Royal Stompbox proudly presents:

HEARTWORN HIGHWAYS

40th Anniversary of the outlaw country classic!

With special live performance by the Blue Sky Miners! http://www.blueskyminers.ca/

Canadian theatrical premiere of the restored edition from Light in the Attic Records - the preeminent document of the outlaw country movement. Co-presented & with prize giveaways from JUNE RECORDS! https://junerecords.com/

“I’ve seen this probably a hundred times – still makes my liver hurt” – Father John Misty

“One of the richest films about music ever made” – Colin Greenwood (Radiohead)

“Essential viewing” – Mark Lanegan

Sometimes, a documentary maker is present at precisely the right moment to capture lightning in a bottle. It happened with essential punk doc The Decline of Western Civilization, it happened with Dylan’s Don’t Look Back and Chet Baker’s Let’s Get Lost, and it happened with 1976’s Heartworn Highways.

The iconic performance documentary saw filmmaker James Szalapski travel to Texas and Tennessee to capture the radical country artists reclaiming the genre via an appreciation for its heritage in folk and bluegrass and a rejection of the mainstream Nashville machine. Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Steve Young, David Allan Coe, Steve Earle and many others appeared on both screen and soundtrack, where musical highlights include Clark’s brilliant “Desperados Waiting For A Train”, Young’s stirring “Alabama Highways” and Van Zandt’s emotional “Waiting Around To Die”.

The hard living – and hard partying – lifestyles of outlaw country’s figureheads are played out on screen as we visit Van Zandt’s Austin trailer, see Coe play in Tennessee State Prison, join the gang in Nashville’s notorious Wig Wam Tavern and witness a liquor-fuelled Christmas at Clark’s house. No wonder the film’s original tagline read: “The best music and the best whiskey come from the same part of the country”.

Outside of a couple festival screenings, the movie remained unreleased for five years after its completion, finally hitting screens in 1981 and finding a cult. Restored by Light in the Attic Records for a deluxe, extremely limited 2016 Record Store Day release, this screening is the Canadian theatrical premiere of the restored edition for the film’s 40th Anniversary.