Townes Van Zandt Archive

KUT Radio Tribute 01/02/97

We did a tribute to the Late Great Townes Van Zandt on my radio show on Thursday, January 2. Mickey White, who played guitar with Townes for six or seven years, came to the show with his and Pat Mears' son, John Mears White. Pat is in Holland right now and was a solid friend of Townes. Mickey told several stories about adventures with Townes, and played a short set. Mandy Mercier and Bianca Ellis also performed in the set with Mickey. They did five songs among them: "Columbine," "Lungs," "To Live Is To Fly," "The Catfish Song," and "Waiting Around To Die."

Donny Silverman, who played saxophone with Townes for several years, was also in attendance. Tary Owens, a long-time friend of Townes, and Maryann Price came to the studio during the program. Calvin Russell slipped in near the end of the show. That group, myself included and John excluded, were all in Townes' age range. Near the end of the show Scrappy Jud Newcomb of Loose Diamonds and Toni Price's band came to the studio with Beaver Nelson. They had spent the day together talking about Townes and singing his songs, and had been listening to the tribute on the radio. They did wonderful, impassioned renditions of "Rex's Blues" and "Ain't Leavin' Your Love." Mandy said to me how great it was that the younger musicians like Jud and Beaver had the same feeling for Townes' songs that we did.

I have located some good links to pages with information about Townes. If you do an Alta-Vista search there are many links that are easy to figure out from the information provided. Lyrics for many of the songs have their own page. An Alta-Vista link is provided near the bottom of this page.

Here is one good link to get you started. It will take you to most of the other links I found.

Blue Sky/Townes

There's a couple of Townes stories in the Blaze Foley story in my Commentary section.

Mail me: lm@88net.net

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