Young Rodney Crowell, Steve Earle Perform Country Classic

by Julian Spivey
Sometimes you find a truly remarkable video on the Internet that proves to be a perfect capture of a moment in time.
​
I found one of these last night (August 6) randomly on Twitter. It was a video captured from a little known and hard to find music documentary called “Heartworn Highways,” directed by James Szalapski in 1976, but not released theatrically until 1981. The video features two of today’s most respected singer-songwriters in the Americana genre, Rodney Crowell and Steve Earle, before either was known and it’s a truly amazing find.

In this portion of the documentary, which can be seen below, a 24-year old Rodney Crowell, almost three years away from his 1978 debut album “Ain’t Living Long Like This,” and a 20-year old Steve Earle, more than an entire decade away from his 1986 debut “Guitar Town,” perform the Bob Wills Western swing classic “Stay a Little Longer” at a guitar pull at the legendary songwriter Guy Clark’s house on Christmas Eve 1975 (it’s Clark you see, wine glass in hand, joking around with a buddy at the video’s beginning).

A “guitar pull” is a term for a group of singer or songwriter friends or colleagues getting together and sharing songs one at a time, usually in a circle around a bar, porch or living room. Country music is famous for these guitar pulls, and this one at Clark’s house in late 1975 is especially unique because it’s not only caught on video, but catches two icons well before they became famous.

Watching these two future songwriting legends having fun at such a young age in midst of the tutelage of Clark seems like one of those rare fly on the wall moments that I can’t believe we get to experience almost 40 years later because somebody had the forethought and brilliance to record it.

I wonder if Szalapski knew Crowell and Earle would amount to something at such a young age when he included them in the final cut of his film (note this particular performance wasn’t in the final cut, but as a bonus performance on the DVD release, but both Crowell and Earle are featured solo on the final cut) or if he just included them because they fit the ambiance of the Texas Outlaw Country scene he was filming?

The entire documentary, which can be found on Amazon (I’d recommend renting the Amazon Instant Video because it’s much cheaper than buying the DVD because of the rarity of the film), features performances from other Texas Country Outlaws like Townes Van Zandt (Earle’s mentor and biggest influence, whom he named his also-musician son Justin Townes Earle after), Charlie Daniels Band and David Allen Coe.

You can also find other great footage from the documentary from Crowell, Earle, Clark and Van Zandt on YouTube, such as Van Zandt performing the all-time great “Pancho and Lefty,” which Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard would bring to greater popularity in the early ‘80s.