* Some of my most favorite memories in life involve hanging out at parties with musicians, sharing a jug and listening to them play guitar and talk about their craft. Those parties were usually at some run-down house with beat-up furniture and dogs running around loose. The parties would often last all night, and sometimes a group breakfast was prepared come morning. And then it would start all over again.

The documentary film Heartworn Highways is about as close as you can get to having that experience without actually doing so.

Shot on a shoestring budget in late 1975 and early 1976, Heartworn Highways doesn’t really tell a story. Instead, we’re invited to those parties, with empty beer cans strewn across the table, ashtrays overflowing with cigarettes and some of the best young songwriters of their generation playing music straight out of Heaven.

James Szalapski’s film wasn’t released until 1981, and it’s hard to find these days, although you can watch it on Netflix if you subscribe. I stumbled across several YouTube videos the other day while looking for something else, so let’s get to it.

* At the beginning of our first video, you’ll see the great Guy Clark saying “Listen to this song,” and pointing with reverence to a babyfaced Steve Earle.

“Listen to that song!” Guy again commands the cameraman, knowing - and wanting all of us to know - that his young protege is destined for a greatness that nobody save him can possibly imagine at the time. Unfortunately, the filmmakers failed to heed Clark’s prescience and the song didn’t make the movie’s final cut. Thankfully, it’s on the bonus DVD.

“Did you hear the verses at all?” Clark asks Rodney Crowell toward the end of the song, shaking his head in wonder and amazement. Earle was just 20 years old at the time and this is his first known recording. Steve later said he wrote “The Mercenary Song” on the back of a menu at a pizza restaurant where he was a cook. It’s probably one of my favorites in his vast repertoire…

I guess a man’s got to do what he’s best at
Ain’t found nothin’ better so far
Been called mercenaries and men with no country
We’re just soldiers in search of a war

* Rodney Crowell has written for many of the greats, including Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash and Crystal Gale. Bob Seger made a big hit out of Crowell’s “Shame on the Moon.” He’s a Grammy winner, was once married to Rosanne Cash and has a slew of hits, including five number one singles in a row in the late 1980s. But we see him here as a 25-year-old who is still learning at Guy Clark’s feet.

Fair warning: Crowell’s song “Bluebird Wine” will not leave your brain easily or quickly. It’s an incredibly catchy tune that was covered by Emmylou Harris. She eventually asked him to join her band and the rest is history…

The party just started
And I’m drunk on Bluebird Wine

By the way, that’s David Allan Coe driving the tour bus.

* Richard Dobson never made it big and I don’t know why. But his songwriting is top notch. Johnny Cash covered his song “Baby Ride Easy,” as did Dave Edmonds and Carlene Carter. He also wrote a book called The Gulf Coast Boys. It’s full of stories about his running buddies, including Townes Van Zandt. Dobson lives in Switzerland and tours mostly in Europe, but you can catch him every now and then in Texas. Check his website for info.

Guy Clark had some success with his cover of Dobson’s great tune, “Forever, For Always, For Certain”…

Four seasons go around on a pinwheel
And tomorrow ain’t nothin’ at all

* Steve Young wrote the outlaw classic “Lonesome, On’ry and Mean” immortalized by Waylon Jennings. But Young also penned the sublime “Seven Bridges Road,” which was beautifully covered by the Eagles. Here he is singing “Alabama Highway”…

Turn supernatural, take me to the stars, and let me play

* I saved my favorite for last. Townes Van Zandt was a songwriter’s songwriter. One day I’ll get around to doing a post just about him. Suffice it to say he’s a giant in the music business. Steve Earle once said that Townes was the greatest songwriter ever, “and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that”…

As Steve Earle tells it, he was just 17 when he met an artist and performer who would mould the shape of his career. The teenage Earle was singing at a club in Houston, Texas, when he was teasingly heckled by an older man in the audience who asked him to play the song Wabash Cannonball, and told him he wasn’t much of a country singer if he couldn’t.

The heckler turned out to be Townes Van Zandt, a legendary Texan singer-songwriter who Earle already admired. Earle was unable to comply with his request, but instead performed a word-perfect version of a tricky, complex Van Zandt song, Mr. Mudd and Mr. Gold. This playful exchange made them firm friends.

“I met this guy, and I was 17,” Earle recalls now. “It was obvious I was going to write songs and make records, but here I was, meeting someone who was making art for the sake of art, at a really high level. He was committed to continuing to do that, whether he made money or not. That’s the most positive thing I took from him.”

From that day to this, Earle has been a diehard Townes Van Zandt fan. It has not always been an easy thing to be: as Earle delicately puts it, “Townes was a real bad role model.”

Townes’ biggest hit was probably “Pancho and Lefty,” which was covered by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard. “If I Needed You” also scored on the charts and has been covered by just about everyone. The song was featured in the Oscar winning movie Crazy Heart.

* Anyway, Steve Earle says that the musicians in Heartworn Highways wanted to take some revenge on the filmmakers over some broken promises. So, they sent them to Austin to interview Townes Van Zandt. Townes was a little, um, difficult to deal with, and they thought this would be proper punishment. But he ended up stealing the whole show.

Here he is singing the first song he ever wrote…

I came of age and found a girl in a Tuscaloosa bar
She cleaned me out and hit it on the sly
I tried to kill the pain
I bought some booze and hopped a train
Seemed easier than just a-waitin’ around to die

…Adding… I told you a few years ago about the late underground songwriter Blaze Foley. The documentary about his life is now finished and is in limited release. Click here for more info. There’s even a Facebook page.

* More Heartworn Highways videos…

* Heartworn Highways - Jam session

* Heartworn Highways - Christmas Eve 1975

* Heartworn Highways - Jamming at Jim’s

* Richard Dobson - Hard By The Highway

* John Hiatt - One For The One For Me

* David Allan Coe - I Still Sing the Old Songs

* David Allan Coe - River

* Gamble Rogers - Black Label Blues

* Barefoot Jerry - Two Mile Pike

* Larry Jon Wilson: Ohoopee River Bottomland

* Steve Earle talks about Heartworn Highways