I'm Gonna Fly

"I was in Nashville to record a couple of songs with Waylon Jennings. Joe Gracey and I bumped into Townes Van Zandt at a bar and I popped off without thinking and said, 'Hey Townes! Why don’t you come record a song at Cowboy’s studio with us tomorrow?'. He agreed and it was then that I realized I had just asked the Shakespeare of my generation, my hero, to record a song that I had written, except that I had no idea which song! I decided on 'I’m Gonna Fly' because I thought the poetry of the lyric was my best shot at having anything like Townes would write or sing. Townes showed up in a very fragile state the next day and kept stopping to cry while we recorded the song because it struck a nerve in him. I was happy that he liked the song, but sad because I was pretty sure we weren’t getting a vocal we could actually use. When we later listened to the playbacks, I realized that every note of both tracks was soulful and beautiful. We had to choose, so we finally picked one and released it on the album. Now for the re-release of the 'West Texas Heaven' album, I have a chance to use the outtake I have always loved and am so happy that his fans will have a chance to hear it, howbeit posthumous. I have no way of knowing, but I’ve been told that was the last released recording Townes ever did. He died a few months later leaving me with the memory of a timeless moment where when filtered through the guy that was Townes Van Zandt, I sat there fully understanding my own lyric, about how a 'heart can only make one sound like a whippoorwill in the midnight'.” ~ Kimmie Rhodes