7 min read · Dec 22, 2022
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What if you were given the precious gift of traveling back in time to see your favorite musical artists transformed into their younger, brighter, selves, trapped in the infancy of their careers, with nowhere to look but forward? What if you could see their beginnings, hear their dreams, see the things that pushed them to perform and write the songs we now cherish as classics?
Heartworn Highways is a time capsule. From the moment that you hear and see the opening song, L.A. Freeway performed by Guy Clark in his workshop, you are transported to 1975 and inserted into the lives of third-generation country, folk, and bluegrass musicians in the genesis of their careers, and in the intimacy of their homes, workshops, and favorite bars. Instantly, you feel the nostalgia of an impromptu round of acoustic living room guitar picking on shag carpeting. You can smell the smoke of filterless cigarettes and spilled red wine, and you can hear the beautiful imperfections of the voices creating music in a setting that could never be replicated after time’s success begins to trickle into the lives of the artists.
In James Szalapski’s creation, he had no idea if the artists he filmed would ever make it to the big time, and it was this uncertainty that allowed the weaving of some of the most genuine, and intimate footage ever to be featured in a music documentary.
Some artists like Larry Jon Wilson, Peggy Brooks, and Gamble Rodgers would never make it to the mainstream, but luckily for us, their passion and artistry are immortalized in the film in some of the most endearing scenes. After Guy Clark introduces us to the pace of the film, Larry Jon Wilson awakes from a hangover, lights a cigarette, and steps into a studio soundproofed by what appears to be green felt and slabs of tree bark. I would love to include a photo, but unfortunately, I was not able to locate permissions. You’ll have to check it out for yourself.
Most of us familiar with the classic country and folk genres will recognize the other artists but will be gifted with insight into their modest beginnings. This is perhaps most demonstrated by our introduction to a 36-year-old David Allan Coe, driving his own tour bus and joking with truckers on a CB radio, and using a seamless flurry of trucker code to communicate. The truckers recognize him solely by his handle, The Rhinestone Cowboy. He is on his way to Tennesee State Penitentiary to perform for inmates that he was incarcerated with only four years prior. In his next scene, dressed head to toe in thousands of rhinestones, he converses with a small group of both inmates and guards about issues with the prison system, specifically his concern with the lack of mental health resources.
Another budding country music career that Szalapski showcases in Hearworn Highways is Charlie Daniels’. We can easily affirm now that Charlie Daniels has an established place in mainstream country music. If you listen to the radio on a long drive, it’s likely that you’ll hear his well-known hit, The Devil Went Down to Georgia, come on at some point, and there’s a good chance that someone in your car will know all of the words.
But in Heartworn Highways, Charlie Daniels is a beginner like everyone else, navigating the early stages of his career, unsure if his art will be noticed, and taking low-pay, low-exposure gigs in high school auditoriums. On-screen, we see Daniels awkwardly setting up his equipment, talking amongst a small crowd, slowly filing into the metal folding chairs set up on the auditorium floor, and drinking beer out of paper cups. He’s young and fat, dressed in a thin beard and a dollar-store black cowboy hat, but when he gets on stage, he lights up, spinning and dancing, shredding on his fiddle until the bowstrings widdle down to almost nothing. A crowd of fewer than three hundred cheers emphatically.
In contrast, we have to talk about Townes Van Zandt, and some of the most tender footage of him that exists. Because of hindsight, we now know that Charlie Daniels makes it to the mainstream, but Townes Van Zandt wasn’t as lucky. In a famous quote, Townes remarked —
“I was just tapped on the shoulder from above and told to write these songs, as opposed to wanting to be a success in the music business.”
But in watching Heartworn Highways, we see are able to share Townes’ modest successes with him as he gives a charming tour of his Nashville ranch grounds. Clutching a bottle of Seagram’s whiskey, a glass bottle of coke, and a shotgun, we follow Townes’ as he introduces his dog, Geraldine, his live-in girlfriend, Cindy, and his chickens, Smith and Wesson. He’s wearing incredibly stylish cowboy attire — a leather, wool-lined coat, and a cowboy hat. The weather is visibly cold; as the scene progresses we see his lips begin to quiver, and his words begin to slur from the liquid jacket he sips to keep warm.
The segment breaks, and we’re greeted by two unrecognizable men, sitting alone at a bar covered in country music memorabilia. The owner, Big Mac McGowen, smokes cigarettes and talks in a deep Louisiana drawl about his experiences, and changes in the country music industry with the man on the receiving end of the bar, Glenn Stagner who is adorned with a red windbreaker, and the kind of thick-framed glasses that were popular in the 50s and 60s, though it is 1975 in the moment of this interview.
Like Statler and Waldorf, the two cantankerous old men assume their places as experts, and gatekeepers, issuing out the old generation of country artists, and hesitantly issuing in the new generation. They sip straight from the bottle before breaking out a few instruments of their own and playing a blues song — neither of them seems to agree on what the song is actually called, and they bicker playfully in front of the camera.
For the second and final time, we arrive back at the Van Zandt ranch as Guy Clark and Steve Earl play a warm, heartfelt rendition of Old Time Feeling in the transition. Snow is falling down on the cattle as an elderly farmhand feeds them hay.
Inside, Cindy does dishes and brings drinks to Townes and a man whom Townes introduces to us as Uncle Seymour. Uncle Seymour is an old, black man with large hands, cracked and weathered from a lifetime of working as a blacksmith. He comes off as stoic and serious, but as Townes pushes him to open up with his affable playfulness, he delivers a beautiful soliloquy on hard work, moderation, and gratitude:
“All ways be doing something; if it ain't much, do a little, and never forget to get down on your knees and pray to God and thank Him for the time He’s given you on Earth…” “…Live careful, and eat three times a day, and eat common food, soul food like beans, turnip greens, and cornbread, drink the best bourbon whiskey. People condemn whiskey, but they have no right to because when God created the heavens and earth, He created all things. He also created barley, rye, and if He didn’t think those things were good for man, He wouldn’t have let those things grow. But He also created cattle of the fields, birds of the air, and foods for us to subsist on, but He didn’t mean for us to eat so much of it that it was detrimental to us and make us sick. The same thing applies to drinking whiskey, or beer or anything you drink. You don’t have to see a barrel of whiskey because you see a barrel sitting there. Drink a little bit of it and stop, and ask God to give you the knowledge to do that.”
Though Uncle Seymour isn’t a musician, he becomes just as recognizable as one in Heartworn Highways, and even holds a spot with Townes on the cover, and movie poster.
When Uncle Seymour is finished with his advice, Townes begins to play the guitar he had been holding as he sat listening intently with a smile on his face the entire time. This is the first known footage of his songs, Waiting Around to Die, and Pancho and Lefty, arguably his most well-known pieces to this day. As Townes describes his personal struggles in the words, Uncle Seymour empathetically begins to sob as Cindy comforts him.
At the end of the movie, we arrive for a nightcap at Guy Clark’s living room for a New Year's Eve party. The room is packed with young men with acoustic guitars, drunk and smiling, singing Christmas carols. Most of them smoke cigarettes and drink champagne on the floor while they issue in 1976. The feeling is wholesome nostalgia — this is like every New Year’s party among 20-something musicians within the last century. You feel their loving friendships and the hopeful anticipation of what the New Year will bring to their lives and art.
