Townes Van Zandt :: Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas :: 1977

Townes Van Zandt didn't have a very good voice.. It wasn't awful; he could stay in key and didn't make any weird screeching noises or anything. It just sounded like he had never really sang in public before. The way he swooped up to notes is pretty much What Not To Do In Singing 101. He never belted out the kind of note that would bring the house down. It kind of sounds like he's talking with really long syllables actually. But damn, he could write a song.

Every song he wrote is a story, both personal and universal. When he's telling you a third-person tale, like his most well-known song "Pancho & Lefty," you get the feeling it's somehow autobiographical. And when he's singing such a private song as "If I Needed You," that you're pretty sure he wrote for only one person, he's also telling the story of us all. He knew more than anything that a song can bring people together, not just physically but emotionally and spiritually. These songs are for every person who has ever felt... anything.

While his studio albums are fantastic, nothing gets to the root of the man and the songs like this double live album, recorded in 1975. It's just Townes, his guitar and several dozen people in a sweaty Houston bar. It's a very intimate setting where the songs speak for themselves. And to hear the silence of several dozen people in a sweaty Houston bar is as beautiful as the songs themselves. You can practically see the tears running down the cheeks of the burliest Texas roughneck that's ever loved his mama. Because whether he was singing in a bar, in a studio, at a festival or alone in the mountains somewhere, you just feel like he's sitting next to you, singing only for you, to help you get through whatever it is your gettin' through.

Townes Van Zandt didn't have a very good voice. His voice is probably like a lot of ours, a little rough and a bit shaky, but since he's singing straight from our hearts, it's the most perfect and beautiful voice that could ever sing these songs.
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What do listen to after you fall in love with this album? Well he recorded 7 albums between 1968 and 1978; take your pick.