Townes Van Zandt: Dreaming Hit Songs, Detox, and Waiting Around to Die

Double Elvis. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. This is a story about a songwriter. An incredible talent who toiled in obscurity. He had a number one hit, but most people don't know his name. He released a dozen albums during his lifetime. None sold more than a few thousand copies. He spent his entire career waiting to die, knowing that he would only become a legend after he was gone. Just like his idol, Hank Williams. Because just like Hank Williams, he lived in pain. And also like Hank Williams, he sacrificed everything to chase the muse. This is the story of Townes Van Zandt, a songwriter's songwriter who lived his art. In his art was some of the saddest, most mournful songs ever committed to tape. Songs that were so real and relatable and funny and fucked up that they had a magical power to make you feel better about your own fucked up life. Great music. Unlike that loop I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Mellotron called Texas Lighter Fluid MK1 I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Tony Braxton's Unbreak My Heart And why would I play you that specific slice of blistering heartbreak cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on January 1st, 1997 And that was the day that Living on the Road finally killed Towns Van Zandt, 44 years to the day after Hank Williams died under similar circumstances. On this episode, poetry, picking, gambling, rambling, blistering heartbreak cheese, and the legend of the late, great Towns Van Zandt. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. We'll see you next time. held the paper cup in the palm of his hand. It was tiny, like something they would give you at the dentist's office, or something the nurses used to give him with his pills back in Galveston. It was New Year's Eve, 1996, and Townes was in a Memphis recording studio. Behind the mixing board was Steve Shelley, the drummer for Sonic Youth. Across from Townes, a group of young Memphis all-star pickers from the band Two Dollar Guitar waited for Towns to call the next song. They were all there to make an album for Sonic Youth's record label, Ecstatic Peace. Towns was convinced it would be his final recording. After a hard 52 years, Towns could feel his body breaking down. His lungs were collapsing. It left his singing voice weak and unsteady. His heart felt like he could barely pump the blood through his veins. His hands were shaking every time he went more than an hour without a drink. so he could barely play the guitar. And then there was his hip. He'd slipped and fallen a few days before Christmas, and he spent the last week in his cabin outside of Nashville, scooting around on his ass. When his long-suffering road manager, Harold Eggers, picked him up for the trip to Memphis, he begged Towns to go to the hospital instead. But the opportunity to cut one last album with these younger dudes was irresistible. If he didn't make the session, Towns knew he might not get another chance. So Harold carried Towns to the car and then rolled him into the studio in a wheelchair. But now the pain in his hip was blinding. Towns desperately needed a fix if he was going to get through a song. And these tiny cups of vodka that Harold kept pouring weren't getting it done. Neither were the handful of pain pills he swallowed before they arrived. Towns crumpled the paper cup in his hand and tossed it onto the ground. He snarled at Harold. Enough of these stupid tiny cups, H. And Harold snapped back that he would pour Towns a gallon if that's what he wanted. Towns shook his head. He didn't want a gallon. He just wanted the pain to stop. It felt like it had been his constant companion for so long. And after a long pause, he said, just one more shot for a blues. Harold handed him another small cup and Towns tipped it back. He felt the burn of the vodka as it went down. and with the liquor coursing through his veins, he summoned up the last bit of energy he had left. He straightened up, even though it sent lightning bolts of pain shooting down his leg. He screwed his eyes shut tight in the way he always did when he sang and began weaving together a haunting blues tune called Old Satan. His rhythm was shaky and his voice was frail, but still, he poured everything he had into that performance. and for a moment it looked like the song might take flight and there was a glimmer of the magic Townes used to conjure up so effortlessly. Steve Shelley excitedly started turning knobs on the mixing board and the younger musicians watched breathlessly. But then the waves of pain eventually overtook Townes again. He stumbled through the second verse and the magic spell was broken. He made it through the song, barely, but the take was hardly a keeper. Towns knew he couldn't go on. He laid down the guitar and snatched the bottle from Harold and took a long pull. No one said anything, but they all knew it. This recording session was over. A few hours later, Towns was stretched out in the backseat of