Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Steve Earle covering Townes Van Zandt's Colorado Girl.
CD Review
Townes, Steve Earle, New West Records, 2009
I have mentioned on previously occasions when I have discussed county music, or rather more correctly outlaw country music, that I had a very short, but worthwhile period when I was immersed in this genre. After tiring somewhat of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and other more well know country outlaws I gravitated toward the music, eerily beautiful and haunting music, of the man who Steve Earl is paying tribute to here, Townes Van Zandt. And while this outlaw country thing was short-lived and I scrabbled back to my first loves, blues, rock and folk music I always had time to listen to Townes. And today listen to Townes through the medium of Steve Earle.
As the liner notes indicate Steve Earle and Townes shared some common time together and Earle learned much of his trade at the side of Townes so it is rather appropriate that Steve has produced this tribute album to his fallen comrade. Townes led a nomad live, have some very peculiar ideas about life and about how it was to be lived but he knew how to write songs. Songs of sorrows, songs of grief, songs of lost loves and lost opportunities. And even a few “happy” ones, although those do not stand the test of time as well as the more moody ones. And in his own way Steve Earle has captured those emotions, and in his own style. That style on some songs seemingly very close in voice and sound to some of Bruce Springsteen’s later folk-oriented work.
The stick outs here are the hauntingly beautiful Colorado Girl; the lyrical No Place To Fall; the hard-edged Loretta; and my favorite Townes songs, the wistfully symbolic, magically word-mastered (Quicksilver Daydreams of) Maria.
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