Sing a lonesome tune: Five memorable Townes Van Zandt covers

Townes Van Zandt was tailor-made for cult stardom: After a troubled childhood where he received shock treatments to “cure” his predilection for drug and alcohol experimentation, he lived the life of the perpetually melancholy yet soulfully charismatic fuck-up before dying in 1997 at the untimely age of 52. Oh, and he also was a really great songwriter, though his lack of commercial success—while ideal for his underground cred—has kept him largely unknown. The closest Van Zandt ever got to mainstream recognition was when other, more well-known artists covered his songs, which holds true more than 12 years after he died: Steve Earle is the latest to shine a light on his body of work, visiting The Pabst Theater tonight to support his new Van Zandt covers collection, Townes.

Earle, a long-time friend and acolyte of Van Zandt—he even named his son Justin Townes Earle—once called him “the best songwriter in the whole world, and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.” But Van Zandt was an average singer at best, and neophytes might better appreciate his songs when other people interpret them. Here are four covers (and one cover Van Zandt himself performed) to get you started.

Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, “Pancho And Lefty”
Van Zandt’s most popular song, “Pancho And Lefty” equates the lonely, desperate existence of an outlaw with the rootless lifestyle of the traveling musician. But Van Zandt was only in his late 20s when he wrote it, and it arguably was a better fit for Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, two outlaw country singers who built careers on simultaneously glorifying and warning people against life on the road.

Emmylou Harris, “Pancho And Lefty”
Six years before Willie and Merle scored a No. 1 hit with “Pancho And Lefty,” Emmylou Harris recorded the song for 1977’s Luxury Liner. Harris’ version is appropriately heart-wrenching, and hearing “Pancho And Lefty” sung by a woman draws out the sensitivity and empathy of Van Zandt’s lyrics. (Although Harris’ characteristically beautiful vocals make lines like “Now you wear your skin like iron and your breath’s as hard as kerosene” seem a little prettier than they ought to be.)

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, “Nothin’”
In Van Zandt’s hands, “Nothin’” is a harrowingly spare blues song asking the world to leave him alone as he gazes into the abyss. “Sorrow and solitude, these are the precious things, and the only words worth remembering,” he sings mournfully. (It’s incredible he lived 26 more years after he wrote that.) Robert Plant and Alison Krauss turn the painful insularity of the original inside out, expressing Van Zandt’s inner turmoil with jarring stabs of Zeppelin-esque bombast.

Townes Van Zandt, “Dead Flowers”
For all the artists that covered his songs, Van Zandt returned the favor with his stripped-down version of The Rolling Stones’ “Dead Flowers.” Surprisingly, Van Zandt’s “Dead Flowers” became one of his best-known recordings after The Coen Brothers’ used it as the wistful closing song for The Big Lebowski.