TALK about long goodbyes. Townes Van Zandt had been on stage barely 30
minutes when he started apologising for a curfew not giving him time for
more songs. Then, like the party soak who sinks endless farewell drinks
and eventually falls asleep behind the couch at breakfast time, he went
on, and on.
This fooled a few early leavers, probably newer converts, because
veteran Van Zandt followers know it ain't over until it's over. Mind
you, if I'd gone along on the strength of the ''great songwriter''
advance publicity, I might have felt I'd been had, too. Oh, he writes
great songs. Poncho and Lefty, magnificently covered by Willie Nelson,
for one. But he chucked that away like a chip wrapper.
There's a touch, too, of the Woody Guthries about his song selection.
So you get an unquestionably sincere love song; a tender lullaby for his
daughter . . . but then a lyric inviting a shrimp down to New Orleans
where the women will take him out of his shell. Later he'll launch into
Drunk Ira Hayes, a powerful tale of a Native American, a serial turner
of the other cheek, a tale made somehow the more powerful by Van Zandt's
obvious pre-gig indulgence.
Of course, being a Texan, Van Zandt also plays the blues. His choice
was co-written, he said, by Lightnin' Hopkins, Blind Willie McTell, and
himself, although its meter suggested a collaboration between W C Handy
and W C Fields. Then a brief, lucid guitar break would emerge and not
for the first time the words ''wayward genius'' sprang to mind.
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