I go on a one-song listening spree sometimes. That is, I'll listen to different versions of the same song. Recently it has been Pancho and Lefty by Townes Van Zandt. I've heard the song a number of times before, but hadn't paid much attention. The version that piqued my interest was by the bluegrass band "Old and In the Gray," (2002) an offshoot of the earlier "Old and In the Way," a group with Jerry Garcia on banjo, Vassar Clements on fiddle, Peter Rowan, guitar, John Kahn on bass, and David Grisman on mandolin. I love their initial 1973 release! The later group maintains Clements, Rowan, and Grisman. I then listened to a live version of Van Zandt playing the tune, followed by versions from Emmy Lou Harris, and Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, among others. My favorite was Van Zandt's. I like the other renderings, too, especially Harris's, but the solo simplicity and lack of heavy production gives the song the lonely feel that I rather like in the melody and lyrics. Music doesn't need to be heavily produced to speak volumes.
The words are somewhat cryptic about Pancho, a Mexican bandit, and a sidekick Van Zandt calls Lefty (subconsciously evoking country icon Lefty Frizzell?). Or it's about Pancho Villa. Van Zandt himself wasn't sure: "I realize that I wrote it, but it's hard to take credit for the writing, because it came from out of the blue. It came through me and it's a real nice song, . . ." Sometimes we just don't know what our creative works are about; it can be left to others to decide, but it is "a real nice song." We can let our creative juices flow and what happens will happen.
Sidebar: when Old and In the Way was playing together, the band was driving past a large billboard somewhere in California with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead pictured. Not knowing that Garcia was actually in the Dead, Vassar Clements turned to Jerry and said, "The fella on the billboard looks just like you, Jerry." Clements admitted later that he really had no idea who Garcia was before that.
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