Rex's Blues: Van Zandt, Rodriguez, Holland • We Blog The World

A good song is a good song, period, not matter who it’s sung by. Such is ‘Rex’s Blues’ by Townes Van Zandt. It’s a dark, bleak song about following one’s own compass…despite the consequences.

‘I’m chained upon the face of time
feelin’ full of foolish rhyme
there ain’t no dark till something shines
I’m bound to leave this dark behind”
—from Rex’s Blues by Townes Van Zandt

It was December 1992 when I saw Townes Van Zandt take a stage in Boulder Colorado. Barely out of college, raised on equal parts California fog, rain and sunshine, I didn’t really know he was…and then I heard him sing. It was kind of like seeing Allen Ginsberg at The Fox a year or two later. Both men, pioneering and dogged in their pursuits, were very near the end of their lives. I knew it was big to see them but I didn’t quite realize I’d remember these moments so clearly 20 years later.

When I feel lost where I am, I scan the past for such times. Sometimes, it’s only when you look back over a life, you see you are being led all along.

So it’s striking to me that several versions of ‘Rex’s Blues’ by Townes Van Zandt have come to my attention in recent months, both sung by female singers. I’ve been listening to a version by Carrie Rodriguez, a polished, alt-country artist from Austin, since I heard her sing several months ago in LA. And this week I realized Jolie Holland, a true old-soul new blues/Americana artist of the day, included it on her latest album ‘Pint of Blood.’ Both make it their own—Rodriguez sweet and reflective and a bit more loyal to the origianl; Holland, haunting, howling and slower in tempo— while retaining both their own and the song’s respective souls. Good stuff. Check ’em out:

Deborah Crooks

Deborah Crooks (www.DeborahCrooks.com) is a writer, performing songwriter and recording artist based in San Francisco whose lyric driven and soul-wise music has drawn comparison to Lucinda Williams, Chrissie Hynde and Natalie Merchant.

Singing about faith, love and loss, her lyrics are honed by a lifetime of writing and world travel while her music draws on folk, rock, Americana and the blues. She released her first EP “5 Acres” in 2003 produced by Roberta Donnay, which caught the attention of Rocker Girl Magazine, selecting it for the RockerGirl Discoveries Cd. In 2007, she teamed up with local producer Ben Bernstein to complete “Turn It All Red” Ep, followed by 2008’s “Adding Water to the Ashes” CD, and a second full-length CD “2010. She’s currently working on a third CD to be released in 2013.

Deborah’s many performance credits include an appearance at the 2006 Millennium Music Conference, the RockerGirl Magazine Music Convention, IndieGrrl, at several of the Annual Invasion of the GoGirls at SXSW in Austin, TX, the Harmony Festival and 2009’s California Music Fest, MacWorld 2010, Far West Fest and many other venues and events. She toured the Northwest as part “Indie Abundance Music, Money & Mindfulness” (2009) with two other Bay Area artists, and followed up with “The Great Idea Tour of the Southwest in March 2010 with Jean Mazzei.