Description
* 20 page booklet with essay by Sam Sweet interviewing artists and documentary creators and crew
* 2xLP on black vinyl REPRESS
* CD in gatefold sleeve with two 30 page booklets with essay
Sometimes, a documentary maker is present at precisely the right moment to capture lightning in a bottle. It happened with essential punk doc The Decline of Western Civilization, it happened with Dylans Dont Look Back and Chet Bakers Lets Get Lost, and it happened with 1976s Heartworn Highways.
The iconic performance documentary saw filmmaker James Szalapski travel to Texas and Tennessee to capture the radical country artists reclaiming the genre via an appreciation for its heritage in folk and bluegrass and a rejection of the mainstream Nashville machine. Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Steve Young, David Allan Coe, Steve Earle and many others appeared on both screen and soundtrack, where musical highlights include Clarks brilliant Desperados Waiting For A Train, Youngs stirring Alabama Highways and Van Zandts emotional Waiting Around To Die.
The hard living and hard partying lifestyles of outlaw countrys figureheads are played out on screen as we visit Van Zandts Austin trailer, see Coe play in Tennessee State Prison, join the gang in Nashvilles notorious Wig Wam Tavern and witness a liquor-fuelled Christmas at Clarks house. No wonder the films original tagline read: The best music and the best whiskey come from the same part of the country.
Outside of a couple festival screenings, the movie remained unreleased for five years after its completion, finally hitting screens in 1981 and finding a cult audience ever since.
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