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

Guy Clark

Guy Clark It’s goodbye to all my friends; it’s time to go again Think of all the poetry and the picking down the line —TVZ, “To Live’s To Fly,” from High, Low and In Between G uy Clark’s autumnal renaissance arcs further toward his folksinger roots with every measure. The legendary songwriter’s earthy Grammy-nominated album Somedays the Song Writes You (2009), which includes a version of Townes Van Zandt’s “If I Needed You,” liberates unforeseen introspection (“Somedays You Write the Song”) and trademark narratives (“Hemingway’s Whiskey”) with minimalist production. Clark confirms a frequently told story about the popularVanZandtsong:“TowneswaslivingwithSusannaandmeinthe early 1970s. One morning, he woke up and picked up a guitar and laid Guy Clark, Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, CO, June 15, 2002 8 I’ll Be Here In THe MornInG a piece of paper on his leg and proceeded to sing [‘If I Needed You’]. I went, ‘Wow, where’d you come up with that?’ He said, ‘I dreamed it last night. I dreamed the whole song, the melody and everything, rolled over and wrote it down, and went back to sleep.’”1 Van Zandt met his closest friend Guy Clark, who was born November 6, 1941, in Monahans, Texas, while both were working the Houston folk club circuit in the mid-1960s.2 Clark soon joined the Peace Corps and later moved between Houston, San Francisco, and Southern California, where he built Dobros at the Dopyera brothers’ Long Beach guitar factory . In 1971, Clark signed a songwriting contract with RCA’s Sunbury Music and moved to Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife, Susanna Clark, an artist and successful songwriter in her own right (“I’ll Be Your San AntoneRose,”“EasyfromNowOn,”and“ComefromtheHeart,”among others). An accomplished luthier, Clark has continued to build guitars in his home workshop for the past four decades.3 Townes Van Zandt, who served as best man at Guy and Susanna Clark’s wedding on songwriter Mickey Newbury’s houseboat in early 1972, sporadically lived with the couple for extended periods throughout the 1970s. “Townes and I had a bottle of vodka [at the wedding] and got as shitfaced as we could till we got back to the dock,” Clark says. “We got back in the car and went back to our house, and he was there for eight months. We were as close as you could get, closer than brothers.”4 Guy Clark and Van Zandt continually fueled each other’s creative fires. “The inspiration was not to be like Townes, but to be able to find that place within yourself to write,” says Clark, who called Van Zandt “the Van Gogh of country music.”5 Van Zandt acknowledged their bond in the song “Pueblo Waltz.” “If I have to go, I won’t be long / Maybe we’ll move to Tennessee,” he sings. “Leave these Texas blues behind / See Susanna and Guy.”6 GuyClarkplayedanimportantroleinreshapingNashville’ssongwritingcommunity .WithstrongconnectionstotheAustin-basedprogressive country scene of the 1970s and 1980s, Clark (along with fellow Texan KrisKristofferson)helpedpushtraditionalcountrymusicthemesbeyond Guy ClArk 9 cheating and drinking and into more literate and meditative narrative storytelling.7 Clark’s major-label debut album Old No. 1 (1975), widely considered one of the era’s defining collections and a primary influence on younger songwriters such as Steve Earle, Rodney Crowell, and John Hiatt, includes two songs made popular by Jerry Jeff Walker—Clark’s “instant classic” “L.A. Freeway” and the tribute to his grandmother’s “wildcatter boyfriend,” “Desperados Waiting for a Train.”8 Each tune displays Clark’s trademark ability to deliver the buoyant melodyinworkadaylanguage.“Packupallyourdishes/Makenoteofall good wishes,” he sings on “L.A. Freeway.” “Say goodbye to the landlord for me / That son of a bitch has always bored me.”9 “Guy does this better than anybody, writing something very specific and detailed in his own life, yet it has universal meaning,” says Lyle Lovett, whose career Clark helped launch in the mid-1980s. “You take more from Guy’s songs every time you listen and go farther in.”10 Some music critics consider Jerry Jeff Walker’s version of “L.A. Freeway” one of the greatest all-time country music singles.11 However, “Desperados Waiting for a Train” better exhibits Clark’s keen eye for sketching strength in vulnerability, a recurrent theme especially in portraits of independent women. Early peaks such as “Rita Ballou,” “Better Days,” and “She Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere...