Your song with a day of the week in the title song of the day is “Like a Summer Thursday” by Townes Van Zandt. This tune was originally released on Mr. Van Zandt’s 1969 album, Our Mother the Mountain. This was his second album, following his debut album, For the Sake of the Song, which was released the previous year. Like most of his albums, this one didn’t sell especially well (didn’t crack the Billboard charts at all) but it did cement his reputation as a “songwriter’s songwriter,” with tunes like “Tecumseh Valley,” “Be Here to Love Me,” the title song, and this one.
“Like a Summer Thursday” is a bittersweet love song, and a damned good one. I could tell you everything that’s great about it, but it’s probably best to let Mr. Van Zandt’s lyrics speak for themselves:
Her face was crystal
Fair and fine
And her breath was morning
And her lips were wine
And her eyes were laughter
And her touch divine
And her face was crystal
And she was mineIf only she
Could feel my pain
But feelin’ is a burden
She can’t sustain
So like a summer Thursday
I cry for rain
To come and turn
The ground to green againIf only she
Could hear my songs
’bout the empty difference
‘tween the rights and wrongs
Then I know that I
Could stand alone
As well as they
Now that she’s gone
Musically, “Like a Summer Thursday” is nothing special; none of Van Zandt’s tunes really were. They’re just good solid country/folk chords (I, ii, vi, IV, and V, mainly) with step-wise melodies that service the lyrics. That’s all they need to be.
Townes Van Zandt was born in 1944 and grew up listening to Lightnin’ Hopkins and Hank Williams records and watching Elvis Presley on the television. Diagnosed with manic depression while in college, his parents forced him to undergo three months of insulin shock therapy that erased most of his long-term memory. He started playing guitar and singing in the Houston area in 1965, originally playing covers by Bob Dylan and others, but soon branching out to writing and performing his own songs. At the encouragement of folk artist Mickey Newbury, who he met in a Houston coffee shop, Van Zandt moved to Nashville in 1968.
Living in Nashville fueled Van Zandt’s creative juices, and the years from 1968 to 1973 were some of his most productive. He released six albums during this period, including such now-classic songs as “Pancho and Lefty,” “To Live is To Fly,” “I’ll Be Here in the Morning,” “Tecumseh Valley,” and “If I Needed You.” Those and other songs brought him to the attention of other songwriters and performers, who acclaimed him as one of the best songwriters of his generation. His songs were recorded by artists like Nanci Griffith, Emmylou Harris, Lyle Lovett, Steve Earle, Don Williams, and Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, who had a #1 country hit in 1983 with Van Zandt’s “Pancho and Lefty.”
Townes Van Zandt continuing writing, performing, and recording into the 1990s, but his demons and addictions (heroin and alcohol) kept him from attaining or enjoying any level of success. He passed away on January 1, 1997, after fracturing his hip during a fall at his home. After enduring several corrective surgeries, he checked himself out of the hospital, began drinking heavily, and, during the early morning hours of New Years Day, passed away from cardiac arrhythmia. He was 52 years old.
