I'll Be Here in the Morning

Earlier this month, Jason and I participated in the 15th annual Townes Van Zandt tribute show. Our friend Eric Nassau is the main organizer for this wonderful gathering of musicians who love Townes and it always takes place on TVZ’s birthday, March 7th. This year, in pandemic fashion, it was a virtual fest and allowed us to participate from Tennessee (it all happens in Ohio) and it was a benefit for our favorite central Ohio radio station, WCBE 90.5FM.

Along with Lucinda Williams songs, I started learning Townes songs when I first picked up the guitar in my early 20’s and found them to be simply beautiful. I learned to play many of them and found so much meaning in each line. I dug into Townes and then discovered Guy and Susanna Clarke and my obsession continued. I never got to meet any of them but their music is a part of my musical make-up. Reading ‘Without Getting Killed or Caught’ by Tamara Saviano a few years ago taught me even more about them all.

This past week I watched the documentary that was adapted from the book and to hear the voices of Guy, Susanna and Townes on never before heard tape recordings was deeply fascinating to me. It is the sound of an old friend in a new context. It reminded me of when I found some old tapes of my grandfather after he died, playing the piano and talking into a tape recorder. He referred to his metronome as his ‘sideman to the left, helping me keep a steady beat.’ He plays on and talks and makes a few more jokes and it is was such a wonderful surprise, and the recording made him feel alive to me again for a few minutes. I still have these tapes in a sealed ziploc bag and they sit on top of my piano along with my grandmother’s journal which chronicles when she and my grandfather started dating sometime around 1933. I feel so fortunate to have these relics and they help me keep my own memories alive of them. Sometimes I still hear their voices, and occasionally Grandpa B. shows up in my piano playing. It’s usually when I do an unexpected fancy flourish or a jazzy chord voicing that I wouldn’t normally use and it makes me so happy.

‘I’ll Be Here in the Morning’ wasn’t the first Townes song I learned, but it was probably the third or the fourth. In re-learning it for the tribute show, I thought it would be cool sung as a duet. I love this song because it reminds me of traveling, especially touring as a musician. There’s something uncanny about moving on from a place, whether it’s where you live, or a town you just got to a day or two before. Leaving a place commands you to be in the moment, which I really enjoy about touring as a musician. Some days I wonder if I’ll ever really do that again and I wonder if I’m romanticizing it all. Then I realize, yes I am and so was Townes. The road is rough, and sometimes uncomfortable, and sometimes totally plain awful. But I wouldn’t trade the experiences I’ve had for anything. Something else that I’ve learned along the way is that how nice it is to return to a place you’ve travelled to before. You might think, ‘I’ve been there, done that’ but it’s just the opposite. It’s truly possible to fall even more in love with a place the more you get to know it. I sometimes think there’s no way I’ll ever be to all the places I want to go, and worst of all I won’t have time to revisit them again and again. Even if travel is hard I’m committed to doing it again someday.

‘There’s no stronger wind than the one that blows down a lonesome railroad line. No prettier site than looking back on a town you left behind, but there’s nothing that’s as real as the love that’s in my mind. Close your eyes I’ll be here in the morning, close your eyes I’ll be here for a while’