Customer Reviews

Our Mother the Mountain (Dig)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

1983. I'm a sixteen-year-old rooting through lp cut-outs in an Alco store in Loveland, Colorado. I find an album called Our Mother the Mountain by a guy in a cowboy hat and Lennon specs with an odd name. I see no way this album could be any good and move on.

Sometimes, Fate is kind and gives you a second chance.

1984. I've discovered the local public radio station. The morning man plays an amazing song that captivates me. I catch the phrase "Our mother the mountain" in the song. I realize I made a serious mistake in Loveland. Later that year, I'm searching for blank cassettes in a hardware store. I find an 8-track tape for fifty cents: Our Mother the Mountain. I don't repeat my earlier mistake.

This is Townes Van Zandt's masterpiece and one of the finest collections of music ever released. There is not a trace of filler, and many of the songs are classics. "Tecumseh Valley" and "St. John the Gambler" have to be two of the most masterful story-songs out there. Relationships and their attendant complexities are documented quite well in "Be Here to Love Me," "Second Lover's Song," Like a Summer's Thursday," and "Why She's Acting this Way." "Our Mother the Mountain" sounds like a spooky folk song from the seventeenth century; "Kathleen" is just plain harrowing.

There's an otherworldly, unnameable quality to this music. It resonates through my entire being. I've never heard another album like it.

Worth it for the glorious St. John the Gambler that has be one of the greatest performances of his career. The rest is also fantastic. A great starter album if you are new to Townes and an essential album in any collection.

There will come a day when people outside of the country and folk music worlds will realize the universal genius of Townes Van Zandt. He was one of the best (maybe THE best) songwriters who ever lived, and this album is a great proving point.
The harrowing, sad songs ("Tecumseh Valley") are balanced well with the pastoral, beautiful ruminations ("Like a Summer's Thursday").

This album shows why Townes van Zandt must be accounted one of the very greatest of the 60s singer-songwriters. His pure, honest delivery - never going for the easy sentiment - coupled with equally upright lyrics full of earthy poetry and devastating stories, are the marks of a rare genius. Be sure that Townes was a poet and story-teller in the best tradition: who can forget the harrowing 'Tecumseh Valley', with verses like 'So she took to whoring out on the streets / With all the lust inside her' or the darkly mysterious title song, with the ominous verse that opens 'So I reach for her hands and her eyes turn to poison / And her hair turns to splinters / And her flesh turns to brine.' There is so much truth and beauty in these songs that no-one who believes in the singer-songwriter tradition should deprive himself of a chance to listen to this album.

I have to tell you that I have been mesmerized by this album since I heard it for the first time a few weeks ago. I as you can tell am brand new to the music of Townes Van Zandt, I discovered him by being a Steve Earle fan and hearing Steve's tribute album to Townes.
Our Mother The Mountain is pure magic, all at once it is one of the most beautiful and sad albums that I have ever heard, Kathleen is the perfect example of this, heart wrenching and gorgeous at the same time. And as was stated in another review here the title song sounds like it was written and performed hundreds of years ago, like one of those song catcher tunes , I can listen to it everyday and not tire of it.
I could go on and on but what's the point, every song is fantastic and I am so grateful that I found this album , now I will have to explore his entire catalog, this guy was one of the greats.

As as collector of good singer song writer songs. He is on top along with Iris Dement, Kate Wolf, Gillian Welch, Lucinda Williams, Guy Clark, Jimmy Gilmore, Chris Williamson and of course Willie Nelson, along with several others. I look for these people. Mostly they only record once in a long while, after feeling their songs are good enough, or perhaps one or two. I even like Lenord Cohen. This Van Zant is the best one, next would be Flying Shoes, and the one named for him, "Townes Van Zant". Also there is the "Lonesome Sisters, Kimme Rdodes, Eilen Jewell, and Jan Smith." Most you have never heard of, but songs are poetic, and powerful. Lorie Crandall has only one out but is it GREAT, about hurt and healing. John Prine and Eric Anderson is more. Try them out if you don't know about them.

