into your addiction. It's actually kind of a weak move to

cast everything aside and just do that one thing because obviously in this world you have people that care about you and there too many other things in life besides writing songs that are important

Townes was a migratory beast in those days.

He didn't really live anywhere for eight years.

Part of Townes' loop was he'd spend the summers in Colorado

and then he'd usually come down to Texas immediately following that

and then he'd go to Nashville and stay with Guy and Susanna

and then he'd come back to Texas and then he'd go back to Colorado.

There was a certain part of my life that Towns admired,

I figure it was mostly Susanna.

Susanna and Towns were like serious soulmates, you know?

They had shit between them that was never between Towns and anybody

or Susanna and anybody, including me.

And I hope it wasn't sexual.

On July 4th, I moved down to Houston where Guy lived,

and I didn't know one soul.

I knew nobody.

I'd seen Towns once in my life.

And one night there was a house full of hippies

and people who I didn't do drugs

and I didn't know what it was like

and long hairs hanging out of windows

and doing these things.

Susanna was a debutante.

I mean, from the highest dollar family in Oklahoma City.

Anyway, and so Towns came up to me

in the middle of all this

And he said, Susanna, I don't know you very well, but if Guy loves you, I love you.

And he put his arms around me and held me for a long time.

And he said, I mean that.

Kinky motherfucker.

And I'm getting out of here.

That's one thing I have to bring up in this thing.

And I want Susanna to be here.

Townsville is always after Susanna, no matter what.

He was.

And it's like, that was just part, man, keep your fucking eyes open, man.

Keep your eyes on him, because he's hitting on your old lady all the fucking time.

He never.

Bullshit.

There was never anything like that.

I know.

Well, it's because you have better taste, but it doesn't mean he wasn't trying.

Well, this song is called Rex's Blues, about a friend named Rex.

Ride the blue wind high and free

Should lead you down through misery

Leave you low come time to go

Lonely low as low can be

Well, if I had a nickel, I'd find a game.

If I won a dollar, I'd make it rain.

If it rained an ocean, I'd drink it dry.

Lay me down dissatisfied.

You don't imagine you'll get back into heroin at all.

I don't know.

Up in the air.

See, Houston is the only place I've ever messed with it, other than like one day in Baltimore

when I knew I was leaving.

That's just like getting high.

That's not as bad for you as getting drunk.

But like in Houston, I made the connections of where to get it.

The last time I drove in Houston, the very first thing I did was get one.

I mean, the very first thing.

I don't know, I may do it once.

Maybe if I do it once, I'll do it twice.

I don't know, I haven't really decided whether I'll even do it once.

When we were living on 30th Street, we were just beginning, it was really early on.

He had terrible nightmares.

And I used to find him sobbing in the middle of the night,

where I would have to hold him for like an hour,

where he was just in such pain emotionally.

I had OD'd sniff an airplane glick.

The guy said, first thing I remember is when I came to,

the guy asked me if I was hooked on airplane glue,

and I said, no, I'm stuck.

All of them except these, these front two right here,

are fake.

These are the only two real ones.

I had three tubes of airplane glue wedged in my mouth,

so I could sniff it and lay asleep at the same time.

And of course my mouth was all stuck shut,

you know, with airplane glue.

It took a ball peeing hammer, said, this is gonna hurt.

and then they charged me for it.

I was pronounced

DOA by one doctor

and then a younger doctor ran up

and I was told

that him and the older doctor got in a fight while I was sitting there at DOA that why my brains are scrambled right If you dead over six seconds your brains lose it right

And I was dead for an hour and a half.

I sat there and they argued and found out,

and the guy said, well, okay, I'm leaving.

And the young doctor said, okay,

I'll bring him back to life.

Hit me once in the stomach, there it was.

Back to this joyous earth.

I figure if you're dead, you're dead.

Right, so you went?

Well, see all those, they have different ways.

There's brain death, which I suffered when I was three.

He wasn't dead, he was just real sick.

Right, and there's respiratory death,

which I haven't suffered yet, and there's heart death,

which I go through like every two, three months.

But I figure if you're ever dead,

if you're ever all three of those things at once,

that's it, that's the ball game.

If I start smoking weed, I sometimes get neurotic.

If I drink alcohol, I get psychotic.

Right?

Yeah, but that's not what, when you're drinking alcohol and you feel psychotic, what is it that tells you that this is psychotic?

Well, just completely irrational, wild things with no, like, no thought of should I do this or not?

It's just like, oh boy, this has got me down.

The first time I ever saw anybody shoot up in my life was Towns and this girl, little

Susie, who was long dead.

And you know what they were shooting up?

Bourbon and Coca-Cola, so go figure.

