I don’t know that a bunch of words can tell you why you should buy this disk. Townes’ work over the years always inspired a lot of words of celebration, from critics and from us fans who managed to learn about him and from the many other musicians who loved him and his songs, who covered those songs and tried to get him noticed.

The words always fail though, as they often do with “cult” artists, because you’re either going to be captured by the music, or you’re not. We’ve forgotten, in this age of factory-produced and hype-promoted “art”, that music and other expressions of the human experience are ineffable. You’re touched, or they pass right by.

Steve Earle is paying tribute to his friend by playing his songs on this wonderful, understated, beautifully produced and performed album, and he does it as a singer should pay tribute to a great songwriter … he finds the places where the songs speaks to him and pours them out in his own stripped-down style. There is a great bunch backing him up on this, his wife Allison Moorer (I saw them together months ago at the Pabst Theater), mandolin virtuoso Tim O’Brien and Tom Morello (of Rage Against the Machine fame), to cite the more familiar names. Here’s the link to Amazon if you want to pick it up, but if possible try to find a local independent music store to get your copy.

Here’s a video of Townes playing “Marie” back in 1993.