Towering Townes

Better Be Good

And there's this one from me. The last time I interacted with Townes personally was at a party to celebrate his return from rehab around Christmastime in 1994. He was then staying at Guy and Susanna Clark's lake house outside of Nashville, and Townes's ex-wife Jeanene was the hostess. Since Townes was (allegedly) newly sober, no alcohol was served at the party. Sadly the cure had not taken, and Townes had squirreled away a bottle of 100-proof schnapps in a tree somewhere on the grounds, so he and he alone was pretty lit.

Courtesy of John Nova Lomax

Townes and me, Nashville, 1992: When he wasn't teasing me, he tended to get bored.

Photo courtesy of John Nova Lomax

Cindy and Townes stand to the right of my mother, Bidy Lomax, at a hot-air balloon expo near Van Zandt's Tennessee cabin, circa 1978.

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Old Quarter Acoustic Cafe (413 20th St., Galveston)

413 20th St., Galveston
Galveston, TX 77550

Category: Music Venues

Region: Galveston

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The 15th Anniversary Townes Van Zandt

Sunday, January 1, at the Old Quarter Acoustic Cafe, 413 20th Street, Galveston, 409-762-9199 or www.oldquarteracousticcafe.com.

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More About

• Townes Van Zandt
• Year's Day Townes
• Brian Atkinson
• Guy Clark
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He would always give me a hard time, try to scare me straight, teach me not to do how he had done. He asked me how I'd been and I told him I'd been well, that I wasn't the fuck-up dropout I was when I'd seen him last, a couple of years before. "Don't give me that shit, man," he replied. "You're full of crap. I know you've been carrying on like your mama and your old man," he snapped. "Do you know what I've just been through, Nova?" he went on. "I mean, do you have any idea what it's like in one of those places?" I was muttering, sniveling just a little, my eyes wide as tortillas. "You just can't imagine how awful it was. It was truly hell on Earth.

"Hey!" Townes exclaimed, abruptly cheerful. "You wanna see me walk on my hands?" I said sure. He stretched his arms behind his back, cleared his throat, looked around the room to make sure he had plenty of space, and then reached down and grabbed the soles of his boots and sort of crab-walked across the room on his hands, leaving me there dumbfounded. He spent much of the rest of the party seated on a wooden chair in the middle of the room in front of the TV, on which a holiday musical special was playing.

While the rest of us were uneasily shifting our weight from foot to foot on the fringes of the room and soberly nibbling servings of Stouffer's lasagna off paper plates, Townes was muttering to the TV, parsing the lyrics of the carols burbling out of the TV. "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" came on, and Townes was transfixed. "Man, this song is a lot deeper than I ever knew," he suddenly enthused. "Think about it: 'Be good for goodness' sake.' That seems like a throwaway line, but it's really saying, 'Be good for the sake of goodness.' Wow. That's hip."