Fang’s Blues

I’ve been hacking away at the guitar now for maybe a year and a half and at this point I can still barely hit a clean chord and I strum with my forefinger. I might as well be smacking the strings with a popsicle stick.

Then this kid comes along on YouTube and effortlessly knocks one out of the park on a cover of Townes Van Zandt’s “Rex’s Blues.” I’ve practiced the shit out of this tune lately but you’d never know it to hear me play it. This kid not only nails it, but elevates it.

I hate him so much. So very, very much.

Then I check out his channel and discover, Oh how nice for him, he not only sings and plays like an angel from the heart of Texas, but he writes, too. And writes well. Check out the note accompanying his latest posting.

A trad-style folk song that I wrote earlier today, after going through various Haiti-related news pages and trying to imagine the horror over there...

“A song he wrote earlier today”! About the crisis in Haiti and it’s not crass or exploitative or maudlin or anything I can criticize. Goddammit, it’s good.

Somebody needs to get this kid shackled to a recording contract right now. I personally don’t want any money; I just want to be on record as the venal, petty, small-minded person who first officially discovered him. I’m willing to settle for being an asterisk tacked on to the life story in music that this kid will write.

His name is Adam Sterling and the song below is the one he dashed off about Haiti the other day. In the morning.

Somewhere, Townes Van Zandt is smiling.