TOWNES VAN ZANDT : DOWN HOME & ABROAD

 

Disc One (57:44)

  1. Intro
  2. Dollar Bill Blues
  3. Pancho And Lefty
  4. Buckskin Stallion Blues
  5. No Place To Fall
  6. Talking Thunderbird Blues
  7. Mr. Gold And Mr. Mud
  8. If I Needed You
  9. Snowing On Raton
  10. To Live is To Fly
  11. Don't You Take It Too Bad
  12. Snake Mountain Blues
  13. Rake
  14. Fraternity Blues
  15. Colorado Girl / Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues

Disc Two (69:35)

  1. Dollar Bill Blues
  2. Pancho And Lefty
  3. Brand New Companion
  4. Two Girls
  5. Lungs
  6. Rex's Blues
  7. Nothin'
  8. The Ribbons Of Love
  9. Kathleen
  10. The Cuckoo
  11. Brother Flower
  12. If I Needed You
  13. Pinball Machine
  14. Tecumseh Valley
  15. Flyin' Shoes
  16. Don't You Take It Too Bad

Label : Floating World Records

Venue : The Down Home, Johnson City, Tennessee, USA + The Tavastia, Helsinki, Finland

Recording Date : April 18, 1985 + June 18, 1993

Release Date : November 2, 2018

Review (The Irish Times) : It’s always good to ring in the new year with an old friend. And Townes Van Zandt and I go back way too many years. When I first heard his classic album, Our Mother the Mountain, back in 1969 I was smitten for life. TVZ's songs trawl the dark side of the human condition and colour that world with poetic flair and tunes seeped in country and blues. This double album finds TVZ live in 1985 at a small gig in Johnson City, Tennessee, and then eight years later playing in Helsinki. Within four years this troubled man would be dead at 52 from a heart attack brought on by his fondness for drink and drugs. The Johnson City set at the Down Home is undoubtedly more accomplished, his voice sounds assured and his performance is full of quirky personality – he wryly introduces Pancho and Lefty as a "medley of his hit". The Helsinki show is more poignant, a portrait of a performer on the downslide but politely grateful for the warm reception for his cracked voice and luminous songs. Yet he is still able to reach into himself for a rivetting version of his epic ballad Tecumseh Valley. A voice like no other.

Review (Folking.com) : It’s hard to believe that Townes Van Zandt has been gone for more than 20 years, leaving behind some fine songs and memories of some uneven performances, in which his problems with addiction and bipolar disorder were no doubt played their part. The live double album Down Home & Abroad features performances from two pretty good nights. Disc 1 was recorded at The Down Home, Johnson City, Tennessee in 1985, and Disc 2 at The Tavastia in Helsinki, Finland in 1993. Inevitably, some of the songs occur on both CDs, but if, like me, you can never hear too much of ‘Pancho And Lefty’ or the somewhat-traditional-sounding ‘Dollar Bill’, you’ll probably enjoy comparing these two readings. (The other songs that are included in both sets are ‘If I Needed You’ and ‘Don’t You Take It Too Bad’, both fine songs.) Disc 1 –Tennessee 1985. With musical support from Mickey White (guitar) and Donny Silverman (flute and sax). This set includes a couple of Van Zandt’s early excursions into talking blues, with a biting humour that is less upfront in his later material. Disc 2 –Finland 1993. The spoken introductions to the songs tend to be a bit rambling compared to the earlier set, and the set as a whole is a little less polished, and the overall tone darker. The music of Townes Van Zandt belongs, I guess, in that broad area of Americana somewhere between folk and country: if you haven’t heard him before, you may want to draw comparisons with Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, John Prine, Joe Ely, Guy Clark and Steve Earle, as well as more mainstream country artists like Hank Williams, or Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, who had a number one country hit with their duet version of ‘Pancho And Lefty’. But he had a voice and poetic sensibility all his own, drawing on influences ranging from Shakespeare to the blues, and some of the best songs in the rather broad singer/songwriter idiom are his. If you aren’t familiar with his studio work, this is a good introduction to his songs: if you know and love his work already but don’t have these sets, you’ll certainly want to add this to your collection.