Track Listing

1. To Live Is to Fly - Guy Clark
2. Tower Song - Nanci Griffith
3. White Freightliner Blues - Billy Joe Shaver
4. Highway Kind - Cowboy Junkies
5. Snake Song - Emmylou Harris
6. If I Needed You - Ray Benson
7. Loretta - John Prine
8. Nothin' - Lucinda Williams
9. Blue Wind Blew - The Flatlanders
10. Mr. Mudd & Mr. Gold - Robert Earl Keen, Jr.
11. Two Girls - Steve Earle & the Dukes
12. Marie - Willie Nelson
13. Pancho & Lefty - Delbert McClinton
14. Waitin' 'Round to Die
15. My Proud Mountains - Townes Van Zandt

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #107204 in Music
• Released on: 2001-09-11
• Number of discs: 1

Album Description
'Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that'. (Steve Earle). Great tribute from 15 artists including Guy Clark, Nanci Griffith, Billy Joe Shaver, Cowboy Junkies, Emmylou Harris, John Prine, Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle and the Dukes and more. Gatefold digipak. 2002 release on Catfish Records.

Amazon.com's Best of 2001
The songs of Townes Van Zandt are destined to be for folk artists what the works of Gershwin are to saloon singers. The likes of "Pancho & Lefty," "If I Needed You," and "To Live's to Fly" are the quintessence of troubadour music, thanks to the somber grace of the late Lone Star legend's language and the engaging simplicity of his melodies. Poet gathers a talented assortment of Van Zandt contemporaries and apostles to pay tribute to the man by lovingly reinterpreting his songs. Steve Earle electrifies "Two Girls" while Billy Joe Shaver tackles "White Freightliner Blues" with similar fervor. "Tower Song," one of the most poignant breakup songs ever written, is revived by Nanci Griffith, and Willie Nelson provides a conversational version of "Marie." Stalwart fans of these gems will always prefer hearing the originals and live versions performed by their composer, but they'll find plenty to respect and enjoy in this lovingly compiled salute. --Steven Stolder

Customer Reviews

the melodies linger on
With the recent release of a two-CD retrospective of his early recordings, and now this tribute, those who may have been worried may be assured that though their creator left us nearly five years ago, Townes Van Zandt's songs will not soon be forgotten. In a review of Poet in the New York Times, Anthony De Curtis, not entirely hyperbolically, declared him a greater songwriter than Hank Williams -- though, of course, known to many fewer devotees of American music.

Poet may not be the last Van Zandt tribute we'll ever hear, but it sets the gold standard. Its producers have assembled a stellar collection of folk and country artists, all of whom turn in impassioned performances. The production is right, too -- a big consideration when one considers the clunky production that mars a number of Van Zandt's own recordings. Billy Joe Shaver offers a rocking roadhouse-blues version of "White Freightliner Blues," and it's great. But except for Steve Earle and the Dukes ("Two Girls"), everybody else prefers an austere acoustic approach whose effect is to underscore Van Zandt's roots in traditional music. No one does it so explicitly as Emmylou Harris, who sets the obscure "Snake Song" to a plaintive old-time banjo sound. If one didn't know better, one might almost think this was some venerable Appalachian lyric and melody. Willie Nelson's stark take on "Marie," one of Van Zandt's last songs, brings to mind the mood and storyline of Woody Guthrie's "I Ain't Got No Home."

Still, for all his manifest influences, Van Zandt was an original, a melancholy romantic who never lost his ability to laugh. Few have known, either, how to tell a story better than he did. It's hard to imagine that "Pancho and Lefty" (done here by Delbert McClinton) and "Waitin' 'Round to Die" (Pat Haney) will ever lose their dark power.

The bad news is that while the music is uniformly satisfying, the extensive liner notes one would expect are nowhere to be found. A thoughtful, informed essay on Van Zandt's life and art, which one would assume to be essential to a project of this sort, is nowhere to be found. Nor is information on who played behind whom on the various cuts. This shouldn't keep you from buying this very good disc, but it should annoy you a little.

