Every Friday around 11 a.m. Central, it’s time for Classic Americana on Radio Heartland. We pull a special track from the archives or from deep in the shelves to spotlight a particular artist or song.

This week’s Classic Americana spotlight artist is the late singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt, who was born March 7, 1944. Revered as a groundbreaking songwriter yet mourned as an artist lost too soon, Van Zandt’s influence remains indelible in music, particularly in folk, country and Americana circles.

While much has been written about the life of Townes Van Zandt and his connection to places like Texas and Tennessee, a small but significant portion of Van Zandt’s formative years were spent in Minnesota. While he was growing up, Van Zandt’s father’s job required the family to move frequently. When the Van Zandts had moved to suburban Chicago when Townes was a teen, his parents decided to send him to boarding school at the Shattuck School — now Shattuck-St. Mary’s — in Faribault, Minnesota, so he could have two consecutive years in the same place, thereby lending some consistency to Townes’ education.

According to classmate Marshall Froker, the teenage Townes Van Zandt was a good athlete and was a member of the school’s gridiron football and wrestling teams. "He was coordinated and nimble and strong,” Froker told The Current in 2017.

Froker also shared that Townes Van Zandt got some of his early gigging in while a high schooler, performing on campus in both formal and informal settings. Townes Van Zandt graduated in 1962 and pursued his dreams as a singer-songwriter from there.

For our Classic Americana pick this week, we’ll share one of Townes Van Zandt’s most beloved songs, “Pancho and Lefty.”

External Links

Townes Van Zandt – Fat Possum Records site

Shattuck-St. Mary’s School – Faribault, Minnesota (official site)