Listen to Kathleen and think of you or anyone you know that has ever had a serious bout of depression/drugs/drinking that they were fighting, and losing, for years.

Understand that there is a unbeatable copy protection on this disc.
I had to route the headphone output on a discman to inport on sound card and into a waveform editor to be able to rip to my MP3 collection. Good Luck to You, By the by the music is great.(Of course I already knew that)

The main points of this review have been used to review other Townes Van Zandt CDs.

Readers of this space are by now very aware that I am in search of and working my way through various types of American roots music. In shorthand, running through what others have termed "The American Songbook". Thus I have spent no little time going through the work of seemingly every musician who rates space in the august place. From blues giants, folk legends, classic rock `n' roll artists down through the second and third layers of those milieus out in the backwoods and small, hideaway music spots that dot the American musical landscape. I have also given a nod to more R&B, rockabilly and popular song artists then one reasonably need to know about. I have, however, other than the absolutely obligatory passing nods to the likes of Hank Williams and Patsy Cline spent very ink on more traditional Country music, what used to be called the Nashville sound. What gives?

Whatever my personal musical preferences there is no question that the country music work of, for example, the likes of George Jones, Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette in earlier times or Garth Brooks and Faith Hill a little later or today Keith Urban and Taylor Swift (I am cheating on these last two since I do not know their work and had to ask someone about them) "speak" to vast audiences out in the heartland. They just, for a number of reasons that need not be gone into here, do not "speak" to me. However, in the interest of "full disclosure" I must admit today that I had a "country music moment" about thirty years ago. That was the time of the "outlaws" of the country music scene. You know, Waylon (Jennings) and Willie (Nelson). Also Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash and Jerry Jeff Walker. Country Outlaws, get it? Guys and gals ( think of Jesse Colter)who broke from the Nashville/ Grand Old Opry mold by drinking hard, smoking plenty of dope and generally raising the kind of hell that the pious guardians of the Country Music Hall Of Fame would have had heart attacks over (at least in public). Oh, and did I say they wrote lyrics that spoke of love and longing, trouble with their "old ladies" (or "old men"), and struggling to get through the day. Just an ordinary day's work in the music world but with their own outlandish twists on it.

All of the above is an extremely round about way to introduce the "max daddy" of my 'country music moment', Townes Van Zandt. For those who the name does not ring a bell perhaps his most famous work does, the much-covered "Pancho And Lefty". In some ways his personal biography exemplified the then "new outlaw" (assuming that Hank Williams and his gang were the original ones). Chronic childhood problems, including a stint in a mental hospital, drugs, drink, and some rather "politically incorrect" sexual attitudes. Nothing really new here, except out of this mix came some of the most haunting lyrics of longing, loneliness, depression, sadness and despair. And that is the "milder" stuff. Not exactly the stuff of Nashville. That is the point. The late Townes Van Zandt "spoke" to me (he died in 1997) in a way that Nashville never could. And, in the end, the other outlaws couldn't either. That, my friends, is the saga of my country moment. Listen up to any of the CDs reviewed in this space for the reason why Townes did.

Townes Van Zandt was, due to personal circumstances and the nature of the music industry, honored more highly among his fellow musicians than as an outright star of "outlaw" country music back in the day. That influence was felt through the sincerest form of flattery in the music industry- someone well known covering your song. Many of Townes' pieces, especially since his untimely death in 1997, have been covered by others, most famously Willie Nelson's cover of "Pancho and Lefty". However, Townes, whom I had seen a number of times in person in the late 1970's, was no mean performer of his own darkly compelling songs. Start with "Our Mother The Mountain" and work your way through. It is worth the time.

OMG!!! This record is so amazing! this record changed my life!!! i love it so much! you deff. need to BUY BUY BUY