Description
Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt, live from Folkscene, Los Angeles, CA November 13th 1988.
In 1966 Zandt left school for good, he went on the road playing shows with Guy Clark, and began to write serious songs. One of the first was Waitin' Around to Die, a road map for his adult years: "I guess I'll keep gambling, lots of booze and lots of rambling it's easier than just waitin' around to die." He purposefully set out to live by those words, telling his first wife Fran that "you were living a lie if you sang the blues and hadn't lived them." Although he never got to release a major label album and remains largely unknown in the mainstream, Van Zandt set a standard for any artist whatever the genre.
His appearance alongside Guy Clark at Folkscene, LA on November 13, 188, for broadcast on KPFK-FM remains a prized performance of the period. It captures the shrewd bard in his element. Moreover, it helps to portray how Texas produced one of the modern era's most potent and elegant lyricists this side of Shakespeare. As Lester Bangs once said of the man, his songs come "from a depth of feeling that few men can touch."