Harold's car as they drove back to Nashville in silence. Neither of them wanted to talk about the disastrous recording session, so instead, Harold flipped through the radio dial looking for a tune. And down near the left end of the dial, the unmistakable warble of Hank Williams suddenly cut through the static. Townes laid his head back and hummed along to the words of Hank's lost highway. Hank Williams, along with Lightning Hopkins and Bob Dylan, made up Townes' holy trinity of musical influences. Back in Houston, Townes studied at Lightning's feet, learning to cast the spell with a groove so thick and steady it could hypnotize a room into silence. To this, he added the searing imagery from Bob Dylan's early records, which he devoured as a college student at the University of Colorado. But Hank Williams was his North Star. Towns always felt a spiritual connection to the country legend. They both had the same long and lanky frame, the same piercing stare, the same willingness to push aside health, family, friends, push aside everything, really, to chase the muse. And like Hank, who struggled with the bottle his whole life and was committed to a sanitarium more than once, Towns Van Zandt had also spent some time in institutions. The first time was when he was just 20. During his sophomore year at the University of Colorado, he spent weeks locked in his apartment with a bottle of whiskey and Lightning Hopkins records on repeat. Worried, his girlfriend contacted his parents. and when they saw the terrible shape their son was in, they immediately had him committed to the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. In Galveston, town spent three months locked up and doped up. The doctors strapped him down to a gurney. They forced a rubber block into his mouth and zapped his brain with electroshock treatments that they insisted would cure his depression. Instead, it erased his long-term memory. Hank's voice crackled through the car speakers and the song came to an end. In the backseat, Townes listened as the DJ came on, reminding everyone that Hank Williams died on New Year's Day. Townes knew the story well Hank Williams was riding in the backseat of a black Cadillac heading up to a concert in Ohio but he never made it Word was he died somewhere around Bristol Yet even after death Hank legend kept growing. Towns had long figured he was in the same boat. His legend would grow, but only after he died. As the codeine and vodka started to make his head spin, he could almost see Hank in a white suit and Stetson hat sitting alongside him in the backseat. The ghostly vision of Hank reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a flask and handed it to Towns. Towns took a pull and swore he could taste whiskey. Then Hank beckoned Towns on to follow him down the lost highway. But Towns wasn't ready to go just yet. It wasn't that he was afraid of death. Far from it. He was the guy who wrote Waiting Around to Die, first released when he was barely in his 20s, after all. But Townes wanted to see the album through. He wanted to see his kids again. He wanted to wring just a little bit more picking and poetry out of his life. So he willed his aching body to hold on just a little longer. And he looked over at the vision of Hank smirking at him, underneath a white hat, and begged for a bit more time. And he could only hope that Hank Williams would listen. It is not hard to destroy a college. Last season, the podcast Campus Files brought you stories of fraternity drug rings, stolen body parts, campus cults, and more. And now Campus Files is back for another season. There's a guy screaming into his phone. He's like, I just saw Charlie Kirk just assassinated right in front of me. Every week is a new episode and a new story. It was so chaotic. It's almost like a university on a siege. Listen to and follow Campus Files. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. Towns Van Zandt stared at the clenched fist in front of him. The fist belonged to Guy Clark. Guy's wife, Susanna, hovered next to him, waiting. Towns looked at the three straws Guy held tight in his hand and scratched his head. He reached forward, but then stopped to think. The trio was gathered in the living room of a tiny dilapidated house in East Nashville, where newlyweds Guy and Susanna lived. Towns came out from Texas to be the best man at their wedding in January of 1972, and never really left. It was March now, and he was still crashing in Susanna's tiny art studio on a dirty twin mattress they found in a dumpster. Towns and Guy have been best friends since linking up as young songwriters on the Houston coffeehouse circuit. They had an equal passion for songwriting, booze, and gambling. And they would gamble on anything. Cards, sure. Dice, of course. But they would also bet $100 on a coin flip. Or which raindrop would make it the bottom of the window first. Right now, though, the stakes weren't quite as high, but Towns still wanted to win. As Towns' hand hesitated above the three straws, he stared once more at Guy's eyes, and