Yes, into their veins.

Clarksville then was just dirt streets.

It was black people, a few white hippies, and that was it.

And you could go over there and nobody could find you.

You could just disappear.

I'm here waiting around to die.

Yeah, I thought I would.

Towns, is that the first song you wrote?

That's the very first song you wrote.

Well, sometimes I don't know where this dirty road is taking me.

Sometimes I can't even see the reason why.

I guess I'll keep a gambling.

I guess I'll keep a gambling.

Lots of booze and lots of rambling.

It's easier than just waiting around to die.

Well, the way I met Townes was playing drums with Steve Earle in 73, 74 maybe it was.

And I figured, well, Townes, he's pretty successful.

He's had a few good albums.

I'd expected to drive up to a real nice house with a bunch of nice cars out front.

Hey, somebody come with us.

Pull in the car.

It was just an old house trailer with basically the windows out of it, no furniture, a mattress

in the bedroom, and one couch, a bunch of chickens hanging around.

He was just waking up, it was probably 4 o'clock in the afternoon.

I knew them, well this guy's here for the music.

So how long have you known Towns Van Zink?

About two years.

What's it like?

What's it like?

What do you mean?

Nothing.

Good evening.

Bummer.

Bummer.

No, not really.

He's a real nice guy.

Likes animals.

Papa, hold that bear can and you'll lift like a cigarette.

Are you going to shoot it at him?

Why does everybody drink so much?

Thirsty.

Filmmakers don't talk about them.

That's true.

But you have to, uh...

Why not?

This is a trick.

This is a trick.

This is a trick.

Me and Tom worked out.

Be careful.

You be careful, Jack.

Every one time friends

I had a ma. I even had a pa.

He beat her with a belt once cause she cried.

She told him to take care of me.

She headed down to Tennessee.

Oh, it's easier than just waiting around to die.

And a friend said he knew where some easy money was.

We robbed a man and brother, did we fly?

They told her to take care of me.

They drove me back to Tennessee.

And it's two long years of waiting around to die

As I get older and have written a whole bunch of songs each song now that I write has to be perfect There can be a wrong anything

A note or a word or a comma or a pause to be correct.

And it's got to be about something that is worth writing about.

So it's like being zeroed in.

But it's not real hard.

It just kind of comes when it wants to.

I never throw any songs away.

I try every one. I try to make good.

It's a little tough.

They're, you know, they're still coming.

I almost have enough new ones now for an album.

Well, I've been up from Mississippi to the Manitoba light.

I've been downstream to the Gulf of Mexico.

Followed the sun out of West California

And there just ain't no place left for me to go

Oh, and if you go searching

For rhyme or for reason

Do you have any remote ideas to what your album has sold?

No, not much. None of them have sold over 7,000, I'm sure.

They're still kind of selling a bit.

They what?

They're selling real slow.

Does Kevin Eggers have any visions about your success or career or anything else like that?

He's had a lot of faith in me all along.

But you don't?

Oh, sure, I do, too.

Whether I'll be a star or not is what he's concerned about, but writing a good song, you know, is more what I'm concerned about.

I say it be fun just to see what that sort of notoriety does I already gotten close enough to it to where people I meet don look at me at all like a person They look at me as a thing

I just clam up because they're waiting for everything you say with bated breath.

I don't have the urge to lay stuff on them.

It's also wrong.

Like I've been to parties like that after a gig where I'll end up just sitting against the wall.

Do you remember the late great Van Zandt, late great times Van Zandt?

That's one album I haven't got.

That's with a real sober picture of me on the front.

I'd come from out of the mountains of Colorado to New York for a photo session.

The picture on the front is when I first got there.

And the picture on the back is that I'm like riding in my new saddle, riding the back of this couch, on a sofa.

My jacket was just like ripped off, thrown over one shoulder,

and my shirt was ripped off and wound around my neck,

and I had a cowboy hat on, giving the finger, you know.

And my mom and my aunt Helen, as was the ritual,

they heard I had a new record to buy the record,

and there it was, they found it, and they got a few copies.

And my mom said to this nice young man behind the counter,

it's really a nice picture of Towns on the front, but who is this on the back?

And he says, well, it's Towns.

I said, no, that's not Towns.

And he said, well, ma'am, I'm sure, Miss Van Zandt, I'm sure that's Towns.

And my Aunt Helen said, now you listen here, young man.

I'm Towns' aunt, and this is his mother, and that's not Towns.

And it was like, you're right, I don't know who that is.

It's certainly not Towns.

Has your record been doing well?

Pretty good.

Have they been advertising it?

Yeah.

I've been looking.

Next one will be a hit.

Next one is likely to be like a hit.

