The UnTexan

MARY TRAVERS: I WAS ONLY PASSING THROUGH

I am sitting here listening to music I told myself I outgrew a long time ago. I first came across Peter, Paul and Mary when I was on my way to Bob Dylan but didn't know where I was going. They made a wonderful noise together. What was more important was that they made a meaningful noise together, fitting their voices together around the words in an old harmony I could understand. And that is what I was after - meaningful noise. It was 1962-63 and the times were changing sure enough and I was 17 years old and in need of something to believe in. I could feel it and when I listened to Peter, Paul and Mary - especially Mary - I heard it too. Mary Travers. There was nothing like her at my high school; the girls there were too tidy to be sexy with their Peter Pan collars, virgin pins and Capezio flats. They were thin-lipped southern women in the making. I could already see it in their faces. But Mary Travers was from New York City. Mary Travers had that long blond hair, those bangs, that voice. She made folk music sexy, especially for those of us who were not quite sure what we were listening to or why, and were nowhere near ready to hear Bob Dylan sing his own songs. She was a sexy woman making a meaningful noise. She seemed like everything I wanted in a woman, the kind of woman who would want a man like me. When I met her (backstage after a show though a cousin of a friend of a friend whose other cousin played bass for Peter, Paul and Mary if I remember it correctly) she was - frighteningly - a woman. And I was only a babbling boy in front of her. Not long after that I "outgrew" Peter, Paul and Mary, found Bob Dylan and abandoned prim and thin-lipped girls with Peter Pan collars and virgin pins. Mary Travers died Sept. 16. She helped me get past harmony and get on with my life.

IT'S WOODSTOCK WEAK

Joni Mitchell said, "By the time we got to Woodstock we were half-a-million strong." I once published a short story in which the main character said of himself, his wife and most of the people they knew, "By the time we got to Woodstock, it was a movie." And face it, it was. That was made clear to me early on, when I attended a rock festival in Georgia and many of my fellow festival goers were already acting out Woodstock - the movie - rather than having their own good time. In a moment of clarity in my smoky haze, I remember watching them play Woodstock (mud wallowing was very popular at the time) and thinking what a sad commentary on the unoriginality of American youth that was, ignoring the fact that I was there among them. It was "Woodstock Lite" and it probably would have seemed more pathetic than it did, but I was too far gone for subtlety and nuance most of the four days I was there. Nowadays I am so overwhelmed by subtlety and nuance that I would like to get on the magic bus and head for the old fog of Woodstock. But it is a place most of us have never been, and, face it, a place we can no longer go.

Woodstock is 40 years old this week. Television will remind us. New CDs of old music are being released. The dead are being hauled out and counted. Everywhere there is talk of the "Woodstock Nation." People speak of it with fondness. But remember how we were never going to end up like our parents? Listen to the nostalgic voices of the Woodstock Nation, 40 years on. Our fathers and mothers talked about World War and the Great Depression just like that. Can you hear it?

A FRIDAY TOAST TO THURSDAY'S DEAD

Here's to Michael's face and Farrah's butt
and to an America that's utt
erly drowning in this freaky stuff -- it's a glut -- but
can't get enough of Michael's face and Farrah's butt.

WHEN STEVE SINGS TOWNES, I LISTEN

I first heard Townes Van Zandt in 1977. It was in New Mexico at my friend Tom's house. He told me it was an album I needed to hear called Live at the Old Quarter in Houston and it was a two-record set. I think I sat there listened to it all the way through, both records, both sides. It was just about the newest music (with some of the corniest jokes) I had ever heard. The words. The words. They weren't strung together like other writers string words together; Townes' words gathered wherever words gather to lean against each other, touch each other with meaning, and be heard. In 1977, New Mexico was new to me too so I figured at first maybe Townes belonged to that time and place in my life, but that wasn't it. It is always the time and place for Townes. I bought my own copy of Live at the Old Quarter and played it nearly to death. It was among the first cd's I bought and among the first albums I put on iTunes. When I hit shuffle on the iTunes and a Townes song pops up, I still stop and listen. I have heard "Pancho and Lefty" hundreds of times; I even learned to play and sing it myself. It plays, I listen. Townes' songs remain some of the newest music I have ever heard. I know he ended up a sorry-assed drunk and a burden to his friends and family, but as I heard the novelist T.C. Boyle say a few minutes ago on television, a man doesn't have to be a good person to make great art (he was talking about Frank Lloyd Wright, but Townes probably falls into that category too). Having known some artists in my life, I have to agree.

Now Steve Earle has made a new album called Townes. Steve has been Townes-obsessed for a long time, even named his son after Townes. It turns out Steve is the right man at the right time to sing Townes Van Zandt songs. Steve is a word guy and he seems to have recognized the same thing I did a long time ago: Townes didn't write lyrics; he gathered words together and turned them loose to do what they needed to do. That is what the best writers do. Steve has that knack of setting the words free too. Of course, there is one song Steve should have left alone. A few years ago Willie Nelson turned Townes' song "Marie" into the saddest song I have ever heard on a Townes tribute cd and Steve doesn't even come close. But he makes up for it with a particularly raw version of "Lungs." Steve lifts Townes and all his darkness up into the light. This is a set of songs worth owning.

The New York Times did a good piece recently on Steve and Townes.

If only Texas could be as wonderful as its music.