On 20 September 1977 Townes Van Zandt played the first of two nights at the Lone Star Cafe, then New York City’s premier country music venue. By this point the Texas-born musician had recorded six albums, made over the course of just four years. The previous year, his manager, John Lomax III (the grandson of John and son of Alan, both famed folk ethnomusicologists), had placed a small classified ad for a Van Zandt fan club in an issue of Rolling Stone, and within a month had received several hundred adoring responses, including from fans who said his ballads had saved them from suicide, or comforted them after losing loved ones.
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