Guy Clark

Classic documentary: Heartworn Highways – the best music documentary ever made!

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

heartworn-highways1

The best music documentary ever made: Heartworn Highways

For it is just that, the best documentary about music I have ever seen! It looks like a home movie, you feel like you get insight into a world long gone and you feel like looking into a world just for the invited.

It is up on YouTube , so catch it before it gets taken down (or better, buy yourself a copy so you can see it as often as you want).

Heartworn Highways is made by James Szalapski whose vision captured some of the founders of the Outlaw Country  and Singer/Songwriter movement in Texas and Tennessee in the last weeks of 1975 and the first weeks of 1976. The film was not released theatrically until 1981.

Highlights for me: The visit to Townes Van Zandt’s caravan and the Christmas party at Guy and Susanna Clark (especially Steve Earle singing Mercenary Song).

Heartworn Highways (full movie):

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Classic TV: Townes Van Zandt tribute at Austin City Limits 1997

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen

Tribute to Townes Van Zandt
Austin City Limits
Recorded in December 7, 1997.

Townes Van Zandt, was an American singer songwriter. He is widely held in high regard for his poetic, often heroically sad songs. In 1983, six years after Emmylou Harris had first popularized it, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard covered his song “Pancho and Lefty”, scoring a number one hit on the Billboard country music charts. Much of his life was spent touring various dive bars, often living in cheap motel rooms and backwoods cabins. For much of the 1970s, he lived in a simple shack without electricity or a phone.

He suffered from a series of drug addictions, alcoholism, and the psychiatric diagnosis bipolar disorder. When he was young, the now discredited insulin shock therapy erased much of his long-term memory. Continue reading “Classic TV: Townes Van Zandt tribute at Austin City Limits 1997” →

November 6: The late great Guy Clark was born in 1941

Posted on by Hallgeir Olsen
guy clark
Photo credit: Aimee Howell – [email protected]

“Buffett I guess. Lightfoot. Warren Zevon. Randy. John Prine. Guy Clark. Those kinds of writers.”
– Bob Dylan (on the question about favorite songwriters asked by Bill Flanagan in 2009)

I have no reason to sit home and write songs all day without going out and playing for the folks. And I have no reason to go play for the folks unless I’m writing new songs so they can sort of feed off one another. And I just try to do the best I can.
~Guy Clark

Guy Clark doesn’t just write songs, he crafts them with the kind of hands-on care and respect that a master carpenter (a favorite image of his) would have when faced with a stack of rare hardwood.
~Kurt Wolff (allmusic.com)

Desperados Waiting For A Train (FANTASTIC version from the legendary “Heartworn Highways” DVD):

Continue reading “November 6: The late great Guy Clark was born in 1941” →