Don’t let the sunshine fool you: The last tour of lost legend of country
Fans and friends recall bittersweet night revered singer-songwriter visited tiny folk club just months before his death
The venue was a folk club in a village hotel in rural Aberdeenshire. The crowd might have struggled into triple figures. The headliner? A lost legend of country music.
It has been 25 years since Townes Van Zandt played her Gadie Folk Club in Insch but Deirdre Macdonald still can’t quite believe it happened at all.
Van Zandt’s songs have been hailed and covered by superstars from Bob Dylan and Emmylou Harris to Willie Nelson and Laura Marling and, despite his musical legacy of melancholic, poetic ballads inspiring generations of performers, his fans continue to lament a sidelined giant of country.
After a careering life, blighted by drink, drugs and mental health issues, Texas-born Van Zandt died at 52 in the early hours of New Year’s Day 1997.
But only a few months earlier, he had played in Insch at the club run by Deirdre and her then husband and musician Iain Macdonald in what would become the first stop on his last tour of Scotland.
It seemed an impossible dream to book one of their musical heroes but on a hot Saturday night, July 20, 1996, Van Zandt took to the stage in Insch’s Station Hotel. Twenty five years on, Deirdre Macdonald said: “We had no idea about his health before he arrived, but it was very soon obvious that all was not well.
“It was a struggle for him, and my son remembers speaking with Townes, and Townes running out of energy and breath to finish his sentences, and it was the same with his performance.
“He would fade from a song, get another breath,
and start another number. You were willing him to be OK and be able to sing.”
Townes Van Zandt was born into a wealthy southern family in 1944, and begged his father to buy him a guitar after watching Elvis Presley’s televised performances.
As a young man Van Zandt was diagnosed with manic depression, now known as bipolar disorder, and his parents took the well-meaning but misguided action of submitting him to insulin shock therapy, resulting in damage to his long-term memory and rendering him unable to recall memories from childhood. He began performing in the mid ’60s and while he had upbeat, fast-tempo songs in his repertoire, he became best known for poetic, melancholic lyrics and stripped-back, fingerpicking guitar playing style.
Drink and drugs took a toll, and by the time he arrived in Insch in 1996, he was visibly weakened. Iain Macdonald, who died in 2018, was a respected folk musician, and opened the Insch show for Van Zandt, who was so impressed he enjoyed a private jam session with Macdonald on the steps behind the venue, something he rarely did,
preferring in his later years to only play guitar when on stage. He also invited Macdonald and fiddler Louise Mackenzie to open for him the following night at his gig in Perth’s AK Bell Library.
Deirdre Macdonald remembers: “Townes wanted to share the stage with them so that they could do their own thing but Iain and Louise knew a lot of Townes’ songs. So, from a pragmatic point of view, Townes wanted them to help him do a big gig in a concert hall.
“I was in the audience for that show too, and it was so emotional. I feel emotional even now, speaking about it. It was so moving to see him perform despite his ill health. But he pushed through – performing was who he was.”
Harold F Eggers Jr had worked with Van Zandt since the late ’70s and was with him in Scotland that summer as his tour manager. Eggers Jr said: “He was fragile, but had a very, very, very strong spirit.
“He really enjoyed his time in Scotland, he would go down to the Tay River in Perth and spit in it, because someone told him it was good luck.
“We caught a taxi in Insch, and Townes began talking to the driver and telling jokes. Then Townes starts singing, ‘you take the high road, and I take the low road’. The driver said, ‘you’re singing it wrong, it’s ‘you tak the high road’ and then the man sang the whole song beautifully. Townes said, ‘do you hear that? That’s an old soul singing there’.”
Eggers Jr remembered a conversation in which Van Zandt explained why people loved sad music: “He once said to me, ‘blues is happy music’. I said, ‘blues is people crying, it’s not happy music’. Townes said, ‘well, before my next show, go to the front door and watch people walk in, and then when they leave, watch them go out.’
“So I did, and when they came in they had their heads down and weren’t making eye contact with each other. But when they left, they were smiling and hugging each other, and I understood what Townes meant. Blues is happy music because it makes people feel less alone, and that’s what his music was for so many people.”
Somebody Had To Write It, a collection of acoustic Townes Van Zandt songs, is out now