Drunk Degenerate Genius Poet Part I

A Brief Introduction to the Life and Music of Townes Van Zandt

I can remember the first time I heard a Townes Van Zandt song. I was sitting in my family room watching the show Hell on Wheels when “Waitin’ Around to Die” came on. It immediately struck me that this is what I had been searching for in music. The song is at once an authentic, beautiful, dark, compelling story; what most songwriters strive for, yet fall short of, and Townes did it effortlessly. This was about eight years ago. His life and music have been an endless source of fascination, enjoyment and inspiration for me ever since.

Opening verse to Waitin’ Around to Die:

Sometimes I don't know where

This dirty road is taking me

Sometimes I can't even see the reason why

I guess I keep a-gamblin'

Lots of booze and lots of ramblin'

It's easier than just waitin' around to die

Townes Van Zandt is an enigma and a cult figure. He was one of the great singer-songwriters of his era. His music can be described as folk, country, blues, outlaw country, americana, and yet none of these labels quite fit the bill. In a 1971 interview with journalist William Hedgepath, singer-songwriter and member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame Mickey Newbury said

“the person who’s influenced me more’n just about anybody else is somebody I’m sure you’ve never heard of, a guy named Townes Van Zandt. An incredible poet.”¹

Newbury went on to say

“I consider him in the same category as Dylan and McCartney. Townes’s songs contained some of the most beautiful imagery I’ve ever heard in my life. You’ve got to wonder why he wasn’t more successful. But he just didn’t get the break. He didn’t have the right people working his deal. There’s no doubt that he worked. The man was a road warrior. He was the Real Deal.”²

While he was revered by his peers, idolized by many, and celebrated by a cult following, he had little commercial success during his life, and since the time of his death, remains relatively unknown. This essay is a brief introduction to the life and music of Townes Van Zandt for those who may be unfamiliar.

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Who is Townes Van Zandt?

John Townes Van Zandt was a singer songwriter born to a prominent Texas family in Fort Worth on March 7, 1944. His great great grandfather was Isaac Van Zandt, a political leader in the Republic of Texas alongside Sam Houston. Van Zandt County, about fifty miles east of Dallas, is named after him. Townes was named after his great grandfather on his mother’s side, John Townes, who founded the University of Texas law school. Townes’ father was a successful corporate lawyer whose career required the family to move many times throughout his childhood. 

Like many young boys of his generation, Townes saw Elvis Presley on the Ed Sullivan Show at twelve years old and from then on, wanted to become a guitar player. His father eventually bought him a guitar with the condition that he learned to play the song, “Fraulein,” which he did, and continued to play for the rest of his life.

During the prime of his career and songwriting abilities, Townes would typically spend winters in either Texas or Tennessee and Summers in the mountains of Colorado. Steve Earle once described Townes as a

“migratory beast… and those of us fortunate enough to live along that migratory path of his, well, we just waited with baited breath until he came around again the next year.” 

This nomadic way of life began during his childhood. He lived in Fort Worth for his first eight years and after that the family moved constantly every few years due to his father’s work as a corporate lawyer. First to Midland, Texas, then Billings, Montana, Boulder, Colorado and finally, Barrington, Illinois. In 1960, at age sixteen, Townes agreed to go to military prep school at Shattuck Military Academy in Faribault, Minnesota. It seems he agreed to this because it promised some continuity for the first time in his young life. After graduating from Shattuck, he went to college at the University of Colorado, Boulder. 

About halfway through college, Townes began drinking heavily, using drugs, and exhibiting manic behavior. At one point, he leaned backward off a third story balcony “to see what it felt like all the way up to when you lost control.”³ Of course he had to go through with the fall to achieve this. He was not seriously injured, but due to this and several other incidents, his parents became worried about his mental health. They took him back to Texas and had him committed to a mental hospital where he was diagnosed as an “obsessive-compulsive schizoid character with strong paranoid trends.”⁴ He underwent forty treatments of electroshock and insulin coma therapy, which apparently erased many of his childhood memories, at least temporarily.

According to a psychological report from the hospital, Townes’ IQ was measured at 134.⁵

After being released from the mental institution, he would attend the University of Houston for a short time before dropping out to pursue a career as a musician.

