The 1976 documentary Heartworn Highways provided insight into some of the legends of alternative country like Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, and Guy Clark. Director Jim Szalapski filled the film with vignettes of the singer-songwriters in their daily lives, providing a fly-on-the wall portrait of them. It is a film for music lovers, without a narrative story, that I found engaging.
Now, to celebrate the thirty-fifth anniversary of Heartworn Highways, director Wayne Price will be releasing Heartworn Highways Revisited.
The new film takes a look at some current outlaw country singers like Shelly Colvin, Matraca Berg, Bobby Bare Jr., Johnny Fritz, Robert Ellis, Shovels and Rope, Joshua Hedley, John McCauley, and Langhorne Slim. Some old-timers make appearances too, like Guy Clark and David Allan Coe. I am happy to see that rising star singer-songwriter Andrew Combs is in the film too.
Check out the promotional video below.
On the film’s website, Price writes, “With electronic laptop musicians commanding the airwaves, I am excited to bring us back to the ‘old school, with songwriters who only need their instrument and their experience to create music.”
Years ago, I loaned my copy of Heartworn Highways to a friend and never got it back. But I enjoyed the movie, which has some great moments like Van Zandt playing “Waitin’ Round To Die.” I still listen to the soundtrack.
Reportedly, there is no release date yet for the new film, but I am looking forward to the release of Heartworn Highways Revisited.
In what has become an annual tradition on Chimesfreedom, we wish a happy birthday this week to Willie Nelson, who was born in Abbott, Texas late at night on April 29, 1933. Due to the late hour, the birth was not officially recorded until the next day and his birthday is sometimes reported as April 30. So, Nelson celebrates his birthday on both dates. One of his recordings I love is his wonderful interpretation of Guy Clark’s “Desperados Waiting For a Train.”
The song “Desperados Waiting For a Train” combines themes of memory, aging, history, and mortality. The singer recounts being friend with an old man when he was a boy.
The singer reports how the old man told him about his youthful days as a drifter working on oil wells. And the young man watches the old man get older. Anyone who as a child has been close to an elderly person or a grandparent may recognize the relationship and admiration. The singer sums it up, “Well to me he was a hero of this country.”
One of the reasons the lyrics ring so true is that Clark based the story on someone he knew. As he explained in a 2011 interview, “It’s a true song about someone in my life – I mean, you couldn’t have made that up. . . . It was about a guy who was like my grandfather.” Clark also recounted how he knew he would write about the man almost as soon as he started writing songs.
Versions of “Desperados Waiting For a Train”
There are several excellent recordings of “Desperados Waiting For a Train.” Guy Clark made a beautiful recording of it, including some live versions. Jerry Jeff Walker released the first recording of the song on his 1973 album Viva Terlingua. Actor Slim Pickens released his own version, where he reads the lyrics like poem over the music.
Willie Nelson took part in an earlier version recorded with Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson as the Highwaymen. Their version that appeared on the super group’s album Highwayman was a top 20 hit when released as a single in 1985.
The more recent version by Nelson alone appeared on a wonderful Guy Clark tribute album, This One’s For Him (2010). At the time, Nelson, like the old man in the song, was “pushin’ eighty.” This version of the singer as an older man looking back on his youthful encounter with old age and death adds a deeper layer to the classic song. Check it out.
For some additional Willie, the Larry King Now website features a recent episode where Larry King interviewed Nelson about music, marijuana, politics, and aging.
Happy birthday Willie, and thanks for the presents to us.
What Willie Nelson song are you playing for his birthday? Leave your two cents in the comments.
I do not quite get the album art on Worried Man (2012), the debut full-length CD by Andrew Combs. Is he cold? Is it supposed to be a picture of a “Worried Man”? I do not think the album cover adequately prepared me for what to expect when I heard the music. One thing I do know, though, is that it is the best album by a new artist I have heard in a long time.
Because Worried Man came out in October 2012, I realize I am a little slow in discovering Andrew Combs. But seeing a video of Andrew Combs performing on the Twang Nation website recently led me to check out his album. Listening to Worried Man starting with the first track of “Devil’s Got My Woman” has been one of those periodic experiences that restores my faith in new music.
Combs, who is originally from Texas and now resides in Nashville, wrote all of the songs on the album, and he sings with an ache in his voice in the best country and Americana tradition. The album includes heartbreak, whiskey, and pedal steel, and the title track reminds one of an old murder ballad (even if the violence stops short of killing). You can hear the influences of Combs’s heroes who include Harlan Howard, Willie Nelson, Mickey Newbury, Guy Clark, Jackson Browne, and Tom T. Hall. Combs pulls off connecting to these past influences while also sounding modern at the same time, as he does in this performance of “Please, Please, Please.”
Every artist is different, of course, but for comparison purposes, a lot of the songs remind me of another artist I like a lot, Slaid Cleaves. “Please, Please, Please” sounds like it could be a great Heartbreaker-era Ryan Adams track. The song “Worried Man” sounds like it is off of the album of another Texan, Ray Wylie Hubbard . For now, Andrew Combs has made a stream of the album available so you can listen for yourself below Check it out.
Combs, who released the album on his own Coin Records, also co-produced the album with Mike Odmark. Singer-songwriter Caitlin Rose adds her voice to several of the tracks. I look forward to more music from Andrew Combs, whatever the cover looks like. What is your favorite track off of Worried Man? Leave your two cents in the comments.
