Townes Van Zandt — 1013 Red River Street, Austin

The Red River Street district in Austin, Texas, was one of the environments where Townes Van Zandt performed and existed during his Austin years — a neighbourhood of small clubs, bars, and music venues that grew up in the shadow of the Sixth Street entertainment district and that has become, in recent decades, one of the most important live music corridors in the city. Van Zandt drifted between Houston, Austin, Nashville, and various other cities throughout his career, never quite settling anywhere, his nomadic life reflecting the restlessness and alcoholism that marked his adult years.

Van Zandt's Austin connections were significant: the city was where much of the Texas singer-songwriter community he belonged to was centred in the 1970s and 1980s, and where his performances at small venues like the Hole in the Wall, the Continental Club, and various bars on Red River Street cemented his reputation as a songwriter's songwriter. His songs were better known through covers — Emmylou Harris, Don Williams, Willie Nelson, and Merle Haggard all recorded his compositions — than through his own recordings, which were underproduced and difficult to find for much of his career.

Van Zandt died on New Year's Day 1997 at the age of 52, after a fall at his friend's home in Smyrna, Tennessee, following a hip replacement operation that had been complicated by years of heavy drinking. His grave is in Austin, and the city has gradually embraced him as one of its most important musical figures. Annual tribute concerts bring together Texas musicians to perform his songs, and his recordings have been reissued and reassessed as among the finest in the American singer-songwriter tradition.