“There are only two types of music,” Townes Van Zandt used to say, “the blues and zip-a-dee-doo-dah.” It is a well-worn quotation to guide us through the thicket of the Texas troubadour’s mind. He only played zip-a-dee-doo-dah if he noticed some of the audience crying in their beers after listening to a string of sorrowful songs sung in his achy, sputtering voice.
Van Zandt and Guy Clark were the forerunners of a new style of folk music that went beyond Pete Seeger and Peter, Paul & Mary. Like a parishioner admitting his sins to a priest expecting to be absolved and reconciled, their songs were confessional. This forward-thinking approach ultimately led to what’s known today as Outlaw Country.
‘Highway Kind’ was first released in 1972 on Van Zandt’s “High, Low and In Between” album. It was a dark ballad in a minor key that contrasted with his well-known, affirmational ‘To Live Is To Fly,’ that Van Zandt spoke of to biographer John Kruth: “It’s impossible to have a favorite song, but if I were forced at knifepoint to choose one, it would be ‘To Live Is To Fly.’”
Though Van Zandt was praised as a songwriter first and foremost, his fingerpicking ability was respected as well. He played his Gibson J-200 guitar Travis-picking style, although Merle Travis only used the thumb for the bass and one finger for the melody while Townes used two. Before acquiring that guitar, he played all kinds of second-hand instruments. He liked to tell a story about how he and friend went to dig up Blaze Foley’s grave because he had been buried with a pawn ticket for one of Van Zandt’s guitars.
His parents recognized their son had emotional and alcohol problems and pulled him out of college. Electro-shock therapy was an accepted practice, and he received several rounds. When his father died, it released him to pursue a life on the road with his guitar, stopping at small folk clubs and bars to play gigs, crashing on someone’s couch after last call. He became a binge drinker with a burdensome drug addiction, but that didn’t prevent him from writing songs that have stood the test of time. Steve Earle released an entire album of Van Zandt’s songs and named his son Justin Townes after his close friend. Earle once offered that, “Townes Van Zandt is the best damn songwriter in the world, and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.”
Whether Dylan’s coffee table was sturdy enough to support the weight of a big guy with cowboy boots is only speculation, but one thing was sure, that Dylan admired Van Zandt’s songwriting skills. “One way to measure a songwriter is to look at the singers who sing their songs,” Dylan wrote in his book, ‘The Philosophy of Modern Song.” He explained: “You know a song is great based on whether it’s still being performed. Townes’ are.”
‘Highway Kind’ is not one of Van Zandt’s most popular songs to cover. Earle didn’t even include it on his album. But it is a look into the soul of the songwriter, whose sharp observations were not only of people and places but of what made him tick with equal amounts of sorrow and pleasure.
“Usually, I just walk these streets and tell myself to care. Sometimes I believe me, sometimes I don’t wanna hear. Sometimes the state I’m in won’t let me go”.
The anguish which results from being in a state of perpetual tormented isolation is aptly portrayed in Lyle Lovett’s 1998 version on his album “Step Inside My House.” These two gifted songwriters from Texas have similar but different takes on the song. To hear Lovett sing it, you can’t help but feel he understood Van Zandt; it reverberates to your core, your mouth agape with amazement as you picture Van Zandt wandering through the days and years until death finally takes him by heart attack.
“I’ll meet the one’s between us, be thinkin’ about you, all the places I have seen and why you were not there”.
That mournful harmonica you hear is typical Cowboy Junkies style. Michael Timmins playing minimalist guitar passages that accompany his sister Margo Timmins’ sweet as maple syrup, melancholy vocals. She sings ‘Highway Kind’ as if it was a cousin to their superb ‘Misguided Angel,’ and there is no higher praise. The Canadian band recorded it in 2001 for “Poet: A Tribute to Townes Van Zandt.” The last time I saw Cowboy Junkies, Margo mentioned how honored they were to have been able to share the stage with Townes. They stretched the short 2-minute original to a riveting six minutes.
Like Lyle Lovett and Steve Earle before him, Eric Taylor was another songwriter from the Texas folk music capitol of Houston who was enthralled by Van Zandt’s music. His sixth album, released in 2007, was filled with songs of characters who didn’t fit the mold and found living hard. The one cover on “Hollywood Pocketknife” was a sardonic rendering of ‘Highway Kind’ that he sings in his signature rough-hewn manner that makes you feel as if you are walking in a gutter:”You’re the only one I want and I never heard your name” is Van Zandt’s statement that he’ll never find his true love, though his ex-wife remained close to him to the day he died in what had once been their home before divorcing.
Mark Lanegan passed last year at age 58. Besides releasing twelve solo albums and two duets with Isobel Campbell, he was a former member of Screaming Trees and Queens of the Stone Age. In 2009, Lanegan contributed vocals and a couple co-writes to the Soulsavers album “Broken”. Van Zandt’s song is only found on the Japanese pressing as a bonus track, and it will cost you dearly to buy one even if it can be located before collectors draw a bead. The haunting vocals sound as if they should be coming from the afterlife with Lanegan singing to you from another dimension.
One more that would be negligent to overlook is the 2016 version by jazz/pop singer Madeline Peyroux with Jon Herrington contributing some tasteful acoustic guitar, each riff telling a tale of loneliness and sorrow. You can imagine sitting on the bed in a seedy hotel, watching whatever mundane program happened to be on TV while waiting for take out to arrive. All alone and weary of the road but buoyed by the prospect of an audience paying attention to your songs, you take a sip of whiskey and light an unfiltered cigarette. Maybe you use something stronger, after all, life is hard but it’s also an experience worth writing and singing about.
“Sometimes I believe me, sometimes I don’t wanna hear Sometimes the state I’m in won’t let me go”.
