Townes Van Zandt "Townes Van Zandt" (1969)

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GENTLE CELEBRATION OF RURAL AMERICA

• This is what it sounds like when a troubled man foreshadows his own death. "Waiting Around to Die" best typified the tragic troubadour's obsession with the inevitability of his destiny, but the coal miner's ballad "Lungs" is perhaps the most haunting dirge, painted in the sparseness of a lone acoustic guitar, a tambourine and the late Van Zandt's clutching country croon.

• His roots solidly in the folk tradition, Townes' songs are evocations of the American earth; deeply loving, free of fashionable sneers, yet almost oppressively sad. I can't imagine a better song about what America has come to than "St. John the Gambler" (on Our Mother the Mountain) whose inspiration apparently was that old cowboy song "Roving Gambler," about an innocent young girl who leaves her mother to follow a freewheeling American gambler.

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 on gamblin

Lots of booze and lots of ramblin

It`s easier than just a waitin round to die

(Waitin' round to Die)

• For many many years I have come back to this album and each time I am devastated. Every single song is breathtaking. Townes said more than once that he doesn't write his songs but that they flow out of him.

• This is most obvious in the mystical "Lungs", which owns a primordial force which can be compared only to the strongest moments of Bonnie 'Prince' Billys "I see a darkness".Townes Van Zandt can claim his place amongst the best songwriters of all time, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and Will Oldham.

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