Search - Townes Van Zandt :: Our Mother the Mountain (Dig)

One of the Best Albums EVER.

Old T.B. | Cheyenne, Wy USA | 11/26/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"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."

This is what Steve Earle was listening to when he spoke of b

Vernon Ross | 08/13/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"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."