Clark, Van Zandt Present a Texas Sound at McCabe’s

If you made a list of the best songs to come out of Texas in the last 50 years, it’s a safe bet that at least a handful of those tunes were performed at McCabe’s over the weekend. The club played host to Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt, a pair of semi-underground legends who two decades ago emerged from the wind-swept desolation of west Texas with vivid, evocative and moving songs.

Saturday’s dream country-folk double bill began with an hour from Clark, who’s best known for writing “Heartbroke” (a hit for Ricky Skaggs) and “L.A. Freeway” (ditto for Jerry Jeff Walker). Clark (who will soon release his first album in a decade) has a great, craggy dignity, a self-deprecating wit and a winning batch of tunes about growing tomatoes and hammering nails. His finest moments came on a series of character sketches that summed up the heartbreak and the nobility of everyday live with devastating clarity and impact.

Van Zandt is less an Everyman’s songwriter than he is a classic Texas character, with a dissolute air and a doleful sense of humor. He’s also supplied standout songs to singers with more tuneful voices (including “Pancho and Lefty” and “If I Needed You”), but Van Zandt’s set alternated finely drawn songs about longing with twisted, elusive, imagistic narratives. And on a night that belonged to two remarkable songwriters, he came up with the most entertaining non-original: “Song of the Shrimp,” a classic groaner from the Elvis movie “Girls! Girls! Girls!”