Have you started recording anything?

No, we're gonna start pretty soon. I have almost all the songs.

Oh, this is the infamous album.

What do you mean it's the infamous album?

Well this was the last studio album I did with Townes in Nashville And this is when his drugs were really kicking in hard And I didn put this out for 20 years I had such a bad feeling about the whole event I just put it in

When she don't need me, well, it makes me crazy.

She say rest easy

And it makes me lazy

But when she please me

She please me all night long

My friends are leaving

She say don't worry

They're only leaving

There is no parting

You will get lonesome

I will be here with you

When I met Towns, he was just getting ready to start a record

that was originally called Seven Come Eleven,

but it was never released.

I'm too slippery, I do no sleeping.

Man, I get lonely.

You can touch me if you want to.

But I got poison, I just might bite you.

That was this sort of missing link in his career.

If that had come out right on top of the late great,

it would have really been a whole other thing.

I think Kevin lost the deal, so Jack Clement just held onto the tapes.

They just got put back into the tape pool because Kevin Eggers didn't pay for them.

Sure has been nice playing for y'all.

Hey, back there at the bar, order up $20 worth of whiskey, 20 shots,

and hand them out indiscriminately off my tab.

It's nothing.

Train and ride

16 courted law

It was becoming more and more clear

that whatever hopes that we had of the album

was going to get out were just about gone.

Every time we'd call Kevin and try to find out what was going on with it or try to communicate

with him, it was just clear.

Well, you took my baby and you never brought her back.

Thank you, man.

Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!

Towns would get on stage and sing a few songs and say, here's the Emmeridge Mountain Boys

and just leave the stage and there we're working in front of a thousand people.

I love Mickey White and Rex Bell.

Mickey White's one of the best guitar players I know.

But I think Towns is turning over the stage to the Hemorrhage Mountain Boys.

I'd like to do my own for an invitation.

Which was essentially a comedy act,

and a comedy act in questionable taste by anybody's standards.

Big element.

It used to, even when I was 17 years old,

bother me to see that obscure the fact that people were saying the best

songwriter in the world.

How come that most of your songs are sad songs?

Well, you know, I don't think they're all that sad.

Some, I have a few that are just that aren't sad, they're like hopeless, but a

totally hopeless situation. And the rest aren't sad, they're just the way it

goes kind of, you know, you don't think life's sad.

No. But from recognizing the sadness you can put it aside and be happy and enjoy the happy

side of life. Blues is happy music.

Yes, I agree.

Do you ever envision yourself as a middle-aged man?

Never, I never have.

Lightning Hopkins is an old man.

Like, he's one of those guys with the body, you know, that strong body.

Like, man, he drank quarts of gin a night, you know,

left gallons of gin a night and played all his whole life.

That's all he did.

For the last 20, 30 years, he hadn't done anything but that.

Will he give his sevens first instruction?

Spirited me a game of studs

Stakes unscarred by limitation

Between a man named Gold and a man named Mud Club filled gold with greedy vapors Till his long green eyes did glow mud was left with the size and trembles watching his hard money go flushes fell on gold like

water tens they paired and paired again but the aces only flew through heaven and a diamond jack

called no man friend the diamond queen saw mud's ordeal began to think of a long lost son

Between 77 and 79, Towns had sort of gotten tired of not living anywhere, and I knew about

a cabin, and I hooked that up for him.

They had the slave walls that were property borderlines, and it was just an old wood sharecropper

cabin that had basically two rooms.

The kitchen was running the whole length of both the rooms and then the front porch.

and we had the swing on the front porch that kind of looked over the valley.

It was a big piece of property, a lot of room back there to just be alone and have privacy.

Towns in those days, his major concerns were morning glories,

but more of them in every year.

He was really fascinated with the morning glories,

and he also wanted to make sure that he listened to Paul Harvey every morning on the radio

and watched Happy Days.

I had been hunting.

I was mainly just walking around the woods with a gun, trying to look cool.

And I came back to the house, and Tim said this .357 was a cowboy gun,

you know, single-action revolver.

He put a round in it and spun the cylinder

and put it to his head and pulled the trigger.

And he did it three times and got away with it three times.

When he finally quit doing it and handed me the gun,

and I was pissed.

I was thinking about how in the fuck could you put me through that

if you give a fuck about me?

And I think that's what anyone would think at the time,

and it took me a while to get over it.

It took years.

He went through a period where he was kind of stagnant

as far as the writing goes,

and he wasn't under contract to be writing X amount of songs a year

or whatever his contracts were.

When he married Cindy, JT went to visit him and he was so excited about that trip that

as soon as I told him he packed his bags and he just sat real still every night saying is it time When am I going When am I going By the time I was six I had him turned into Elvis or something in my head And that was kind of the picture on the album covers

that I had.

