Various: Country Outlaws: Renegade Country Music

Reviewed by GRAHAM REID

In last month's Mojo, the reputable British rock magazine, there was a multi-page spread on Townes Van Zandt, a man so fatalistic he released an album called The Late, Great Townes Van Zandt 25 years before his death.

The British have been tardy in discovering Townes, who died of a heart attack on New Year's Day 1997, aged 52. We saw and hailed him a decade ago when he brought his melancholy music through on a memorable solo tour. At one level he made Leonard Cohen seem like a merry prankster, but Van Zandt also wrote beautifully affecting and often simple music.

The lean and rangy Texan was once described as "the Van Gogh of lyrics", a phrase which aptly encapsulated the power of an art which came from a troubled soul.

Born in Fort Worth, Van Zandt was expected by his oil-monied family to become a lawyer or state governor (Townes or George W? That's a no-brainer).

He was smart enough to be either - but instead dropped out of college to become an itinerant folk singer. He was influenced by Bob Dylan, as most were, but increasingly gravitated to the Hank Williams tradition. He often nailed diamond hard images, but could be as sentimental and soft-hearted as he was acerbic and melancholy.

He was revered by dozens of artists, many of whom - such as Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard - covered his songs to greater success than Townes. Among the admirers who performed his material were the Cowboy Junkies, Dylan, Lyle Lovett, Steve Earle and Emmylou Harris. Joe Ely spoke of his "tremendous beauty in his sadness".

Townes wasn't the easiest of characters. He was maudlin and sometimes suicidal (and wrote songs which could really take you down), was an alcoholic and a gambler, an occasional junkie and sometimes a peripatetic loner. When he dropped out he was diagnosed as a schizophrenic-reactionary manic depressive.

He was also, by many accounts, charming. Guy Clark said he was tragic and funny at the same time. He was certainly droll. When he played here he croaked half-heartedly: "They said I should tell a joke. Here's my joke." And he told it - hilarious and rude - then got back down the dark business of singing his songs.

Three of Townes' most famous songs - Pancho and Lefty, the autobiographical, Nick Cave-like ballad Waitin"Round to Die and the beautifully sad Tecumsah Valley, all live - form the centre of the second disc of this excellent double set which is a style sampler and introduction to this post-Dylan/post country-rock music that distilled in the southern states in the 1970s.

Most of the big names of this loosely affiliated movement are here: Steve Young, John Prine, Chip Taylor, Jerry Jeff Walker, Billie Joe Shaver, Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Guy Clark, Terry Allen, Butch Hancock and the late Doug Sahm.

Longtime fans will have all these tracks (and may quibble about a few choices) but for newcomers the recommendation is, like Townes, these musicians/poets are represented by their best-known material - some of it jaded, world weary and captured in the title of Allen's There Oughta Be a Law Against Sunny Southern California..

But when Joe Ely kicks up Me and Billy Kid and My Eyes Got Lucky at Antone's bar in Austin you can hear why Joe Strummer asked him to open for the Clash way back then.

Ely was one member of the shortlived West Texas band the Flatlanders alongside Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore (who played the long-haired bowler in The Big Lebowski, Townes incidentally providing the superb cover of the Stones' Dead Flowers on the soundtrack). Each Flatlander went on to idiosyncratic, distinctive careers, Ely's perhaps the most visible for his blend of country, Jerry Lee Lewis and white knuckle rock.

Gilmore gave Ely one of his better-known songs, Dallas ("Did you ever see Dallas from a DC9 at night? Dallas is a jewel and Dallas is a beautiful sight") although Gilmore's slightly nasal whine is an acquired taste. But once acquired ...

I saw him, in Austin, play a room where he'd last appeared in a Townes tribute concert. After a couple of songs he dispensed with the set list because he felt "the spirit of Townes here tonight".

It was a mysterious, moving night, and afterwards I fled to a punk club just to get some grounding and perspective.

Here Jimmie weighs in with Ripple and Banks of Guadalupe.

After sampling Hancock's two tracks here - West Texas Waltz and Boxcars - you should head for his excellent Own & Own which features Ely, Gilmore, steel guitarist Lloyd Maines, accordionist Ponty Bone and many others. But go for the 19-track double vinyl rather than the truncated single disc. Then you'll get the shaggy dog story Split and Slide which is an object lesson in alliteration and a little idiocy, assonance and asinine humour. When Split stands near the fan you can guess what happens next.

The compiler of this collection, London-based former-Aucklander Garth Cartwright, says of these artists: "Fame and fortune rarely came knocking, but the beauty and pathos they gave us will never be forgotten." True.

He also thanks Real Groovy's expert in such music, Grant McAllum, for turning him on to this stuff. Fitting then to observe about half the artists on these discs came here, as did Townes, through the auspices of Real Groovy.

We have them to thank for us being about a decade ahead of interest in the venerable UK rock press right now.

But if you need to catch up on this extraordinary sidestream of American music, here's where to start.

(Metro/Triton)