[SumBum]

https://youtu.be/AvkMOzbR1Nk +cd cover img
A bit ago yt happened to reccomended this video with relatively few views. The description claims it to actually be the infamous recording near before Townes's death that Shelley had organized for him. With old satan and harm's swift way on it, as well as the odd behaviour on it i am inclined to believe that it is.

However, of all the van zandt information out there that all mention this session since it's relevant to his death, none mention it ever having been released. Searching a out it found absolutely no information about the session. Just... Gladly a download from an extremely sketchy website, and a broken download from another site;where his warned a dmca takedown in the comments. Jeanne does have a contact email on townes' website, but she never replied to me.

If anybody knows anything, or can help me probe more about this that'd be awesome. Otherwise, have this obscure gem.

 

[The Soup Nazi]

From Dimeadozen:

Townes Van Zandt - 1996-xx-xx, Memphis, TN - studio sessions - Reseed

Here are uploader soledriver's notes (many thanks to him/her for making this available again, although apparently the text is the same as the one posted by the previous uploader... who, in turn, took it from Wikipedia), with a little editing from yours truly:

Townes Van Zandt
Studio Sessions
Memphis, TN

Late 1996

I downloaded this one years ago from Dime. It was offered as an unknown (partial) studio recording from unknown date.

When listening I discovered the tracks are most likely from the studio sessions Townes did with Steve Shelley's (Sonic Youth) band Two Dollar Guitar.

In the spring of 1996 Townes was contacted by Steve Shelley, who informed Van Zandt that he was interested in recording and releasing an album for him on the band's Ecstatic Peace! label [sic; it's always been Thurston's label, isn't it], funded by Geffen. Townes agreed, and sessions were scheduled to begin in Memphis during late December of that year.

On December 19 or 20, Townes fell down the concrete stairs outside his home, badly injuring his hip. Townes refused medical treatment.

Determined to finish the album that he had scheduled to record with Shelley and Two Dollar Guitar, Townes showed up to the Memphis studio being pushed in a wheelchair by road manager Harold Eggers. Shelley canceled the sessions due to the songwriter's erratic behavior and drunkenness.

Townes finally agreed to hospitalization. Against medical advise Townes checked out of the hospital. The rest is history.

The songs of these sessions were never officially released. "Harm's Swift Way" went down in history as the last song Townes wrote.

I don't know why track 01 was omitted, perhaps it has been officially released on a compilation. In 2010 Robert Plant and the Band of Joy put it on their album.

01 - Sanitarium Blues [omitted]
02-04 - Old Satan
05 - Sweet The Time [spoken]
06 - Harm's Swift Way
07 - R.M. Too
08 - Townes' Blues
09 - Snow Flake [spoken]

OK, so "Sanitarium Blues" appears on A Far Cry From Dead (1999), but I don't know whether it really is the take recorded with Steve. According to the liner notes, all the songs on that posthumous album were recorded between '89 and '96 at Texhoma Music Group Studio and Cowboy Arms Hotel And Recording Spa. As far as my intrepid reporting skills go, both are/were located in Nashville (although Texhoma "is the name of twin cities on the border of [you guessed it] the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles"). Even Imagine Studio, the place where some overdubs were recorded in '98, is in Music City. So, Memphis, couldn't tell ya.

In my collection of Uncut magazines there's a very good feature on TVZ which touches on this sad final chapter and some quotes from Steve are included. I'd look it up, except virtually everything I own is in sealed boxes as I went from the frying pan to the fire when I moved out of the fucking apartment I was living in to live (if you can call this shit life; I call it pointless survival) in a motherfucking apartment where there's not a single squared inch for me. FUN TIMES! Anyway, here's a direct download link for the Dimeless caste. You can download it "as a folder" or as a zip file. 75.66MB total, front and back artwork included, FLAC because YouTube is for computers not for people, get off my lawn, etc.