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What Made Him Great?

Townes was first and foremost a brilliant songwriter with a unique ability to convey deep emotion and wisdom in an unsentimental, authentic way. 

He rejected the comforts and opportunities of his upper-middle class background and instead chose a life of hard drinking, drug abuse, gambling and travel. What I have come to realize about Townes, the thing that is so unique about him, besides his extraordinary talent, was his level of commitment to his art. He sang about the darkest aspects of humanity - drinking, drugs, depression, heartbreak - and he lived them as well. His art and his life were one in the same. According to Kinky Friedman, Townes

“interwove his life and his art so completely that you couldn’t tell one from the other.”⁶

One of his heroes was Hank Williams, and the similarities between the two cannot be ignored. New York Times journalist Robert Palmer wrote in a June 7, 1987 article,

“both men live in their music, as if singing and writing and being human were the same thing and as natural as breathing.”

He described the music of both Van Zandt and Williams as

“the direct, untrammeled expression of a man’s soul.”

There is something deeply spiritual and sad, with a radical acceptance of life as it is, in all of his songs. He was well known for captivating audiences in a unique and powerful way. Journalist Chris Dickinson recalled watching a Townes performance:

“I once observed an entire club achieve a meltdown in his presence, people crying into their hands, a shared emotional participation I’ve never seen the likes of since.”⁷

He would likely have followed this up with a light hearted corny joke, another signature of his live performances. 

He is the embodiment of the Texas troubadour archetype/myth. In many ways it's based on him.

The reality of his life was certainly not as romantic as the myth, but he managed to create a cult of personality around himself and became a legend while he was still living.

Townes was a junkie at various points in his life; he drank himself to death; he was an absent father at times; he certainly was no saint. Yet by all accounts, he was an incredibly kind person with a magnetic personality who on several occasions literally gave people the shirt off his back. He would allow homeless people to stay the night in his house and often give them all the money in his pocket. His life and body of work are treasure troves of beauty and wisdom, but these qualities are subtle. You have to look and listen deeply to find them for yourself, and judging by his popularity throughout the years, many have been unable to do this.

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To Live is to Fly

Townes Van Zandt

Won't say I love you, babe

Won't say I need you, babe

But I'm gonna get you, babe

And I will not do you wrong

Living's mostly wasting time

And I'll waste my share of mine

But it never feels too good

So let's don't take too long

Well you're soft as glass

And I'm a gentle man

And we got the sky to talk about

And the world to lie upon

Days, up and down they come

Like rain on a conga drum

Forget most, remember some

But don't turn none away

Everything is not enough

And nothin' is too much to bear

Where you been is good and gone

All you keep's the getting there

Well, to live's to fly

All low and high

So shake the dust off of your wings

And the sleep out of your eyes

It's goodbye to all my friends

It's time to go again

Think of all the poetry

And the pickin' down the line

Well, I'll miss the system here

The bottom's low and the treble's clear

But it don't pay to think too much

On things you leave behind

Well I may be gone

But it won't be long

I'll be a-bringin' back the melody

And rhythm that I find

We all got holes to fill

And them holes are all that's real

Some fall on you like a storm

Sometimes you dig your own

The choice is yours to make

And time is yours to take

Some dive into the sea

Some toil upon the stone

Well to live is to fly

All low and high

So shake the dust off of your wings

And the sleep out of your eyes

Ah shake the dust off of your wings

And the tears out of your eyes

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1. Kruth, John, To Live's to Fly: The Ballad of the Late, Great Townes Van Zandt, (72)

2. Kruth, John, To Live's to Fly: The Ballad of the Late, Great Townes Van Zandt, (71)

3. Kruth, John, To Live's to Fly: The Ballad of the Late, Great Townes Van Zandt, (30)

4. Hardy, Robert Earl, A Deeper Blue: The Life and Music of Townes Van Zandt (47)

5. Hardy, Robert Earl, A Deeper Blue: The Life and Music of Townes Van Zandt (46)

6. Kruth, John, To Live's to Fly: The Ballad of the Late, Great Townes Van Zandt, (296)

7.  Kruth, John, To Live's to Fly: The Ballad of the Late, Great Townes Van Zandt, (121)