John Townes Van Zandt, better known as Townes Van Zandt, was an American singer-songwriter. He wrote numerous songs that are widely considered masterpieces of American folk music.
This reissue of a 1993 live album was never intended to memorialize Townes Van Zandt (in the saddest of posthumous ironies, its Sugar Hill sleeve includes a phone number to call for bookings), Originally released by Sundown, a tiny Austin indie with limited distribution, the 17-song set finds Van Zandt in fine form — upbeat, gracious, apparently sober — and in good company, with fiddler Owen Cody and guitarist Danny Rowland adding a dimension of musical enhancement that never overwhelms the nuances of the material. As anyone who ever saw Van Zandt fall off a stool recognizes, there was no such thing as a typical Townes performance, but when he was good, no one working in the Texas troubadour tradition has ever been better.
While the hallmark of Van Zandt’s songwriting was his ability to render the most profound insights in the most plain-spoken language, the literary part of his artistry was but an element of the musical equation. His voice fit his melodies the way his melodies fit his meaning, each reinforcing the others. The result was a uniquely metaphysical brand of blues, a seamless synthesis of Lightnin’ Hopkins and Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie and Soren Kierkegaard. The laconic resignation in his voice was that of a man staring, unflinching, into the abyss, while his softer side found solace in tender mercies, those that helped but could not last. Listeners only familiar with this album’s higher-profile material in more popular renditions by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard (“Pancho & Lefty”), Don Williams and Emmylou Harris (“If I Needed You”) or Nanci Griffith and Arlo Guthrie (“Tecumseh Valley”) may have heard the tunes, heard the words, but they haven’t really heard the songs until they’ve heard Townes.
Predictably, the album finds Van Zandt providing his own best epitaph:
Originally released January 1st, 1993
The Fat Angel Sings 