Late last night I was reading John Kruth's biography "To Live's to Fly: The Ballad of the Late, Great Townes Van Zandt" when I came across this passage on p. 97: "A Gentle Evening with Townes Van Zandt", finally released in 2002, reveals a set of nine songs [plus "A Joke"] that Van Zandt performed that evening [in 1969 at Carnegie Hall]." Hallelujah for that!
Issued by Nashville's hip Dualtone Vintage label (see dualtone.com; price: $13.00), the album opens with the controversial "Talking KKK Blues" & includes such classic TVZ numbers as "Tecumseh Valley," a heartbreaking tune about a prostitute, as well as his minor-key waltz "Rake" & the moving "She Came and She Touched Me." This first-ever live recording of Townes, in an unusual venue for him, closes with a cover: "Ira Hayes," Peter LaFarge's ballad about the tragic alcoholic Pima Indian, a flag-raising hero at the Battle of Iwo Jima. That song was a 1964 hit for the compassionate Man in Black. Oddly enough, TVZ was followed onstage at that weird New York show by an equally brilliant fellow Poppy Records artist, the legendary black comedian Dick Gregory.
Kruth goes on to quote Wisconsin folksinger Bill Camplin, who offers this insight about hippies & Van Zandt: "Townes didn't strike me as much of a hippie at all. What makes a hippie? Being a free spirit? Townes was only interested in heaven once he was down in hell and looking up at it." Indeed. And the music world is a better place for his having described so well in song his journeys to hell & his visions of heaven.
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