LesBlog

“Why do you write only said songs?” someone once asked the legendary Townes Van Zandt. 

“Well…, many of the songs…, they aren’t sad. They’re hopeless,” he affirmed. 

If you’re going to sing and play the blues, you might as well be the best that you can be. Maybe that’s why Townes Van Zandt is revered as a Texas Bluesman.

Here is a video clip of him playing “Pancho & Lefty” for an intimate group of friends. This song later became a number one country hit in 1983 when Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson adopted it as the title track of their duet album “Pancho & Lefty”.

Van Zandt is remembered as a gifted songwriter who left a legacy of songs that inspired, and continues to inspire, musicians of of much wider acclaim and repute than he; really a musician’s musician. Influential in the sub-genre referred to as “outlaw country”, his style really makes you feel just how big Texas really is (it’s the size of 5 average “other” western states).

“Doing your best is a process of trying to do your best,” he was once quoted in “Zen Guitar.”