Word: zandt
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...like Earle, more rock oriented and bolder lyrically, might use the word conformity -- but Travis will pay homage to tradition. Earle will joke about his "heavy-metal bluegrass" sound, and share, with Crowell and Griffith, a high regard for the personalized regionalism of the Texas singer- songwriter Townes Van Zandt. Oslin sings with a voice that has as much Broadway in it as Biloxi, and Kieran Kane of the O'Kanes will talk about a hypnotic love song of theirs called All Because of You just like this: "The music sort of drifts off, gets real atonal...
Admittedly, the flurry of nicknames, second names and stage names can get a bit confusing, especially since Van Zandt is the kind of rock star people just enjoy shouting out to. Walking around Times Square ("my office"), near his home base in Manhattan, he cuts a striking figure in fringed leather, high boots and a trademark bandanna wrapped around his head, an urban swashbuckler whose frigate just got towed away for double parking. "Hey, Miami!" yell a | couple of citizens cruising by in a Chevy convertible. He waves and shouts back as the car runs a light at Broadway. "Miami...
...Zandt, after all, did spend a formative and formidable nine years as Miami Steve, the driving force and antic soul man of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. His guitar was the band's bedrock, and his harmonies with Springsteen were communions of friendship with the audience and with Bruce. He was at Springsteen's side during the first days of major glory in the mid-' 70s, when stardom broke so heavily, and he was there for the years of uncertainty and renewed triumph that followed. Van Zandt did some outside record producing during that time too, calling himself Sugar...
...Zandt had helped produce three of Springsteen's hottest-selling albums. Tunes he wrote for the Jukes and Gary "U.S." Bonds, like Daddy's Come Home, showed high-end gifts for songwriting, even though he insists, "I hate all ballads, including my own." Still, it was impossible to flourish on his own and hang in with the gang. "I felt," he says, "a more urgent necessity pulling me. Like, 'Hey, it's time to find out if you got something else to contribute here on this planet.' " Men Without Women, his first Little Steven album, released...
...City was not only the boldest political anthem of the '80s, it was also the funkiest. Besides writing the song, Van Zandt was the main man behind the album, the video and the documentary about Sun City, which brought hard rock together with hard facts about South African politics. Freedom -- No Compromise continues that same tough tradition of humanist ideology and high steppin'. "The trickiest part is not to be rhetorical," Van Zandt says, "but to make the songs into an emotional, human communication...