I could tell my mom was real concerned

when I got on the plane.

I had one of those attachable ties.

He was in the back and he had these gold teeth.

From my first scan, I saw him.

And I was, I go, all right, that's him.

And I just, my feet were barely moving

because he was just drawn and he wasn't the image, you know.

I don't know what happened.

JT called me one night about 2 o'clock in the morning

and said, bring me home.

And I said, what's the matter?

And he was crying.

And he said, it's not what I expected.

Daddy's really, he's really messed up.

And I said, talk to me. He said, I can't. I just can't. Just get me home, but don't tell him I called, because he didn't want to hurt his dad.

That was my first real taste, where I had to go home and go, this is what it's about.

I just sort of took it all at face value.

Here it was, and let's go on from there and get him the recognition he deserves.

I thought, well, I've never managed anyone, but hey, I can do this.

I think Townes wanted his wife to be on the road with him.

I think in a way Townes had fears that if he would leave me behind,

then I wouldn't be there when he got back.

I think he had fears about that, and I wanted to be with him.

I didn't want to leave his side.

I was, you know, I didn't want to be left behind either.

I wanted to go with them.

Days full of rain.

Sky's coming down again.

I get so tired of these same old blues.

I think that's maybe where the baby it won't be long

till I'll be tying on my flying shoes.

I think some of that was written about him having to go out on the road without me and

being gone for so long and coming back Till I be tying on my flying shoes

Spring on this side.

Summer had to be satisfied.

Fall is a feeling that I just can't lose

It started with a three line ad in Rolling Stone in the classifieds

World's Greatest Songwriter joined the Towns Van Zandt fan club

And I didn't really think anything much would come of it

But we got several hundred letters within a month

Flying to shoes

Over and over, these deeply wrought messages would be coming in.

And I felt like, man, this music is therapeutic.

All these letters that people would send saying that this music had saved their lives,

that they had been close to suicide, and they had listened to his record,

and it had brought them back.

A loved one had died, and they had listened to his records all night,

and just thought, my lord, the whole world needs to hear this.

My management tenure came to an end in 78, at some point probably about halfway through,

maybe summer, maybe fall.

And that was basically engineered because I was trying to get to the bottom of the whole business affairs of Towns.

After I stopped recording him the first time, nobody recorded him.

I did feel guilty like this guy's this guy has to be recorded. So I have no idea what Kevin told him, but I'm sure he

presented him with

some money and

alcohol

Who knows what else and just said

Let's

Let's get back in business together and I can do this and I can do that or whatever

I decided to book the first real tour of towns had ever had in his life

We spent an enormous amount of money to do a 60-city tour with John Lee Hooker.

And the night before he was going to go on that tour,

and he'd written a whole bunch of new songs,

he went on a bender, wrote with Jimmy the Indian in the pickup truck,

They hit a cattle guard. He flew out of the truck and shattered his arm.

He blew up everything that anybody who gave a shit about him, he just blew it up.

And I think my brother was too young and too innocent to be smart enough to get away from it.

I was sort of the straight man, you know? And I wasn't straight. I smoked pot mostly.

I was part of the deal that he made with me because he saw I was smoking a lot of pot when I came to Tennessee.

Tennessee and with towns it was like well that's okay man he says everybody

gives it to me free I'll just give it to you you know and he said well part of

the deal is no he says I'll always have weed for you you know and but you don't

drink you know I didn't like drinking anyway weed was my favorite you know

weed and coffee it's fun to be around someone that cares for you and it'll

take you into the danger zone and sort of watch out for you I mean we never got

shot and we were very close to him many times and all that.

bird another bird another bird another bird another bird verse maybe a bridge

another verse and bridge nothing but birds and the last course I think will

be Latin what's it gonna be about bird oh bird

Finally got a girlfriend, right?

And I listened to his music to go to sleep.

It's like the only way I can fall asleep.

We got in a big fight because she was like,

I don't want to listen to it tonight.

And we just got the Live at Carnegie Hall CD, which just

came out yesterday.

I wanted to hear that.

Of course, I won out eventually and put it in.

But yeah, I have to hear his music to go to sleep, it seems

like.

And whenever I paint, that's what I always listen to.

For a long time I couldn't, you know.

But now it like I coming to grips with everything That like all I listen to really now I threw away all my old gangster rap CDs and all that old dumb stuff It like that just stupid

Hi folks, my name's Towns Van Zandt.

And it's nice to be here on this new show, Texas Mirror.

This is called If I Needed You.

This song's been mighty good to me.

I don't know whether you wrote it for Don Williams and Damian Lou Harris,

but they had a successful record with it.

