Bent and Blue (and Sometimes Shattered) This guy is a legend and one of my songwriting heros. Nobody is more bent or blue.
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FAME & GLORY As it turns out, this was a tape that deserved to be heard. Townes was just 25 when he did this show, and his voice here is smooth, warm and full of youthful vigor, and his stage manner is humorous and self-deprecating. As he says during the show, he had been performing professionally for about three years then. He had two albums under his belt, For the Sake of the Song (1968) and Our Mother the Mountain (1969). Inspired by Lightnin¹ Hopkins, Hank Williams and Bob Dylan, Townes was writing songs that had touches of the blues, country and folk of his heroes, but already he was forging his own style, encompassing both impressionistic, visionary poetry and unflinching lyrical honesty. It was a style that would come to influence such disparate performers as Emmylou Harris, Guy Clark, Steve Earle, Lyle Lovett, the Cowboy Junkies and Nirvana¹s Kurt Cobain.