Heartworn Highways (1976)

There is a particular kind of music documentary that trusts its subjects completely, points the camera, and simply waits. Heartworn Highways, filmed over the final weeks of 1975 and the opening weeks of 1976 and released in 1976, is one of the finest examples of that approach ever committed to film. Director James Szalapski and his small crew from Crimson Productions travelled through Texas and Tennessee to spend time with a loose constellation of country and folk singers who were, at that point, largely unknown outside their own circles. There is no narration, no formal interview setup, no attempt to package or explain what is happening. The film runs to 92 minutes and covers roughly as much ground as a late-night conversation in a roadhouse, which is more or less the atmosphere it sustains throughout. The tagline, that the best music and the best whiskey come from the same part of the country, is perhaps the most honest piece of marketing text in the history of the format.

Szalapski was not an established name in feature documentary at the time, and Heartworn Highways remained his most significant work, gaining its reputation slowly over the decades that followed its release as the artists it featured grew in stature and, in some cases, in legend. The film arrived at a moment when a strand of American country music was pushing back against the polished, commercially smoothed sound that dominated Nashville radio, and the people on screen here were very much on the outside of that industry rather than inside it. What Szalapski captured was, without him necessarily knowing it at the time, a document of something that would not last in quite this form. The roughness of the production, the unsteady camera work, the unscripted passages of drinking and talking and joking around, all of it reads now not as a limitation but as a record of how these artists actually lived.

The principal figures are Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, David Allan Coe, Peggy Brooks, and a then-teenage Steve Earle, caught here before his own career had properly begun. Van Zandt and Clark, in particular, are the gravitational centres of the film, two songwriters whose reputations have only grown in the years since. Van Zandt, whose life and music have been examined further in the 2004 documentary Be Here to Love Me and in Without Getting Killed or Caught, brings the kind of presence that is impossible to manufacture or direct. Clark, quieter in manner but no less striking, writes and plays with the precision of someone who has spent years removing every unnecessary word. Coe, considerably more extrovert than either, adds a different texture, and the film is honest enough to let the tonal shifts between these personalities sit a little awkwardly rather than smoothing them away in the edit. Fans of music documentary will recognise something of the fly-on-the-wall ethic employed so memorably in Amazing Grace, another film that understood the value of getting out of the way and letting the music do what it needed to do.

Heartworn Highways (1976) is a raw, intimate time capsule of outlaw country at its most authentic, before the gloss, the fame, and the corporate Nashville machine took over. It’s not polished, not scripted, and that’s exactly what makes it so powerful. This documentary captures a fleeting moment in American music history, following troubadours like Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, David Allan Coe, and Steve Earle as they live, drink, ramble, and above all, play. And when Townes and Guy are on screen it's transcendent. Watching Townes perform in a dimly lit room, guitar in hand, voice weathered by life, it feels like hearing poetry whispered from the edge of a cliff. Guy Clark, with his quiet wisdom and masterful craftsmanship, sings songs that feel lived-in and eternal. These aren’t performers chasing hits; they’re poets with guitars, singing truth in a world full of noise. The film meanders, some segments drag, especially those with less compelling figures or unfocused camera work, but even in its slower moments, there’s a sense of witnessing something real, something fragile. It’s fly-on-the-wall filmmaking at its best: messy, honest, unfiltered. Flawed in structure, but essential for anyone who loves songwriting, soul, and the mythic spirit of Texas and Tennessee. Not because it’s perfectly made, but because it gave us Guy and Townes, alive in their element. Majestic doesn’t even cover it. A holy grail for folk and country fans.

I keep coming back to the fact that a film this loose and, yes, occasionally unfocused has managed to hold its place for nearly five decades. Most polished but unremarkable documentaries from the same period have simply faded. This one hasn't, and I think the reason is exactly what I've said above: it gives you people rather than products. If you've ever found yourself watching something like Next Goal Wins and thinking about what it means to catch a subject at precisely the right unguarded moment, then Heartworn Highways is the standard to measure that against. It's the film I'd press into someone's hands if they told me they'd never really understood what all the fuss about Townes Van Zandt was. Watch it, then go and listen to the records. That's the correct order.

Rating: ★★★½  | Year: 1976  | Watched: 2025-09-23

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Related on Movies With Macca

More with Townes Van Zandt: Be Here to Love Me (2004) · Without Getting Killed or Caught (2021)
More from the 1970s: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Here and Elsewhere (1976) · Italianamerican (1974) · Punishment Park (1971)
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