Did you write it for them?

Real pretty.

No, as a matter of fact, Ralph, this is the first, the one and only song that I've ever written in my sleep.

You want to translate that to me?

I was dreaming, and I was living with Guy and Susanna Clark, and I was up here to do a record.

And I was asleep, and I had a dream that I was a folk singer.

And this was a song that I was, it's really true.

I happened to have a pencil and a pad right by the bed.

Just kind of rolled over in the middle of the night, wrote it down, and got up the next day.

and it's never been changed.

Were you able to write all the song?

Or did you have to polish it later?

Not a lick.

Let me hear a little bit of what you dreamed then.

If I needed you, would you come to me?

Would you come to me?

The first time Towns ever played and sang If I Needed You to me,

I thought that was the most beautiful song I'd ever heard.

I never asked him if he wrote it for me,

and it was not until years later that I was sure he had.

It was 1981. It was in November.

I know that because it was right when I'd married Ronnie,

and we had just gotten back from our honeymoon.

It was the first night we were home,

and the phone rang about 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning

and Ronnie answered it and said it was for me

and the first words were,

Babe, we finally made it.

We're at the top of the charts.

I can come back.

We can get together

and we can buy your dad that Cadillac.

In the night forlorn All the morning born and the morning shines with the lights of love

And we talked for quite a while because it was so exciting, and he told me about Amy Lou Harris singing it.

And then he asked if it was a nice man that answered the phone.

And that's when I told him that Ronnie and I just got married.

From Fiesta, Texas in San Antonio, the only musical theme park in Texas.

Welcome to the Texas Connection.

Presenting legendary songwriter Townes Van Zandt.

Well, those Stouffer's breakfast serve.

Those are dangerous little units, man.

And my wife takes her like, you know, what is it, three minutes, put it in there, pop it, boop, boop, boop.

And I've gotten to where I love them, and they're so easy, and I don't have to wash the dishes, you know.

And she's gotten to where anything she wants me to sign.

In the morning, she just hands me one of them Stouffers and then puts this paper over there.

I'm saying this right here, Tams.

so far i've signed away all my entire publishing enterprise

if i ever upset her all i have left is this little kind of a john boat kind of a kind of

a big rowboat and a little small motorcycle and my guitar and i've been thinking about how am i

going to tie this big guitar on that little motorcycle and park them both in that stupid

boat and sit out there in the lake and freeze to death. So watch out for them sofas.

You ever had the feeling like you've known someone like forever? And it wasn't like when I saw Towns,

but it was when he spoke to me, when he plopped down in the chair and he said, hey, darling,

do you gamble? It was like I just had this like all these little voices in my head going, oh,

we found him, we found him!" And they were just delighted and I was like, what is going

on? And then I heard what seemed to me to be God's voice going, it's him. And I went,

oh please God don let this be him And it was like it him And it was just like right then that I knew that you know okay here we go

Most of the time back then in Austin, I'd say that was kind of the peak of Anything Goes.

It was impossible to find anything in the refrigerator besides maybe a Stouffer's or a rotten banana.

It was funny, and all the time that I spent with him in Austin, we never once went to the

grocery store.

I think for 10 or 12 years, Towns shopped at the 7-Eleven at the end of the street.

They had diapers for my little brother, chasers for vodka, tampons for my stepmom.

Anything you'd need, the extra price you pay was worth staying out of the grocery store,

because that was a large, scary place to people like us, you know?

Anything could happen in there.

At some point, Poncho and Lefty became a number one hit, but he had kind of an immunity to it.

On the desert stand in Mexico

Nobody heard his dying words

Oh, that's the way it goes

But all the men and all they say

They could have had him any day

They only let him hang around

I had a kindness I suppose

to get it and it was about 12 at midnight so Merle went to bed and she came back an

hour or two later and she had it with her so I listened to it and we played it

I said yeah this is something that we need to do

So we worked it up and got it ready to cut and woke Merle up and had him come over and record it.

Let me put it this way, as a songwriter, the songs become like your children.

And when one of them really breaks right, that's the rarest thing in the world.

Living on the road, my friend, was gonna keep you free and clean.

And now you wear your skin like iron

And your breath is hard as kerosene

Even though, you know, Willie and Merle went on to do it

and have a hit with it later,

and it's sort of recognized,

because I did it first, I just think of it as kind of my song.

but I get the sustenance from it when I sing it

and people still request it

and I pretty much do it every night.

All the better of this day

We could have had every million days

We only let him go so long

Out of my sight

To me, Willie recording a song of mine

I knew it was going to be a monster like that.

Yeah.

would have set me up for life.

I mean, I would have just said, hey, that's great.

