"Flyin' Shoes" marks the end of both TOWNES' five year studio hiatus in the mid 70s and also the end of the magnificent "Texas Troubadour" 4CD set.
Recorded ar Chips Moman's American Studio in Nashville, the sessions for "Flyin' Shoes" found VAN ZANDT re-united with several musicians - like bassist Tommy Cogbill and Bobby Emmons (KEYBOARDS) from previous Nashville days and marked the end of his association with the Tomato label and another protracted break fom the studio.
More importantly, the hard-living intervening years had still failed to blunt TOWNES' muse and "Flyin' Shoes" is every inch the creative success of his first recordings a decade earlier.
Admittedly there's more of an integrated band sound and some slick female backing vocals in places (notably on a groovy take of BO DIDDLEY's evergreen "Who Do You Love?"), but Moman never allows all of TOWNES' rough edges to be filed off, with songs like the vulnerable "No Place To Fall" and the title track - with its clarion call harmonica and rippling piano - both coming in near the top of TOWNES' bittersweet ballad achievements.
Unsurprisingly, TOWNES unquenchable urge to ramble is never far away in his lyrics and this restlessness inspires two back to back blues, "Rex's Blues" and "Pueblo Waltz", the first an opaque tribute to VAN ZANDT's Houston buddy Rex Bell (owner of The Old Quarter) and the latter laying bare his simple desire to visit Guy and Susanna Clark in Tennessee, thus shaking off his Texas blues.
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"Dollar Bill Blues" finds TOWNES desperate to return to the bottle in a groovy, semi-country update of the drunken sailor shanty and - in typical VAN ZANDT style - the album signs off with two of his finest moments, juxtaposing beauty and desolation as ever. Penultimate track "Brother Flower" is one of those bashful ballad treats, TOWNES gracefully bemoaning lost love over a soft, sighing pedal steel, whilst the last track "Snake Song" - a menacing portrayal of the snake's evil nature personified in TOWNES himself, complete with sinister, rattling percussion. White man speak with forked tongue, it seems.
It would be almost a decade before TOWNES' fully-fledged return to the studio with a set of originals (1987's "At My Window") but one decade of virtually unparalleled creativity is more than we should expect from any of our heroes, especially one almost totally crippled with self-doubt for his entire career. For those of us discovering the man and the myth at this very late stage, we can only offer a belated, but very heartfelt "thanks."
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