Solid, with a handful of outstanding interpretations
Though nothing here quite equals, in this writer's opinion, Townes Van Zandt's own performances of these songs (studio & otherwise) this is, overall, an enjoyable tribute. I'm not wild about everything here - 'Highway Kind' by the Cowboy Junkies for instance, while listenable enough, never rises above its own weariness and sounds too much like just another Cowboy Junkies song. Robert Earl Keen's interpretation of 'Mr. Mudd & Mr. Gold' is similarly disappointing. On the face of it such a 'narrative song' would seem to be ideal for him and yet his version of the song falls somehow flat. Also, why we need another version of 'Pancho & Lefty' (Delbert McClinton) at this point in the recorded history of the song is somewhat baffling. Still there's nothing on 'Poet' which isn't at the very least good - including electric performances by Steve Earle ('Two Girls') and Billy Joe Shaver ('White Freightliner Blues'.) The Flatlanders do a warm, appealing version of 'Blue Wind Blew' but a few interpretations - by Guy Clarke ('To Live's To Fly'), Nancy Griffith ('Tower Song'), Emmylou Harris ('Snake Song'), Lucinda Williams ('Nothin') and Willie Nelson ('Marie') - really outshine the rest. The reason for this is simple - it is in these (mostly quite stark) interpretations that one has the sense that the respective performers can be said to inhabit (or, to put it differently) are truly inhabited by the songs. Which means that on these songs there is a kind of magic that comes through - through the sensitivity of the individual performers the songs cast a spell and it's the spell of Townes Van Zandt's songwriting. Another highlight is John T. Van Zandt's rendition of 'My Proud Mountains' - his voice and delivery uncannily recalling his father's.

The duality of the Townes thing
Townes Van Zandt was an extraordinary songwriter who wrote lyrics that could justly be called poetical. And while he played and acoustic guitar and his disks get filed under "folk," Townes was no folkie in the pejorative sense. He was from Texas and he had an edge. Once in a Houston bar at 3am he launched into this epic version of "Nothin'" which must have clocked in at nearly 10 minutes (he had a band behind him), undoubtedly the most frightening musical look into the abyss that I have ever experienced. A couple of drunken cowboys at the bar got into a fistfight at roughly the six-minute mark. Townes, wisely, kept right on playing. I don't think Townes ever made it to Lake Woebegone. Would have been lost if he had.

I sympathize with the reviewers who write that TVZ's originals top most of these covers (though in fairness, Townes' studio recordings were often marred by cheesy production). As an introduction, "Live at the Old Quarter" is superior. This disk is a complement to, not a substitute for, Townes' own recordings. But this collection works, if only for that while Townes was a "poet" and the cover illustration has him looking suitably folkie/poetical, enough of his contemporaries who have retained their edges (if not their chops) are on hand to keep TVZ from being embalmed in treacle.

Personal favorites: Willie Nelson absolutely nails "Marie," and the Lucinda Williams/"Nothin'" pairing is inspired. (In general the artist/song pairings work well: Nanci Griffith gets "The Tower Song" and John Prine on "Loretta," for example.) Billie Joe Shaver reminds us that while TVZ carried an acoustic, he could wail. Steve Earle sort of bashes his way through "Two Girls," but, hey, I saw Townes sort of stumble through his catalogue on some nights, so it sort of illuminates this aspect of his life/style. Reviewers complain about Delbert McClinton's version of "Pancho and Lefty" - but like Lucinda taking on "Nothin'" who better to do "Pancho and Lefty" than a middle-aged Texas roadhouse honky-tonker with a rhythm section? (Nice guitar solo - standard compilation complaint: where are the notes? Who played that solo?). Delbert and Townes are from the same tradition - TVZ used to cover "Fraulein." And for the folks who like the more delicate poetical stuff, Nanci Griffith covers "The Tower Song," and everyone else plays acoustic. And lifelong TVZ supporter Guy Clark justly gets his crack at "To Live is To Fly."

All in all, this comes off as a heartfelt tribute by TVZ's contemporaries. Not a bad disk.