Now, financially, I'll control this

and resign from the human race.

Didn't seem to affect Townsend at all.

No, not at all.

So this was an afterthought.

They almost didn't record this song.

Oh, they were packed.

The bands were halfway to the truck.

Well, aren't you?

Come on back.

Ralph, I can just picture him.

I can hear him saying, you know, we ought to do poncho and lefty.

You know, I could be poncho and you could be lefty.

And what else?

We can, like, for the album cover, let's get on some desert clothes and stand outside.

You know what I'm saying?

I mean, I could see all that going down.

And the band is saying, you mean we've got to unpack and do one more song?

But aren't you glad they did?

You bet, so is my wife.

You wouldn't believe that there's hotel rooms in the road.

Like, first thing he did was get up and make his bed,

bounce a quarter on it you know clean up all the cigarette butts Everything was just like ship military school oh yeah man he was all his clothes were up nothing you know then start drinking vodka

you know but oh yeah yeah so anyway he calls me and i come over and listen to this man he sits

down with the guitar and he has this piece of paper on his knee and he proceeds to play marie

all the way through.

He said, man, I just wrote this this morning.

I'm like, you're shitting me, man.

And went over across the street that night

and played it and remembered every word.

I swear to God, I saw him do it.

Well, I stood in line and left my name.

It took about six hours or so

I thought a man just grinned like it was all a game

And they said they'd let me know

I put in my time till the Pocono line

Shut down two years ago

I was living at the mission till I met Marie

I can't stay there no more

Well, I fell across town city looking for a man to move some old cars around.

Maybe me and Marie could find a burned out van and do a little settling down.

Well, but I'm just dreaming I ain't got no ride in the junkyards a pretty good ways.

That job's about a half week old besides be gone now anyway.

I used to play the mouth harp pretty good

Used to hustle up a little dough

I got drunk and I woke up rolled a couple of months ago

They got my harp and they got my dollar

Them lowlife so-and-sos

The harvest costs money and I ain't got it

It's my own fault, I suppose

Well the Pocono down but the Chesapeake running two freights every day

If it's just me, I'd be headed south, but Marie can't catch no train.

Well, she's got some pain and she thinks it's a baby.

Says we gotta wait and see.

In my heart I know it's a little boy, hope he don't end up like me.

I guess I was about six or seven years old, and I was sitting up kind of front, and it was a big open area.

Everybody was just sitting down on the ground.

And I remember just watching Dad and singing along with him, and this lady kept looking over there and smiling at me and everything.

And then I remember just looking over and saying, yeah, that's my daddy.

and all this, she was like, yeah, I thought it was.

That's what's real sad about Katy Bell,

because she only remembers three days, and that's it.

I mean, the more pictures I show her, she remembers more,

but I worry about her a lot.

Gosh, I feel so bad for her.

I wish she could have got to know him better.

You know, me and Guy, we never drink before shows,

but after the show, we might have a couple.

And Cass says, man, you ever play nine ball?

I said, no, I never have.

And he said, let me show you how it goes.

I said, okay.

So we go over to the pool table,

and he sets it up in that little diamond shape,

you know, with a nine ball in there somewhere.

And I whack it,

and it hits a couple of other balls

that you're supposed to hit first,

and the nine ball drops in a pocket.

And I said, is that how you play it?

Is that a hit?

And he says, yeah, that's it.

It gives me $100.

It's like $100 a game, right?

And by this time, we had caught the staff's attention big time.

Them two guys over there playing nine ball for $100 a game, right?

So the guy immediately says, well, let's play again.

I went, sure.

So he sets it up, and it was a more interesting game.

and took more shots than guy one,

ended up banking off the eight and sinking the nine,

and it was a beautiful shot, this, that, and the other.

And that was for too And it was guy idea not mine because breaking even is you know you end up in purgatory as far as I can tell

I figured there was heaven, purgatory, hell, and the blues.

I'm trying to crawl up from the blues, man.

Purgatory to me would be, boy, home sweet home.

I guess as a kid, I didn't recognize

some of the magic, but a lot of it wasn't magic, a lot of it was just like smoky smell

on everything and like stale chips.

He could be really cruel to the people he loved.

I mean extremely cruel.

He knew the buttons and he pushed them really hard.

So there were many nights where I would just kind of go to bed and either cry or just go,

son of a bitch you know but inevitably every morning after something like that

had happened no matter how drunk he was you'd think he was just in a blackout

he'd be on the edge of my bed every morning waiting for me to wake up almost

with forced tears in his eyes ready for an apology you know he would just say

it's a bitch man it's a bitch

My days, they are the highway kind.

They only come to leave.

But to leave and I don't mind.

