A Conversation with John Kruth (continued)

JK: When you walk into somebody's life like that--when I wrote the book on Rahsaan Roland Kirk, there were people that begrudged me because I was from his New York clique of friends, that I wasn't from the Ohio clique of friends; or begrudged me because of my skin color, or that I lived in New York, or whatever it was. There's always something. And I figured when I went into writing this book on Townes--look, I've played Passim, I've played at Folk City. I've played at a lot these places. And I've worked with people that play at those places. So I figured, okay, I'm just kind of like revisiting a path that I've been on myself.

PM: Right.

JK: But then there are people who are holding me accountable for the war between the states.

PM: Oh, big time, because you're a Yankee. I've been at parties here in the south where a guy that I didn't know looked up at me from the punchbowl and said, "You know, you wouldn't have won if you hadn't have had so many more men." And I'm looking around, saying, "I'm sorry. Are you talking to me?"

JK: Yeah. "And here's the other thing: My grandparents were in Hungary and Russia at that time."

PM: Yeah, and mine were in Ireland.

JK: "So I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

[laughter]

JK: "Besides, hey, I live in New York, and you know that New York was secretly on the side of the south during the Civil War, as we call it here."

PM: Damn.

JK: But any time you walk into people's living rooms asking questions about their old friend or their old employer or their old lover, you're setting yourself up. And obviously, Guy Clark wanted to give me a transmission of what it was like when they were getting wild. And that's why I put it in the book.

What's really funny is that a lot of people think that Woody Allen is a schlemiel, that he's a total loser. Well, how does a loser like that make such great movies? If you allow yourselves to be cast as--I made the metaphor there of being Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Well, I showed up in my Doc Martens and my weird plaid shorts, and started asking Guy Clark questions about his best and oldest friend, and the guy that really inspired him, and his mentor in many ways. And Guy's wife had a very close relationship with Townes that she didn't want to talk about. And I'll tell you something, the Texas Monthly took a shot at me in their review because I didn't mention for the first 35 pages that Townes had been a junkie. Well, he was a child first. He was a kid before he was a junkie.

PM: They wanted it in the first 30 pages.

JK: Yeah. In the first 30-35 pages I don't mention that he was a junkie, and they said in the review that I pussy-footed with who he was.

PM: "Write your own book."

JK: Well, no, here's the thing. I'm not going to write a book like--what was that guy's name? Albert Goldman, who wrote the John Lennon book?

PM: Yeah, it's not a tell-all.

JK: Well, even if it was, I don't have the stomach for it.

PM: Yeah.

JK: I have too much respect for, A) Townes, and B) his family. He's got a daughter and two sons. I mean, there's enough there that gives you the idea that, yes, he drank cough syrup, yes, he drank vodka, and yes, he shot heroin. He did all kinds of kinds of wild things.

PM: He did whatever there was.

JK: Yeah, so fine. That's not the point of writing the book. The point of writing the book is that I felt that Townes Van Zandt--and I wasn't alone--was one of the greatest songwriters in the latter half of the 20th century in the United States, and in the English language. To me, he was in the rarified atmosphere with Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. And yes, he shot himself in the foot career-wise, and yes, a lot of his records were badly produced. And there were a lot of reasons why Townes wasn't a big star. As I think Paul Kaye put it, it just took all of his energy just being Townes, just to write those songs and to play them. He's not a cartoon character like John Mellencamp or Bruce Springsteen, who fill up entire sport stadiums and they're larger than life. He sat there on a chair with his eyes closed and picked his songs, and you had to pay attention. You had to come to him.

PM: Right.

JK: I don't understand how we got so programmed to think that everybody has got to grow up to be a superstar.

PM: Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, celebrity mania.

JK: The I-Ching says, "You don't just work for the time that you live in, you work for all time." And I think that guys like Nick Drake and guys like Townes Van Zandt--and there are many others out there that we don't even know about--they planted seeds.

PM: Yeah, by virtue of the fact that they may fly under the radar, we don't know about them.

JK: Right. They planted seeds, and those trees, or those plants, whatever it is, they blossom of their own accord.

PM: Right.

JK: And sometimes, like Rahsaan sometimes, like Townes, once the musician is gone and can't get in the way of their own career any longer, poof! Explosion! It's like they just start budding--these songs and albums start budding and exploding in everybody's consciousness.

PM: Yeah. So aside from the paper that gave you a hard time about those first 30 pages, are many of Townes' ardent followers pissed off about the book for one reason or another?

JK: Not too many. I think that you get the full spectrum on Amazon. I have people giving it one star and saying this is the worst piece of crap they've ever read in their life.

PM: Really? [laughs]

JK: And I got people giving it five stars, that it's absolutely brilliant.

PM: How about professional reviewers, how's it going?

JK: Really well. The only one that really took a shot at me and hurt was AP, the Associated Press printed this one review that probably got printed in about 200 papers or 250 papers. And it was just about the worst review of the book.

PM: Really? And what was their problem?

JK: I don't know. It's all subjective, isn't it?

PM: Right.

JK: It's all subjective, and it all has to do with reading comprehension.

PM: [laughs]

JK: I'm teaching at Manhattan College in New York, Rudy Giuliani's alma mater, and I have a feeling that some of my students have better reading comprehension than some of the people reviewing the books. Not everybody reads the whole book, you know that, when they review. And you bring to it whatever it is you experience. Your experience, and your point of view, and your focus or lack thereof. And I don't know, man--Marcel Duchamp put it perfectly, he said, "Let the little birds make pee-pee."

And this is the first book, and I'm sure--I think I've heard that there are two other people out there writing books. So let the party begin. It's like, look, I did it because I love the man's music. I couldn't believe I've been talking about his music to people for all these years. It was like Rahsaan; maybe if I write a book about him I won't have to talk about him anymore. Same thing with Townes, if I write this book on Townes--

PM: I'll get it out of my system.

JK: They wanted me to write another jazz book. I didn't want to write a jazz book. I needed to find somebody to fill the same size-thirteens that Rahsaan wore. I mean, a legendary, incredible American figure, a contemporary figure in American music that musicians know is great, but the public is still sleeping on, for whatever reason. And there's Townes Van Zandt. I didn't have to twist anybody's arm for them to go off and say what an incredible songwriter he was, and how good his voice was, and this and that. And yeah, a lot of people were upset with the way his records were either handled or produced, or distributed. And that played a part in why his career never took off. But he also would do things like go to the Colorado mountains for the summer, and he didn't have a cell phone, so you couldn't reach him.

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