they were bleary. His nose was bright red. Susanna looked about the same. All three of them looked like they were half in the bag, but that was only half right. Sure, they had been drinking hot toddies all afternoon, but That was purely medicinal. Because Townes, Guy, Susanna, were all suffering from the worst case of the flu they could remember. Finally, Townes made his decision. He reached down to Guy's fist and pulled out a straw and held it up. It was barely two inches long. Townes shook his head and muttered. He knew he had lost. Which meant Townes would have to pull on his coat and boots and drag his aching body down to the pharmacy to buy a bottle of codeine cough syrup for the three of them. A half hour later, Townes was back at the house. He grabbed three rocks glasses and poured the contents of the bottle evenly between them before passing a glass to Guy and Susanna. They clinked glasses, and Townes downed his in a single gulp. Susanna went back to her easel, where she was working on a painting of a bright red apple bouncing across the canvas. Guy was tinkering with a new song, a cinematic story every bit as detailed as a Scorsese film. a cinematic story that he was calling Let Him Roll. Towns listened for a few minutes before he felt the codeine kicking in. It was one of his favorite highs, warm and black. Normally Towns liked to ride that high as long as he could, but tonight he was too sick and too tired. Then the medicine was doing its job and soon he was nodding off. And while he still had the energy, Towns stumbled off to the mattress on the floor and fell headlong into the deepest sleep of his life. Suddenly, Towns awoke and found himself on a stage with bright lights shining in his face. His mouth opened and out poured a melody, but it was one he couldn't quite recognize. It felt familiar, warm, like he'd been singing it for years, centuries maybe. As he kept singing, he looked around the room, a roadhouse like any of the thousands he'd played before. But like the song, he couldn't quite place this one. Sure, there were the same empty Schlitz bottles scattered across the tables, same sawdust floor, the same spellbound crowd locked into his timeless melody. But there were no foosball tables and no televisions. His guitar took up the melody with an easy, natural swing. And while he played, Townes looked out across the crowd, and the women were wearing knee-length dresses. The men were all decked out in suits. and then he caught his own reflection in a long mirror hanging across the bar's back wall. His piercing black eyes looked the same as usual, but Townes was surprised to see he was wearing a suit as well. A white number with a sharp cut and a white Stetson hat to match. He locked eyes with his reflection in the mirror. Those dark eyes drew him in while he kept repeating the last line of the song. Something about easing the pain over and over while those twin pools of darkness kept pulling him in, deeper and deeper, filling his entire field of vision. It was still pitch black when Towns Van Zandt jolted out of his dream. He thrashed around on the mattress until he rolled onto the floor half awake, and the last line of the song was still ringing in his head. Towns fumbled around for a pad of paper and jotted down the words, Then the melody was deep, so natural that he knew he would have no trouble remembering it. And then he collapsed back into sleep. And when the sunlight flooded into his room the next morning, Townes lay still with eyes closed, listening to his pet parakeets, Loop and Lil, chirping back and forth. Townes loved those birds. He took them with him everywhere. Even stuffing them into the chest pockets of his Pearl Snap Western shirts to sneak them onto airplanes. and as he listened to the birds' timeless song, he slowly remembered his vivid dream from the night before. But when he opened his notebook, the whole surreal performance came flooding back to him. As he watched the birds flit around the room, he scratched out a few more lines before stumbling out into the living room. Guy and Susanna were already awake and drinking coffee when Towns walked into the room and asked if they wanted to hear a new song. And the song was, If I Needed You. And that's how thick the mojo was for Towns Van Zandt in 1972. He was literally writing hit songs in his sleep, even if they weren't always hit songs for him. His version of If I Needed You may have never even sniffed the charts, but Emmylou Harris and Don Williams took it to number three in 1981, and it's been recorded by hundreds of artists over the years. Even if he hadn't scored a hit for himself yet, Nearly everyone who came in contact with Towns Van Zandt was convinced that a hit song was just around the corner. It's why Guy and Susanna let him crash in Nashville. It's why Steve Earle ran away from home as a teenager to Towns in Houston, and later followed him to Nashville just for the chance to soak up some of that mojo. To know Towns Van Zandt was to know greatness. He had the poetry. He had the playing. he had