In some ways, you're always somewhere watching TV when you're not on stage.

You know, you don't have an audience all the time.

So you do have this somewhat of a normal life.

And if you're not at home, you're hopefully in nice hotels.

And if not, Motel 6 and Denny's is always right next door.

And that was kind of his loop, you know.

I'm sure he stayed at almost every cheap hotel and ate at every Denny's in America with Harold right there taking care of the checks

He always wanted to be part of a team like the swimming team or that

He enjoyed the fact that you know well here's the road here's this crew you know his band and road manager and you know

There was something very magical about that and you know he was at his tour bus level at that point

and that winnebega i mean he could have easily gone to a tour bus and i mean at the end there

we were working he was working his way up to the arenas paying three four thousand zeters you know towns

This was in 88. Went through a treatment center. And when he came out, I realized if I was going to be around him, I couldn't drink. And I decided that his friendship was worth more than my drinking.

And Towns always said, well, it only takes two people to have a meeting.

And so we were like a two-man little AA support group.

I guess it was about June of 89 that Towns went to Europe for a month.

And during that time, I started back drinking again.

And when Towns came back from his tour of Europe, I met him at the airport, and I was drunk.

And although I was drunk, when he first saw me, I'll never forget the look he gave me penetrated the drunkenness in me.

like it was a look of fear, like he could see what was coming.

May I offer you dinner?

There's the game, but to where I hold up two hands.

You put your two hands on your waist.

No, on your waist.

Your waist.

When I went out to hear him play, it was one of those shows where he just didn't sing anything.

He just sort of got up there and sort of mumbled and stuff.

And at one point he said, come on up and play something.

And I was kind of wrought up about this,

seeing him in such a terrible shape.

And so I played a couple of his songs

because I remember thinking that, you know,

these people need to hear a town song all the way through And I knew a couple And then you know I got off and he kept going on And then finally I can imagine doing this

I can't imagine I did it then.

I would never do it again.

But I just at some point went up and said,

you've got to get off the stage.

This is horrible.

You've got to stop.

My mother always told me, don't talk towns.

Just play.

Just play.

Don't talk.

Yeah, she was right.

for sure

days up and down they come

like rain on a

kunga drum

forget most remember some

hope it don't turn

none away

everything is not enough

nothing is too much to bear

Where you been is good and gone

All you keep is getting there

Well, to live's to fly

Low and high

To shake the dust off of your wings

And to sleep out of your eyes

It made me angry, really.

It seemed to me that there were a lot of people that had a kind of a morbid curiosity to see

what it's like to watch someone fall from a great height.

I remember I had this dream and all of a sudden I was like back in time or something and I saw my dad and Geraldine playing with each other.

Good dog.

I just kept on having these lashes in my head.

It was like I went inside that house, and then I realized I wasn't even in the same state.

I was looking around, and then I saw my dad and went over to tap him on the shoulder,

and he goes like, hi, Katie, do you want some barbecue?

And I was like, okay.

So I had some barbecue and then I started saying It like it didn look like a tombstone but it looked like someone was making one

Are there any goals left for you?

Well, I'm gonna do this new album with all new songs.

And then...

I...

You know...

I mean, I have a lot of goals, but I have my father, and that's a goal in itself.

That kind of stuff.

But I'd like to write some songs that are so good that, you know, nobody understands them, including me.

The candy floss is falling from the roof.

It's been nice talking to you.

On behalf of myself and Roy and Jimmy, it's been nice talking to you.

And I'm going to have a record out soon on, you know, on...

What'd you say?

CD.

Something, yeah.

CD.

Letter.

This song's called Rake and a Young Man.

Rake is a wild young man.

Well, I used to wake and run with the moon

I lived like a rake and a young man

I was on this tour with Sonic Youth

and I'd been carrying Towns' phone number in my wallet

and I missed a plane on this tour

and so I had several hours to kill

and this number in my wallet was, you know,

was calling out to me, and so I ran over the payphone

and finally got out the courage to call him.

Steve Shelley said he was interested in producing a record,

and Towns got really excited about it,

because he was getting a lot of grunge cuts,

and we had Kathleen was the number one in Europe

with the Tender Sticks, and Mudhoney was doing his stuff.

It was Christmas time, and Harold had come up,

and they were going to Memphis to record this record,

and he was in bad shape.

And I said Towns you don have to do this Everybody will understand if you cancel And he like no I gotta do this I gotta do this I got one more record in me I gotta get it down We had set this date to record at Easley Recording and Towns showed up with Harold in a wheelchair

And it was just sort of like, you know, what can happen next?

He told us that he'd had some sort of seizure at night

and had wound up just sitting there till he got some help.

