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Goin' To Townes: A CBG Tribute - Townes Van Zandt tribute album READY FOR DOWNLOAD!

Hey, y'all! Your patience has been rewarded! The Townes Van Zandt CBG tribute album, called Goin' To Townes: A Cigar Box Guitar Tribute, which started as a mere idea here on CBN almost 4 months ago, is finally available for Download!

A double album's worth of Townes' songs interpreted by CBN Members from all over the world, including me here in Saudi Arabia, Thorsten Hinrichsen in Austria, Vinylhed in the UK, and people all over the US. Truly, a global effort! And all for free!

Download the album here:

http://downloads.cbgitty.com/cbnalbums/TownesVanZandt/Goin%27_To_To...

The zip file above has been updated to include Track 4, Dead Flowers, by Turkeychicken. Thanks to Dan Sleep for putting Track 4 in the updated zip file link above. If you are missing track 4 from the initial download file, please just download the zip file again. Sorry for the confusion.

I'd like to thank Ben Gitty for allowing us to host the album on the C.B. Gitty site, and for the opportunity to use CBN as a meeting place and idea exchange while we compiled the album.. I'd like to personally thank Dan SLeep for numerous e-mails back and forth, while we attempted to get the file from my computer in Saudi Arabia to the Gitty server, and then for him testing and birddogging the file for the last week or more. Thanks to John Maw in the UK for testing the download to make sure that it finally works.

I'd like to also thank Vinylhed (Hedley Brown), Uncle John (Bolton), turtlehead, SUGIMUGI (Thorsten Hinrichsen), RTZ, Jamie MacBLues, Russell Carlin, Cris Portillo, Jr., Ryan Sisco and the Crowne Towne Trio, Jimi Z, Ben Kepler, Letha Allen, Silent Jim, Lindo Cortez, Turkeychicken (Terry Chapel), and Jason Dean Anderson for contributing songs to this project, as well as the two Internet pickup bands put together for this project: The Profane Heaters (me, Vinylhed, his gf Louise, RTZ, Thorsten, Uncle John, turtlehead), and Uncle Ben's Perverted Rice (me, turtlehead, Thorsten, Vinylhed, and RTZ). This project benefited greatly from the dedicated mixing skills of Thorsten, Vinylhed and turtlehead. The album artwork was done by your's truly. Also included are lyrics to all of the songs in a Word document, in the order in which they appear on the track list, except Tecumseh Valley. This song appears twice, as Silent Jim and Letha Allen rendered two very different, but equally compelling, versions of the same song.

All songs were run through MP3Gain to equalize and normalize track volumes as much as possible, ue to the different recording hardware and software used by the various contributors. All tracks are in MP3 format, and have been tested on numerous computers, with both iTunes and Windows Media Player, on both Macs, iPads, and Windows PCs. Also, this album will be made available very soon for free download from MyTexasMusic.com, hosted by Lucky and Jinelle Boyd, who are thrilled to have this tribute album to promote Townes' music to new legions of fans. Lucky is a singer-songwriter himself, and knew Townes.

This has truly been a labor of love for me and my collaborators on this project. We had virtually no disagreements, respected one another's song choices and highly varied takes on them, and showed how the Internet can be used to fully collaborate on a project of this magnitude. I am proud to stand on my coffee table in my cowboy boots, and say that, while Townes Van Zandt may have been the greatest songwriter ever, the people who contributed to this project in ways large and small are certainly the best bunch of ne-er-do-wells one could ever hope to hoist a virtual beverage and a song chorus with!

Enough already. Enjoy the download, y'all!

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jamie MacBlues on July 17, 2012 at 12:15pm

BTW, Ron, ma man. You DO know that when we play this on Windows Media Player, the album cover for "POET" shows, instead of your/our album cover. I know you had problems re graphic, and no big deal, unless album is played on Windows. Detracts not a jot from your efforts. A GREAT collection. Well done, and same to all guys on album, includin me ! lol !

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Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on July 17, 2012 at 5:28pm

Jamie,

Yeah, I tried fixing that numerous times, but as ever, Microsoft kept helping me when I neither needed nor wanted it. Sorry about that to all; I don't know how to keep it from doing that. However, one COULD use this as an excuse to purchase "Poet," see how the pros paid tribute, and then compare. ;-)

Turtle,

I am truly honored to have collaborated with you on this project. I'm glad you like the end result. You should be patting yourself on the shell...er, back, for all of your help with recording, song suggestions, and, of course, performance. If you felt like Mudd, you ended up Gold. ;-)

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Permalink Reply by Jamie MacBlues on July 17, 2012 at 10:10pm

Never thought of that, Ron, Yes, good advert for POET (excellent album).Anyway, it was/is, one great album ya did/organised. Congrats again, ma man :)

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Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on July 22, 2012 at 3:50pm

Well, Townes is just not leaving me be...I just got home to Houston a coupla days ago, and waiting for me at my MIL's were two boxes from Amazon. Inside were Robert Earle Hardy's No Deeper Blue, John Kruth's To Live's To Fly: The Ballad of The Late Great Townes Van Zandt, and Margaret Brown's film, Heartworn Highways.

I'm having me some deeper blue reading Hardy's book, because all those songs y'all did are going through my head while I read, and because the project's *snif* over. I'm gonna have to pace myself, because reading this stuff is like a triple shot of whiskey on top of no breakfast. And it hits home, because I know where a lot of the places Townes played used to be, and I remember wondering what would happen after my freshman year of college, if I'd just chucked it all, freaked my parents out, and gone troubadoring like he did.

A part of me will always wonder.

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Permalink Reply by RTZGUITARS on July 22, 2012 at 7:14pm

Ron, one of my favorite Townes quotes is when he said of pursuing a song writing career.

"I could do this but it take blow everthing off". If you really wanted to sell your songs back then you had to hit the road and leave everyone behind. I hear alot of this in Townes songs. With the internet you might have some success, but going out hitting the road is still where you can get your song out to record companys, bands and singers.

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Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on July 23, 2012 at 12:15am

RTZ,
I hear ya. Back then it was easier. Now, I gotta career, a wife, kids, school to pay for...and I live in a desert.

I do remember playing a 3-hour set of covers and originals at Catch A Rising Star, for 3 people and a bartender. They didn't leave, and my buddy and I got free beer and a compliment from one of the girls about one of my songs.

But that's OK. I've also got the Nation, things like Facebook, bandcamp, etc. Obviously, I wasn't willing to chuck everything.

And I recognized pretty quickly that I couldn't play or sing worth a damn if "substances" were involved. Now, of course, I can just blame it on age. ;-)
.

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Permalink Reply by robert jones on February 22, 2014 at 12:50am

Unable to download this album, getting a 404 error.

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Permalink Reply by Dan Sleep on February 22, 2014 at 2:05am

Yea, there must be something wrong. I am trying to check the FTP site and am getting an error. I will get hold of Gitty and see if he can check on his end.