Sunset, Thursday, 25 June 2009

Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on paper, 16 x 20.

I’m doing some homework on a local issue, but one that reverberates in many other places – here it’s the construction of the Meadowcreek Parkway in Charlottesville, and the fate of McIntire Park. Much of this is covered in an informative, energetic, lucid and confusing-as-hell website, savemcintire.com.

I wasn’t going to mention any of that today but I bumped into an old acquaintance and magazine interview subject this morning – he may not have remembered my name, we just smiled at each other – John D’earth – and then I saw John mentioned at the top of the McIntire site. Superstitious cat that I am, I took it as a sign. John is probably too young to appreciate my using this term, but if he isn’t the spiritual godfather of the Charlottesville music scene, then I don’t know who is. (More here.)

Development and transportation issues in Charlottesville are kind of funny. It’s a town filled with environmentalist liberals (if I lived there, I’d be one of them) but, for a small place, it has a really vicious urban heat island effect. I live only 10 miles out, but to drive down 29 into town in late spring, summer or fall is often to hit a wall of heat. Leaving, you cool down by very noticeable degrees.

As a follow-up to yesterday’s story about my walk and ”Pancho and Lefty” – which of course was a true accounting right up to the pistol shots – I wanted to share this little paragraph buried way down in the Wikipedia entry on Townes Van Zandt. As a preface, I might mention that Bob Dylan reportedly always had a very high regard for Van Zandt and the esteem was mutual.

Anyhow:

Van Zandt has been referred to as a cult musician and “a songwriter’s songwriter.” Musician Steve Earle, a close friend, once said Van Zandt was “the best songwriter in the whole world and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.” The quote was printed on a sticker featured on the packing of At My Window, much to Van Zandt’s displeasure. Van Zandt responded: “I’ve met Bob Dylan’s bodyguards and if Steve Earle thinks he can stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table, he’s sadly mistaken.”

Tonight I just want to be a fan and call this my Michael Jackson sunset.