And he had this big bruise all down the side of his leg.

No.

He was in a lot of pain, and I think he was drinking a lot to kill the pain.

It was a really difficult situation.

No more of those stupid little cups, all right?

I'll pour a gallon then.

Oh, I know that's a lie.

Those stupid big cups.

I buried my face, but it spoke once again.

The night to the day we're abindin'.

And now the dark air's like fire on my skin.

And even the moonlight is blind.

And now the dark air's like fire on my skin.

And even the moonlight is bland

During one of our breaks where I had sent Townsman back to his hotel to rest up,

I had to pull the plug on the sessions, which was one of the most difficult things I've ever done.

We went to his room and we told him that the sessions, we were going to get together some other time.

He gave each one of us a little memento.

and I think I got an envelope with a Marilyn Monroe stamp on it.

You know, he gave me a picture of his friend's racing car,

and it was just little things that he had, but it was important for him to give us.

something. Even though Towns had the broken hip production, which I didn't know at the time,

he wanted me to have him finish that album. And no matter how miserable it got,

you know, and there was a major disappointment on our way back from Memphis.

Harold drove him from Memphis. I said, look, don't bring him home. Take him straight to the hospital

because he is not getting better. So Harold said, look, Towns won't go to the hospital with anyone

but you. Then I took Townes to the hospital.

And then the guy comes out and he goes, his hip is broken. He said, how long has it been

this way? I said, eight days. And he says, well, we need to take him into surgery right

away. And then I had to talk him into getting it fixed. He didn't want to stay. I'm like,

you have to get your hip fixed. So I was like, Townes, do you want to like stroll out on

stage with your guitar do you want to be wheeled out?

And the doctor said surgery went fine, he's resting well. So we went up to the hospital

and Towns was going in DTs already, hallucinating and shaking and puking and sick.

And he said get me out of here, get me out of here. And we got him in the car and I mean

He was shaking so bad he couldn't get the lid off the bottle.

He got some alcohol in him, and he started getting more and more stable,

and by the time we got to the house, he was in pretty good shape.

I fixed him a plate, you know, like apples and crackers and roast beef

for him to nibble on, because he was still pretty shaky.

I didn't want to give him anything with a fork or anything,

so it was just a nibble plate, and I gave that to him,

and kissed him on the cheek, said, you know, eat,

and I'm going to go call everybody and tell them that you're doing good,

that you're fine.

I went into the bathroom I was on my way in I was like Dad do you need anything He like no I fine I got everything I need He like come here I just want to tell I love you and everything I give him a hug I came out of the bathroom and looked in and he was just laying back like that

And I didn't want to freak out, freak mom out.

And I just walked out and I said, mom, I

think you need to check on dad.

It was just a really dense fog.

I was just kind of cruising mindlessly through the stations.

and I came to a town song on the radio.

I was like, far out.

And then they played another town song.

And my mind kind of started working a little bit.

And I thought, oh, two for Tuesday kind of deal, you know?

And so then after the second song,

they played a third song, which was waiting around to die.

And I started kind of bracing myself.

I'm like, something's really strange here, you know?

I don't know if I can get through this.

I hope this gave you 37 years ago.

I hope that it happened.

I come from a long line

High and low and in between

Same as you

Hills are golden

Piles of poison

Time's thrown me through

And I believe I've come to learn

That turning round

Is to become confusion

And the gold's no good for spending

And the poison's hungry waiting

What can you leave behind

When you're flying lightning fast

And all alone Only a trace my friend Spirit of motion born

And direction grown.

A trace that will not fade.

In frozen skies.

And your journey will be.

And if a shadow don't seem much company.

Who said it would be

There is the highway

And the homemade loving kind

The highway's mine

And us ramblers will get the traveling done

You fathers build with stones

To stand and shine

Heaven's where you find it

And you can't take too much with you

Oh, but daddy, don't you listen

It's just this highway talking

All things that are alive

Are brothers in the soil

And in the sky

And I believe it with my blood

If not my eyes

I don't know why

We can't be brothers here

I know we should be

Answers don't seem easy

And I'm wondering if they could be

When she had twenty years well 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 to leave

For the hills cannot hold back my sorrow forever

And dead men lie deep around the door

Of the only salvation that's mine

for the asking

so mother

think on me

no more

and winter

held high

around the mountains

breast

in the cold

of a thousand

snows

lay

heaped upon

the forest

sleep

She dressed in calico

For a gambler likes

His women fancy

Fancy she would be

And the fire of her longing

Would keep away the cold

And her dress was a sight to see

But the road was long beneath her feet

She followed her frozen breath

In search of a certain St. John the gambler

Stumbling to her death

She heard his laughter