Drunk Degenerate Genius Poet - Part II
Examining the Influence and Relative Obscurity of Townes Van Zandt
This is part two of two in my series on Townes Van Zandt. In part one I answered the questions: Who is Townes Van Zandt? And: What made him great? If you haven’t read that, I would encourage you to revisit it for context.
Among critics and songwriters it is widely accepted that Townes is on the short list of greatest songwriters of all time, yet he is the least well known of this select group of people. It is confounding how great his body of work is and how few people are aware of it. In this part two, I will attempt to answer two additional questions:
Why was he not more successful? Both during his lifetime, and up to present day.
What has his impact been?
Steve Earle once famously said “Townes is the best damn song writer ever, and I’ll stand on Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.”
“He was relentlessly great. I cannot understand why people don’t appreciate him. I don’t think he’s better than Bob Dylan, but I think the two stand out above everybody else…It’s funny how people overlook him.”1
It’s possible that the answer to my first question is very simple. Austin based journalist Michael Corcoran sums it up by saying, he “was too smart, too original, too honest to be anything but a cult hero.”
In practical terms, there are four key factors at play, both past and present, that have contributed to Townes’ relative obscurity.
He either did not care to or did not have the ability to promote himself and was prone to self-sabotage.
Over the years there have been dozens of artists and people in the music industry that have sung his praises to the media and tried to help him find the success that he deserved. The problem is that for whatever reason he was unable to champion his own art. He was inept at promoting himself and did not seem to possess many of the other skills required for a singer-songwriter to be successful. As Steve Earle once said,
“Townes’s inability to promote himself and put his dukes up for his own art failed him over and over again, but none of us is whole. We all do some things better than others. As a songwriter, you won’t find anybody better.”
Throughout his career, he squandered many opportunities with his antics. For example he would have a performance with prominent music executives in the audience and he would be too drunk to get through the set; things like this. In hindsight it’s clear that to some extent he was uncomfortable with much of the adulation that came along with being an artist of his magnitude.
His brand of music is not made for the masses. You can’t dance to it; it’s not catchy; the beauty and greatness are subtle and downplayed.
Bob Dylan went electric and made many other artistic moves that helped his career. Early on, his brand of music was similar to what Townes did for his entire career (Townes never made attempts to crossover into the mainstream). He clearly probably didn’t want to. He had a vision of the type of music he wanted to play and he stuck to it. His heroes were Hank Williams and Lightnin’ Hopkins. His brand of music fell squarely in between those two and it did not change. You can call it stubbornness, artistic integrity, anything. Whatever it was, his decision to stay in his narrow lane of music is a big reason that he has remained an obscure cult figure.
Most of his albums were overproduced. They would have benefited from a more
minimalist approach. Townes didn’t take any initiative in the studio. He just showed up, played his songs and did what the producers told him; he trusted them, but they did not know what to do with him.
One of the first producers that Townes worked with, Cowboy Jack Clement, has admitted that they did not quite know how to produce him back then and they probably could have done a better job. On many of his songs you will hear flutes, harmonicas and steel guitars where maybe there should only have been two guitars and a bass. Many believe that Townes was at his best when it was just him and his guitar. He mesmerized audiences across the world for decades with this formula, yet there is only one album where it’s just Townes and his guitar - “Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas” (1977). Many fans and critics alike consider this to be his masterpiece.
He never cared for the business side of his career and therefore it went to hell in a handbasket. If he had money in his pocket to buy food and a place to sleep so he could travel and play music, he was happy. His management for most of his career was either incompetent or outright fraudulent.
Clement believed that producer and owner of Poppy Records (the label Townes was signed to in the early part of his career), Kevin Eggers, had a lot to do with the lack of success in his career. Clement says,
“we started plannin’ an album with Townes when along comes this guy Kevin Eggers. I don’t have much good to say about him. I think he was bad news for Townes...worst thing that ever happened to him. Townes needed a really good manager. I can’t blame it all on Kevin. But a lot of it.”2
This sentiment is indicative of the way the many people close to Townes felt about Eggers.
In the mid-seventies, Poppy Records went bankrupt and the momentum of Townes’ career had come to a halt. Around this time John Lomax III entered the picture as Townes’ new manager. After examining the state of affairs of his new client's career, his conclusion was that Eggers was responsible for the stagnant state of Townes’ career.
“Kevin was totally inept at being able to function in any way other than to get some records into the pipeline, collect money, and keep it, so I decided, I’ll be his manager, and just tell everybody this is the world’s greatest songwriter and we’ll ride off into the sunset and count our money. What could be easier?”3
For many reasons, Lomax’s vision did not come to fruition. Him and Townes had a handshake agreement for their partnership, and Eggers would supposedly get Townes drunk one night and have him sign a new contract with him and slowly Lomax was pushed out of the picture all together. He certainly helped re-create some lasting momentum for Townes’ career however.
What Has His Impact Been?
There has never been an artist who has blended country, blues and folk music together better than Townes Van Zandt. He was a central figure in the Outlaw Country movement of the 1970s, and he helped create and define the wildly popular genre which we now call Americana. Today, among the genres I just mentioned and beyond, his influence is pervasive and unmistakable.
Mickey Newbury, who I mentioned in Part I, is cited by Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, David Allan Coe, and several other country stars as a primary influence on their songwriting and albums. These are the artists, along with Willie Nelson who are credited with creating the outlaw country genre. Newbury credits Townes as his biggest influence. So in both an indirect and direct way, Townes deserves as much credit as anyone for this movement.
His music has been covered by the likes of Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard (“Pancho and Lefty"), Emmylou Harris (“If I Needed You”), Norah Jones (“Be Here to Love Me”), Jason Isbell (“Tecumseh Valley”) and John Prine (“Loretta”) just to name a few. The list goes on and on. The list of artists who cite him as a top influence is equally long and impressive.
His influence stretches well beyond music as well. His songs have appeared in countless films and tv series including The Big Lebowski, In Bruges, Hell or High Water, Crazy Heart, Hell on Wheels, Deadwood and Ozark.
His impact is massive, criminally under-appreciated and very difficult to overstate. He is one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century and his impact continues to be felt today as strongly as ever.
With these essays I hope that I have introduced some people to Townes Van Zandt, demonstrated why he is so special, why he is under-appreciated, and how extensive his influence on music is.
Kruth, John, To Live's to Fly: The Ballad of the Late, Great Townes Van Zandt, (89)
Kruth, John, To Live's to Fly: The Ballad of the Late, Great Townes Van Zandt, (77)
Hardy, Robert Earl, A Deeper Blue: The Life and Music of Townes Van Zandt (147)