‘If you want good friends, it gonna cost you’

     

American roots music spans a galaxy of styles and traditions, regions and generations. I practically used to live on the music of contemporary singer-songwriters from Texas, Louisiana, and environs. Guy Clark, Robert Earl Keen, Lucinda Williams, Joe Ely, Townes Van Zandt, and many more. I had the good fortune to see them perform when they came to New York. You’d pay something like $12 to sit at their feet in the Bottom Line back in the 1980s and ’90s. I would leave class, or the library, or my desk at the student newspaper, and would just cross the street and fold into my usual seat. One night in December 1990, I saw Clark, Keen, and Van Zandt sharing the stage. I’ve been revisiting this music lately. Got a lot of CDs.

Van Zandt’s historic double album Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas captures a night in 1973, pretty early in his career. It was released on New York City-based Tomato Records in 1977.

I had totally forgotten this song. “Fraternity Blues” is about the college fraternity game, of which I never was part. Musically, this is in the tradition of Talking Blues. Think Woody Guthrie and those first Bob Dylan records, for example.

Fraternity Blues

Townes Van Zandt

I decided to improve my social station

I joined a fraternity organization

Tucked in my shirt

Signed on the line

Right away they set about to improve my mind

The car I drove

The books I read

The food I ate

The booze I drank

The girls I took out

My breath

Said “kid, we don’t much like the way you walk

And you gonna have to change the way you talk”

They said “your dress is kind of slouchy

And your attitude is mighty grouchy”

Said “you got to learn to bubble”

“You got to bubble with enthusiasm” I started to bubble

“Most important thing you can’t forget

Is learning the entire Greek alphabet”

I never did really understand

That that’s gonna make me anymore a man

But I learned it

I can whip through that son-of-a-beta backwards in five seconds

Then they hit me with some pretty bad news

Concerning the payment of monthly dues

I never did know where that money went

I never was sure it was well spent

But I paid it

I’m no trouble-causer and besides I figured that’s life

If you want good friends it gonna cost you

Well, finally got to be party time

I got a great big old jug of wine

I went back to the house in about an hour

when the boys were drinking whiskey sours

brandy alexanders

frozen daiquiris

Reciting the Greek alphabet to one another

I could see I was gonna have to do my very best

To get myself out of that fraternity mess

I stood right there outside the door

And I chugged that wine like never before

Walked inside and bubbled

All over a couple of their dates

So now everything’s back to normal again

But there is still lots of room for improvement my friend

’Cause that fraternity stuff is too much for me

Next time I’m gonna join a sorority

Really get me something to bubble about