1968 Kate & Townes Van Zandt

Townes Van Zandt bummed a cigarette from me at the Thirsty Ear folk club in 1968. I was a local sixteen year-old guitar-playing songwritier asked to open the show. We were strapped into our guitars getting ready, tuning and picking in the “green room” aka boiler room. Once the crowd had their fancy coffee orders in, the show would begin. The Thirsty Ear on Washington Street in Morristown, New Jersey, was a one-room coffeehouse all ages hub and home-base for folk music devotees and guitar-smitten songwriters in the area. National folk acts played off nights in the small club in the metro suburbs. We’ had heard about Townes Van Zandt and his songs. all the way from Texas, and there was a full house to hear him sing with his guitar that night. I was ready for my fifteen-minute set and mostly looked forward to getting in my seat to listen to Townes later. Bob Miller,, a friendly, bushy-bearded proprietor, stepped into the spotlight on the small stage and up to the mic. The room hushed as he talked about the shows coming up and began my introduction. Townes gave me a nod and I wished him good show and off I went, I remember playing my set with my eyes closed that night in my green felt hat on my 1964 Martin 00-21 New Yorker and three of my first songs. Lessons in simplicity from that evening, in the boiler room and on the stage and in the audience to watch a legend be born.. A turning point.

There’s more to how this story played out over time but suffice it to say that little did I know how much that night would affect me, my songs, my guitar, my attitude, my artistic freedom, and that I would marry someone thirty years later who sang Townes Van Zandt songs and had an encounter of his own with him. Life is funny..