I'll Be Here in the Morning: The Songwriting Legacy of Townes Van Zandt

Jack Ingram

Jack Ingram I’ll lie on my pillow and sleep if I must Too late to wish I’d been stronger —TVZ, “A Song For,” from No Deeper Blue A s a student at Southern Methodist University, Jack Ingram, born November 15, 1970, in The Woodlands, Texas, decided he was “more interested in being Jerry Jeff Walker than Joe College.”1 Accordingly, Ingram began performing at legendary Lone Star honky-tonks such as John T. Floore’s Country Store in Helotes and Dallas’s Adair’s Saloon, where he recorded Live at Adair’s (1995), a (L-R) Jen Gunderman, Jack Ingram, Verlon Thompson, Blackbird Studios, Nashville, TN, January 28, 2010 JACk InGrAM 199 buoyant blend of western swing and country music. Ingram discovered Townes Van Zandt during these formative years. “I first heard Townes the same way probably everyone else in the world heard his music,” he says, “through Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard.”2 An appearance with Van Zandt disciple and tour partner Robert Earl Keen on the Austin City Limits television series aligned Ingram with predecessors such as Guy Clark, Steve Earle, and Billy Joe Shaver.3 His regional breakthrough Livin’ Or Dyin’ (1997), produced by Earle and Twang Trust partner Ray Kennedy, wore influences on its sleeve with covers of Clark’s “RitaBallou”andJimmieDaleGilmore’s“Dallas,”aswellasacowritewith friend and like-minded peer Todd Snider (“Airways Motel”).4 Ingram’s major-label debut Hey You (1999) increased his popularity throughout Texas, but it gained little traction nationally. The album blended sharp narrative storytelling (such as “Biloxi”) with the confessional ballads that soon would boost his mainstream career (“Feel Like I’m Falling in Love”). “Jack Ingram packs them in at Billy Bob’s [Texas in Fort Worth],” one writer said in 2003. “Ingram’s big in Texas, but virtually unknown in the rest of the country.”5 Three years later, the current Austin resident earned commercial success with Billboard’s Number One country single “Wherever You Are,” from Live—Wherever You Are (2006), an album recorded at Gruene Hall. By This Is It (2007), Ingram suggested his potential worth as a politician: He counted both unrepentant outlaw Earle and mainstream country singer Toby Keith as supporters.6 IngramearnedtheAcademyofCountryMusic’sBestNewMaleVocalist award in 2008 after entering his following five singles into Billboard’s Top Forty.HismostsuccessfulhitscoveredsongwriterssuchasTrentSumner (“Love You,” 2006), Hinder (“Lips of an Angel,” 2006), and Rhett Atkins (“BarefootandCrazy,”2009).Ingrammadenewsheadlineswhenheseta GuinnessWorldRecordonAugust25,2009,byparticipatingin215radio interviewswithinatwenty-four-hourspantopublicizeBigDreamsandHigh Hopes. After performing the album’s Top Ten single “Barefoot and Crazy” the following day on the Fox television network, Ingram claimed, “After the last twenty-four hours, I officially have nothing left to say.”7 200 I’ll Be Here In THe MornInG InlateJanuary2010,IngramreturnedtohisrootswithRodneyCrowell, Radney Foster, Kris Kristofferson, and others to record tracks for This One’s for Him: A Tribute to Guy Clark at Nashville’s Blackbird Studios. He cut his keeper version of “Stuff That Works” on the first take.8 • • • Jack Ingram Townes was opening for Guy Clark at Rockefeller’s in Houston. By the time Townes’s set was over, he was just crying. He wasn’t even playing music anymore. Guy had to come out and help him off the stage. It was just really sad. That’s what gets lost in translation in the mythical folklore about Townes, and especially in how much he’s grown in mythical stature— the real harsh reality about alcoholism. The idea that someone as big as Townes Van Zandt gets reduced to being helped off the stage by an old friend takes some of the fun out of it. Having seen that, for me it’s like the cold, hard light of day. It gets to the heart of the matter that drinking songs are about pain. That night I saw Townes was before I was playing music out, when I was young, like seventeen or nineteen. Townes is a Christ-like figure in Texas. He’s the one. I think that guys like Guy and others he ran with have lifted him up to that stature. They’re still around to talk about him. For guys like me coming up, Guy Clark was probably better known around the scene. Townes was never a mainstream character in the whole Texas music scene, for my generation anyway. I heard more mainstream guys like Guy Clark and Jerry Jeff Walker and Willie Nelson always talking about Townes Van...