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Hey, y'all!  Your patience has been rewarded! The Townes Van Zandt CBG tribute album, called Goin' To Townes: A Cigar Box Guitar Tribute, which started as a mere idea here on CBN almost 4 months ago, is finally available for Download! 

A double album's worth of Townes' songs interpreted by CBN Members from all over the world, including me here in Saudi Arabia, Thorsten Hinrichsen in Austria, Vinylhed in the UK, and people all over the US. Truly, a global effort! And all for free!

Download the album here:

http://downloads.cbgitty.com/cbnalbums/TownesVanZandt/Goin%27_To_Townes_-_2012_CBG_Tribute_Album_Final.zip

The zip file above has been updated to include Track 4, Dead Flowers, by Turkeychicken. Thanks to Dan Sleep for putting Track 4 in the updated zip file link above. If you are missing track 4 from the initial download file, please just download the zip file again. Sorry for the confusion.

I'd like to thank Ben Gitty for allowing us to host the album on the C.B. Gitty site, and for the opportunity to use CBN as a meeting place and idea exchange while we compiled the album.. I'd like to personally thank Dan SLeep for numerous e-mails back and forth, while we attempted to get the file from my computer in Saudi Arabia to the Gitty server, and then for him testing and birddogging the file for the last week or more. Thanks to John Maw in the UK for testing the download to make sure that it finally works. 

I'd like to also thank Vinylhed (Hedley Brown), Uncle John (Bolton), turtlehead, SUGIMUGI (Thorsten Hinrichsen), RTZ, Jamie MacBLues, Russell Carlin, Cris Portillo, Jr., Ryan Sisco and the Crowne Towne Trio, Jimi Z, Ben Kepler, Letha Allen, Silent Jim, Lindo Cortez, Turkeychicken (Terry Chapel), and Jason Dean Anderson for contributing songs to this project, as well as the two Internet pickup bands put together for this project: The Profane Heaters (me, Vinylhed, his gf Louise, RTZ, Thorsten, Uncle John, turtlehead), and Uncle Ben's Perverted Rice (me, turtlehead, Thorsten, Vinylhed, and RTZ). This project benefited greatly from the dedicated mixing skills of Thorsten, Vinylhed and turtlehead. The album artwork was done by your's truly. Also included are lyrics to all of the songs in a Word document, in the order in which they appear on the track list, except Tecumseh Valley. This song appears twice, as Silent Jim and Letha Allen rendered two very different, but equally compelling, versions of the same song.

All songs were run through MP3Gain to equalize and normalize track volumes as much as possible, ue to the different recording hardware and software used by the various contributors. All tracks are in MP3 format, and have been tested on numerous computers, with both iTunes and Windows Media Player, on both Macs, iPads, and Windows PCs. Also, this album will be made available very soon for free download from MyTexasMusic.com, hosted by Lucky and Jinelle Boyd, who are thrilled to have this tribute album to promote Townes' music to new legions of fans. Lucky is a singer-songwriter himself, and knew Townes.

This has truly been a labor of love for me and my collaborators on this project. We had virtually no disagreements, respected one another's song choices and highly varied takes on them, and showed how the Internet can be used to fully collaborate on a project of this magnitude. I am proud to stand on my coffee table in my cowboy boots, and say that, while Townes Van Zandt may have been the greatest songwriter ever, the people who contributed to this project in ways large and small are certainly the best bunch of ne-er-do-wells one could ever hope to hoist a virtual beverage and a song chorus with!

Enough already. Enjoy the download, y'all!