DNA tests revealed that the body of King Richard III had been found last year in a municipal parking lot in the English city of Leicester. Richard, who Shakespeare portrayed in a less than flattering light, was the last English King to die in battle, dying at the Battle of Bosworth Field. After his death in August 1485, his body was put on display and then he was quickly buried near a church without much fanfare.
Since the discovery, scientists have used the body to make a 3D model of the way Richard might have looked. But Richard’s days of being involved in battles are not over. While Leicester plans to give Richard a new burial more fitting of his life’s station, the city of York, where Richard was from, is arguing that it should take charge of Richard’s burial. Richard belonged to the House of York, which was part of the the ruling Plantagenets.
Shakespeare and others have painted Richard III as a villain who murdered his two nephews. That version of Richard has been played by many stellar actors, including Laurence Olivier, Ian McKellen, and Al Pacino. Some historians, though, have argued that history has treated Richard unfairly. While the new discovery will not end the debate, it did resolve one issue, showing that Richard’s curved spine did not create a hunchback as described by the Bard of Avon in the play written in 1592. At the end of Shakespeare’s play, Richard III, we see Richard exclaiming, “A horse! a horse! My kingdom for a horse!” before he is killed. Interestingly, he would end up spending decades not with horses, but with cars out in a parking lot.
Singer-songwriter Guy Clark wrote “Out in the Parking Lot” with Darrell Scott, who has penned a few hits himself. While I have loved the music of other Texas songwriters from the Clark’s era like Townes Van Zandt, it is only recently where I have started to appreciate Clark’s body of work. One of the songs I have been listening to during the last several months is Clark’s “Out in the Parking Lot,” which appears on several Clark albums including Songs & Stories (2011).
As Clark explains in this performance in a bar in Homer, Alaska from 2003, he wrote the song about the parking lot of a bar in West Texas. But the song strikes universal themes, and anyone who has been in a parking lot outside a bar late at night recognizes the scene. There have been many songs about honky tonks, bars, and pubs, but nobody else has captured the mixed emotions ranging from anger to joy to pathos that stirs just outside the action of the drinking establishment, out in the parking lot. There, “Some have given up, some have given in / Looks like everybody’s lookin’ for a friend / Out in the parking lot.”
While Guy Clark has never had the mainstream popularity of big Nashville artists, there are some folks in Nashville that have good taste, such as Brad Paisley, who covered “Out in the Parking Lot” on his Time Well Wasted album from 2005. Alan Jackson joined Paisley in bringing this excellent song to a wider audience.
While I like Paisley’s work and I am glad he brought the song to a wider audience, I hope it ended up bringing some fans to Guy Clark’s great body of work too. While I cannot guess as to which version Richard III might prefer, I suspect his body saw many of the same scenes in his parking lot.
“Now everybody’s gone, they’ve shut out all the lights / The dust begins to settle and it’s never been so quiet / Out in the parking lot.”
Do you know any other songs about parking lots? Leave your two cents in the comments.
One of my favorite recent CD purchases is This One’s For Him: A Tribute to Guy Clark (2011), which I have had on repeat play since I got it in December. This One’s for Him is a solid 2-CD collection of songs by the wonderful Texas singer-songwriter Guy Clark. Although tribute albums often are hit-and-miss affairs with an uneven collection of interpretations by various artists, this one maintains a nice consistency throughout. One reason the CDs work so well is the consistency of Guy Clark’s writing, although tribute albums usually consist of well-written songs. Another reason that the listening experience is like listening to a CD by one artist is because the producers recorded live with the band and a limited number of overdubs, giving consistency throughout. Finally, the great collection holds up due to the group of artists assembled for the project. Although there are some famous singers on the collection, the producers clearly opted for talented musicians who love Clark’s music instead of just seeking big names, and the love comes through the music.
It is hard to choose a favorite song, but one of mine is Jack Ingram’s version of “Stuff that Works.” In a video no longer available on YouTube, Jack Ingram talked about his love of Guy Clark’s music, noting that the music feels “like the Truth.” The great thing about Clark’s songs is that he writes beautiful words to go with his beautiful music. Stuff that works, stuff that holds up; The kind of stuff you don’t hang on the wall; Stuff that’s real, stuff you feel; The kind of stuff you reach for when you fall.
Artists on the CD include a who’s who of great singers and songwriters: Rodney Crowell, Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Kris Kristofferson, Robert Earl Keen, Ray Wylie Hubbard, John Prine, and many more. [UPDATE: In a promotional video no longer on YouTube, Hayes Carll, who sings “Worry B Gone” on the tribute CD, talked about hanging out with Clark.]
If you are already a fan of Guy Clark’s music, you will love the CD. But if you are new to his music, the tribute CD is a great place to start. One of my favorite songs of all-time is Guy Clark’s “LA Freeway.” Radney Foster does an excellent job covering the song on the CD. I could not find his version on Youtube, so here is the songwriter’s version. He does a pretty good job too.
If I can just get off of this LA freeway, Without getting killed or caught; I’d be down that road in a cloud of smoke, For some land that I ain’t bought — bought — bought.
“LA Freeway” captures the common longing for running off and being free. Even if you cannot make that kind of escape, you might come a little closer if while you’re on the road you pop in this CD.
The 1976 documentary Heartworn Highways provided insight into some of the legends of alternative country like Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle, and Guy Clark. Director Jim Szalapski filled the film with vignettes of the singer-songwriters in their daily lives, providing a fly-on-the wall portrait of them. It is a film for music lovers, without a narrative story, that I found engaging.
. Actor Slim Pickens released 
was a top 20 hit when released as a single in 1985.
album from 2005. Alan Jackson joined Paisley in bringing this excellent song to a wider audience.