the charisma and the sheer incredible talent that shined in whatever room he rambled into A few months after writing If I Needed You in the throes of a codeine fever dream Towns had rambled out west to Colorado something he did nearly every summer to ride horses write songs, and rest up for a heavy fall tour schedule. In Colorado, Mickey White, a fellow musician from the Houston circuit, scored Towns a session at a nearby radio station. Sitting in the parking lot of the station, Mickey asked Towns if he had any new songs. Towns didn't pull any punches. He just slung his guitar over his shoulder and played Mickey If I Needed You in Poncho and Lefty back-to-back. Songs were never a problem for Towns Van Zandt. But financial issues at his record lid, questionable production decisions, and his own self-destructive behavior all conspired to prevent the breakthrough that always seemed like it should have been just around the corner. In the early fall of 1972, Townes Van Zandt was back in Texas visiting his mother, when an alarming episode nearly derailed his career permanently. Because by now, Townes wasn't just tipping back cough syrup. He was shooting heroin. But while home alone, Townes tied off and overdosed. It was hours before his body was found. He came into the emergency room, dead on arrival. It took the doctors almost an hour before they finally revived him. Miraculously, he avoided brain damage. And it didn't change his behavior, though. He laughed it off and titled his next album, The Late Great Towns Van Zandt. Despite containing his two signature songs, If I Needed You and Poncho and Lefty, the album sold less than 10,000 copies. His record label folded, and contract disputes prevented the follow-up from coming out for more than six years. And by that point, Towns had given up on stardom. He practically gave up on everything, retreating to a shack in Franklin, Tennessee with no running water. He spent most of the next decade getting high, picking wildflowers, and waiting around to die. But Hank Williams' call was still far off in the distance, an echo that Towns could barely hear. Instead, another pair of country outlaws were about to bring Towns Van Zandt and his career back to life. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. Towns Van Zandt was doing at least 75 when he saw the red and blue lights flashing behind him. That put him at least 30 miles over the speed limit as he flew through this tiny Texas town, halfway between Houston and Austin. The speed limit was only part of the problem. In 1985, just about any time Towns Van Zandt was behind the wheel, he was committing at least a couple felonies. Today was no exception. He was still feeling the buzz from the pint of vodka he put away during the gig last night and the constellation of pills he swallowed afterward, not to mention the beers he had for breakfast. There was also the pharmacy's worth of narcotics wrapped up in a paper sack in the back seat. Plus the small bag of heroin and injection kit stuffed under the driver's seat. But Townes had been through a thousand close calls with the law without earning serious jail time. Once, he crashed his car through a borrower's plate glass window and just walked inside and ordered a drink. Somehow, he ended up with only a fine. So Townes was determined to play it cool as he saw a pair of highway patrolmen step out of their cruiser and march towards his car. They were an odd pair. One was tall and pale with a blonde crew cut and bright blue eyes. His partner was shorter and stocky with bronze skin and dark brown eyes. In the bright Texas sun, the contrast between them couldn't have been greater. Towns couldn't help but think it would make a great song. And as the cops approached, Towns rolled down the window and without a hint of a slur, asked the officers if there was a problem. The shorter cop didn't respond. He just stared at Towns and asked for his license and registration. By some minor miracle, Towns' license was up to date. Unfortunately, though, the car's plates were expired. In no time flat, Towns was being pulled out of the car, and if the cops were suspicious before, they were practically salivating when they found a large wad of cash in his pocket. Towns calmly explained that he was a singer-songwriter and the cash was payment from last night's gig in Houston. He could see the cops smirk at each other and roll their eyes. Towns figured songwriters must be a dime a dozen. out here. The blonde cop practically sneered at him. Oh yeah? You wrote anything we've heard of? A gambler knows when it's time to play his ace, and Towns knew this was the time. Sure, he said. You ever heard of Poncho and Lefty? The remark landed even heavier than he hoped. The cops froze with a surprised look in their eyes before they recovered. They both shook their heads. No way. They weren't buying it. Fortunately, Townes had the proof. He reached into the backseat of the car and pulled out an LP. He pointed to the song on the back, and then he pointed to the liner notes. All songs written by