Freeway”) had already been canonized in Texas via covers by Jerry Jeff Walker. 1, a fistful of his most enduring songs (including “Desperados Waiting for a Train” and “L.A.
By the time Clark released his flawless 1975 debut, Old No. Generations of younger writers, from Rodney Crowell to Hayes Carll, study his craft and strive for inclusion on his Dean’s List.
Guy Clark A veritable Rock of Gibraltar to his mercurial compadre Townes Van Zandt’s rolling stone, the Monahans-born Guy Clark has called Nashville home for his entire recording career. Recorded in Houston in 1973, the double album is as essential as records in this genre get: 93 minutes of nothing but the poet, his guitar, and a sack of songs so bulletproof, he opens with “Pancho and Lefty.” Van Zandt, the scion of a Fort Worth oil family who battled manic-depression throughout his life and died at 52 on New Year’s Day 1997, wrote songs that could be both dazzlingly abstract and devastatingly direct, often in the same verse, and his melodies could be as beautiful as his blues were brutal (weigh the achingly lovely “To Live’s to Fly” against the harrowing “Waitin’ Round to Die.”) He was also a fleet flat picker in the tradition of his hero, Lightnin’ Hopkins, as evidenced on Van Zandt’s Live at the Old Quarter. Townes Van Zandt “Songwriter’s songwriter” is a title that gets tossed around a lot, but when it’s bestowed by no less a giant than Kris Kristofferson upon a recipient as deserving as Townes Van Zandt, take it as gospel. They set their own rules, break them at will, and dedicate their lives pursuing not so much the bridge between art and commerce as the golden mean between impeccable craftsmanship and true poetry. 
By and large, the best Texas troubadours pay little heed to genre fences and the conventional rules of Songwriting 101. From blues and rock ’n’ roll to country and hip-hop, the Lone Star State has produced a size-appropriate share of bona fide legends over the decades, but it’s the acoustic guitar-wielding singer-songwriter that perhaps best exemplifies the independent spirit and outlaw mythos of Texas music at its best.
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