Home Original Soundtrack - Standard Edition
Heartworn Highways
Original Soundtrack - Standard Edition
LITA146-STND
- 20 page booklet with essay by Sam Sweet interviewing artists and documentary creators and crew
- 2xLP on black vinyl
- Gatefold CD with two 30 page booklets with liner notes.
- Produced for rerelease by David Gorman, Patrick McCarthy, Michael Nieves, Matt Sullivan, and Sam Sweet
Special thanks to David Gorman & Michael Nieves at Hacktone Records. Without their immense support, this release would not have been possible.
Description
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 Dylan’s Don’t Look Back and Chet Baker’s Let’s Get Lost, and it happened with 1976’s Heartworn Highways.
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 Dylan’s Don’t Look Back and Chet Baker’s Let’s Get Lost, and it happened with 1976’s 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 Clark’s brilliant “Desperados Waiting For A Train”, Young’s stirring “Alabama Highways” and Van Zandt’s emotional “Waiting Around To Die”.
The hard living – and hard partying – lifestyles of outlaw country’s figureheads are played out on screen as we visit Van Zandt’s Austin trailer, see Coe play in Tennessee State Prison, join the gang in Nashville’s notorious Wig Wam Tavern and witness a liquor-fuelled Christmas at Clark’s house. No wonder the film’s 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.
First released in 2006 by Hacktone Records, we are proud to re-release the film’s stunning soundtrack on double vinyl and CD.
Artist Bio
Helmed by filmmaker James Szalapski, Heartworn Highways is an iconic performance documentary that masterfully captures this magical slice of time through encounters with many of the true progenitors of the outlaw country scene. These radical country artists reclaimed the genre via an appreciation for its heritage in folk and bluegrass and a rejection of the mainstream Nashville machine. Some of country music’s great songwriters, including Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Steve Young, David Allan Coe, Larry Jon Wilson, and Steve Earle appear on both screen and soundtrack, where musical highlights include Clark’s brilliant “Desperados Waiting For A Train,” Young’s stirring “Alabama Highways” and Van Zandt’s emotional “Waiting ‘Round To Die.”
