High, Low and In Between

Eggers produced it at Larrabee Sound Studios in Los Angeles, with Don Randi arranging and playing piano and organ, and guitar from Larry Carlton, David Cohen and Donnie Owens. It has a folk-rock edge that Delta Momma Blues lacks. Townes counted To Live Is to Fly among his best compositions, and the album also has Mr. Mudd and Mr. Gold. Its gospel numbers, Two Hands and When He Offers His Hand, sit beside the comic No Deal and the drifter's ballad Highway Kind.

Some have heard the murder of Townes's girlfriend Leslie Jo Richards, stabbed after being picked up hitchhiking back to Houston from the sessions, behind several of the songs. John Lomax III wrote in Space City in November 1971 that Dylan and Hank Williams once wrote this way and that nobody does anymore, while Kruth called it ultimately a difficult and unsatisfying album. Omnivore reissued it in 2013.