Townes Van Zandt. Townes waited in silence as the cops whispered back and forth. He knew better than to say anything, and he tried not to even breathe too loudly. And when the patrolman turned back to him, Townes could feel the tension lifting. The blonde cop said that they'd let him go with a warning. And Towns was surprised. But he wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. He started to leave. But a question was worming its way through his mind. He knew he should say thanks and be on his way. But he decided to push his luck. Why, he wanted to know. Were they letting him go? The mismatched pair of highway patrolmen grinned and explained that their radio call names were Poncho and Lefty. Towns nodded thoughtfully and started walking back to his car. Still, he couldn't help himself. He spun around on his boot heels to ask one more question. Say, fellas, which one of you is Pancho? The Mexican cop pointed at his blue-eyed, blonde-haired partner. He is. And with that, Towns cracked a smile, tipped his cowboy hat, and a moment later, he was flying down the road towards Austin. Free and clean. By 1985, Towns' career was also flying, thanks to two of the biggest country music stars on the planet. When Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard decided to release a duo album in 1983, it had all the makings of a blockbuster. They had ace producer Chip's Moment and a crack band of Texas pickers. They had unique voices that complemented each other perfectly. But as the last day of recording came to a close, the only thing they didn't have was a single. Close to midnight, Merle Haggard went back to his tour bus to catch some sleep before pulling out in the morning. And Willie Nelson stayed in the studio, pondering the missing track, when his daughter Lana suggested Poncho and Lefty after hearing Emmylou Harris' 1977 version. She left to grab a copy and came back around 2 a.m. Willie listened to the song once and told Chip's moment to go wake up Merle Haggard, and they were going to cut the song that night. And the next morning, the song was finished. But when the album came out, Poncho and Lefty was the title track. Both the album and the single went to number one on the country charts. Willie and Merle filmed a big budget music video, and they even invited Townes to appear in it. Most fans paid no attention to the dark-haired guitar picker from the music video. But enough of them started buying old Townes Van Zandt albums that he was finally able to sign a record contract. He put out his first album in 10 years with 1987's At My Window. And the album still wasn't a big seller, but it earned rave reviews. And it came with a bold sticker on the front, a quote that would follow Townes for the rest of his life. Because by 1987, Townes' buddy Steve Earl had become a major star in his own right. And when the label asked him to come up with a quote, he did more than that. He threw down a gauntlet, saying, quote, Townes Van Zant's the best songwriter in the world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that. Unquote. Townes reportedly hated that quote. When people asked him about it, he liked to say that he had met Bob Dylan's bodyguards, and there was no way Steve would make it anywhere close to Bob's coffee table. Which is probably true, but I digress. Although stardom still seemed out of reach Townes seemed like he might settle into a niche as a critically acclaimed if not commercially viable artist He was touring regularly again He married his third wife, Janine, and they had a son. And for a short time, there was something close to domestic bliss. But living back in Texas again, temptation was everywhere. He couldn't walk a block down 6th Street in Austin without a dozen people offering to buy him a drink or something stronger. Lightning Hopkins always told Townes to play the blues, you shouldn't even be able to stand up. Townes seemed more determined than ever to live by that rule. One night, at the club Emma Joes, he was so drunk that he couldn't remember the words to If I Needed You. He was so drunk, in fact, that he wasn't even sure if the song was his. And the crowd shuffled uncomfortably until a tall man in a beat-up white stetson jumped on stage and sang a verse until the lights finally went back on in Townes' head. It wasn't the spirit of Hank Williams coming to the rescue. Instead, it was his friend and fellow Hellraiser, Blaze Foley, guiding him back in the right direction. But every day that went by, it became more and more clear that Townes Van Zandt would never be able to steer himself in the right direction in Austin. Soon, Townes, Janine, and their son, Will, were leaving Texas for Tennessee. At first, the move did the trick. Townes put out some great albums. He and Janine had a daughter. And Townes even managed an almost two-year stretch of sobriety. But the voice of Hank Williams was calling louder and more incessantly than ever before. And Townes knew it was just a matter of time before he followed Hank's call down the lost highway. Permanently. Towns