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The celebrated singer and songwriter Steve Earle once said Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that. Earle was hardly the only artist of note who loved Van Zandt's poetic, elliptical songs of love and dashed hopes -- Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Norah Jones, the Cowboy Junkies, and Nanci Griffith are among the many performers who have recorded his work, and he was a key inspiration for much of the Texas singer/songwriter community, including Guy Clark, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, and Lyle Lovett. However, while Van Zandt was greatly admired by his peers and a small cult of passionate admirers, it was other artists who had hits with his songs, not him, and this gifted but troubled man was haunted by drug and alcohol addiction much of his life. Van Zandt also had difficult relationships with his family and three wives, and at the age of 20, he was given shock treatments which wiped out nea