Emmylou Harris Remembers the Songwriter of One of Her Biggest Hits, Credits Him With Establishing Americana

For every major recording artist known as a “household name,” there is an even broader web of unsung songwriters and underground folk heroes who first inspired them. For country music darling Emmylou Harris, one such influence was a Texas-born troubadour who wrote music for people followed by rain clouds: Townes Van Zandt.

Van Zandt’s moody, stoic, and poignant lyricism makes him a favorite in the songwriting community. But he never quite got the same mainstream appreciation as, say, Willie Nelson or Merle Haggard (both of whom had Van Zandt to thank for the same thing as Harris). While the rest of the world might have overlooked Van Zandt’s artistry, it hit Harris like a freight train in Greenwich Village in 1968.

“I was knocking around there, trying to make it as a folk singer,” Harris recalled about that fateful night at Gerde’s Folk City in a 2026 interview with Uncut. “[I was] trying to make it as a folk singer when I opened for him. You can’t imagine how astonishing that was, because Townes was like no one. Even though I was immersed in folk music, from Baez and Dylan, Townes was completely different.”

Emmylou Harris Credits Townes Van Zandt for Inventing Americana

Emmylou Harris continued in her Uncut interview, “It’s because of [artists like Guy Clark] and Townes [Van Zandt] that Americana exists. They had to create another part of the playing field, the left field, as we call it in baseball and beyond. We all know what that means, the colouring outside the lines. I certainly feel blessed that I became aware of Townes. He had a huge influence on me.”

And indeed he did. Van Zandt not only inspired Harris. He wrote the song that would go on to help define Harris’ career, “Pancho And Lefty”, in the early 1970s. By the latter half of the decade, Harris cut her own version of the classic heartbreaking country ballad. She later said she felt a sense of ownership over the song because she set a standard that many other artists, including Willie Nelson, used as their model. Harris’ album that featured “Pancho And Lefty”, Luxury Liner, went to No. 1 on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart and to No. 21 on the Billboard 200.

In 1983, Nelson released his own version of “Pancho And Lefty” as a duet with Merle Haggard. It also became a hit for the two country stars. They invited Van Zandt to play the head of the federales in their music video, which Van Zandt graciously obliged.

All of this—Emmylou Harris’ hit influencing Willie Nelson to record the same hit, Nelson and Van Zandt working together on a video set, and the idea of Americana at all—can be traced back, at least partially, to the smoky interior of Gerde’s Folk City in 1968.

Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images

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