Van Zandt screamed out in agony. The air was like fire on his skin. The moonlight screaming in through the window was blinding. He pulled hard on the chain wrapped around his waist, but it held fast. The chain kept him trapped in this room. with just enough slack to make it to the toilet, but no further. He'd been stuck like this for days. Who would put Townes Van Zandt through this kind of torture? A crazed fan? An angry ex-manager? A nurse in some mental institution? It was none of the above. In fact, the person who trapped him in this room was none other than Townes Van Zandt himself. In 1993, with his young son and a baby daughter at home, Townes was taking extreme measures to try once again to dry out. So he went to the hardware store and bought a 15-foot chain. Then, he had his wife, Janine, attach one end to a 1,000-pound waterbed and lock the other end around his waist. For three days, he tried to sweat out the poison. He screamed and hallucinated that his daughter was flying around the room above him. He puked all over the place, shat himself, poured out sweat, and shook like he was going into convulsions. Finally, on the fourth day, he couldn't take it anymore. He begged his wife, Janine, to cut him loose. When she finally undid the chain, Towns stared down at the floor and mumbled an apology. Then he tore ass out the front door and sprinted to his truck. The tires screeched as he flew backward out of the driveway and down the road to the liquor store, where he ripped the lid off a pint of vodka with trembling hands. He downed half the bottle in a single gulp, and at last the pain ended. and it was the last time Townes would try to clean up. A year later, a doctor told him that another attempt at detoxing would likely kill him, but he didn't let that slow him down. He kept touring with his road manager, Harold, managing his vodka intake, and every club on his route learned how to make a Townes shot. Two-thirds ice water and one-third vodka. Just enough to ease the shakes, but not so much that he fell off his stool. And he kept recording, too, despite his fading health. Townes put out two albums in 1994, including some of the most rockin' songs of his career on No Deeper Blue, and a covers collection that included his beautifully melancholy reading of the Rolling Stones as Dead Flowers, which the Coen brothers memorably included in the final scene of their dark comedic masterpiece, The Big Lebowski. But by the time Harold was driving Townes back from his disastrous Memphis recording session on New Year's Eve 1996, it was clear that Townes was reaching the end of the road. Back in Nashville, Harold and Janine insisted that Townes go to the hospital, and the doctors discovered he had a broken hip and pulled him into emergency surgery. And before he went under, Townes made Janine promise that she wouldn't let them try to detox him in the hospital. And after she left the room, he gave the doctors orders not to resuscitate him under any circumstances if the surgery didn't go well. Around 2 a.m., Townes came out of surgery. because he was an active alcoholic. The nurses refused to give him pain medication. He was in agony, shaking from DTs, and told Janine if this was truly the end, he didn't want to die in an institution. At 5 p.m. on New Year's Day, Towns Van Zandt signed out of the hospital against medical advice. He drank a triple vodka in the car on the way to his cabin in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, a cabin he bought from his friends Guy and Susanna Clark. When he arrived, he smoked a joint, and he was no longer shaking, and the pain was starting to subside. Towns wondered if maybe he could slide through this close call like he'd slid through so many close calls before. But as he lay on the couch, he saw that same ghostly vision of Hank Williams stroll into the living room in his white suit and stetson, sit down, and stretch out his feet on the coffee table. He stared into Hank's dark eyes till they were all he could see. A timeless melody was rising in his mind. He could feel himself rising too. Somewhere off in the distance he heard a voice. His son was calling from another room, asking if he needed anything. No, Towns called back. I've got everything I need right here. It was New Year's Day, the same day Hank Williams died on back in 1953. And now, on this New Year's Day, years later, Townes Van Zandt was dead too. Twin souls gone too soon. Both lost on the lost highway. And that is a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland Alright, thanks for checking out this episode on Towns Van Zandt Appreciate you guys As we just detailed, Towns Van Zandt lived an authentic life as an artist and a songwriter And I believe in a lot of ways, living with that commitment, in the end, it cost him and it cost him big. So the question of the week this week is which musical artist gave up the most for their art? 617-906-6638. Let me know, voicemail and text. Hit me up at DisgracelandPod on the socials. 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