Archive for March 22nd, 2009

Meditation on “Poncho and Lefty” by Fort Worth Songwriter Townes Van Zandt

22nd March

2009

written by the Editor

I was sitting in my mother’s car listening to a random Willie Nelson CD when I came across the song “The Ballad of Poncho and Lefty” quite by accident. I knew the song from childhood, not from Nelson’s 1983 rendition, which topped the Country charts, but in the 1977 Emmylou Harris cover, which my parents used to play on the stereo back when we used those black vinyl records. Hearing the song again, I remembered the haunting words, “out of kindness I suppose” and the fact that, back when I was a kid, it wasn’t really clear to me what the song was about. It still wasn’t, actually.

The tune stuck in my head for a couple of days, long enough that I got around to googling it. I discovered that the songwriter, Townes Van Zandt, was a Fort Worthian born March 7, 1944 into an old local family that could brag of oil wealth.

The song is an enigmatic one that has several blog posts out there debating its meaning. Initially people often think that it is simply the story of the death of the famous bandit Pancho Villa, killed by the Federales in 1916. But the song becomes more complex as you listen more closely. In the beginning, the singer tells someone (himself?) that “living on the road my friend, was gonna keep you free and clean.” The song continues to Poncho’s death then switches to another character, Lefty, who runs away to Ohio.

Many who listen to the song believe that Poncho and Lefty were friends, and that Lefty sold Poncho out to the Federales. I don’t completely agree with this, after studying the lyrics, copying them by hand onto a sheet of lined paper, playing the song on my guitar and reading up on Townes Van Zandt’s biography. It looks more to me like the character of Lefty was a singer (“he couldn’t sing the blues all night long like he used to do”) who is washed up and dying slowly in a cheap hotel instead of spectacularly being shot in the Mexican desert, the end that Poncho had. Seen this way, Lefty was someone who dreamed about Poncho’s death and mourned about his own obscurity. The song becomes a meditation on the workings of fate. At the end, we are told to pray for Poncho, “but say a prayer for Lefty too, he only did what he had to do.” What he had to do could have been, as some say, selling Poncho out, but it may have been as simple as a long, unsung demise.

Emmylou Harris, speaking of the song, said she’s was going to play “a little Townes Van Zandt, only there isn’t any such thing as a little Townes Van Zandt, everything he did was a lot.” Van Zandt’s refusal to elaborate on the song’s meaning may be because it ws deeply personal or it didn’t make sense to him either, but the power of the lyrics and melody, which work together to enhance the feeling of loneliness and langsyne, are effective whether you think you understand it or not.

Here’s a music video of the song by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, which follows the “traditional” interpretation of the song.