Live at the Old Quarter

VINYL FORMAT. Barely five years into his recording career in 1973, Townes Van Zandt classics like "Pancho and Lefty," "Rex's Blues" and "Lungs" helped carve out the man's folk hero status among luminaries like Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, and Steve Earle. Live at the Old Quarter, a set recorded in 1973 and first released in 1977, helped seal his critical reputation -- while perhaps simultaneously driving yet another nail into the coffin of Van Zandt's cult status. No one can doubt, even in retrospective, the sheer scope of heartfelt invention present in all these songs. "Pancho and Lefty" unfolds like an intimate blessing. Many cheers greeted the song in subsequent live outings. But a desert quiet permeates the Old Quarter, as though the song was a creation only newly revealed. The song tells the spare tale of two separate drifters, one an outlaw the other a musician in a swift and haunting deconstruction of both the outlaw rider and lone musician myth.

For all their delicacy the songs possess many tough edges. Van Zandt deserves the problematic label of "storyteller." His songs narrate without resolving into familiar structures -- except for their random, though plentiful rhyme. While he would demonstrate consistent confidence in the many subsequent live recordings of his career, those recordings would seldom match the warmth and intimacy Live at the Old Quarter possesses in such abundance. -crescentblues.com