Going Going Gone – Heartworn Highways – 40th Anniversary Edition Box Set

Ultimate Box Set of Outlaw Movie

By Stephen Pate – 40 years after it was filmed, the country cult film “Heartworn Highways” got a limited edition re-release. Light in the Attic Records made 1,500 copies of the “Heartworn Highways” box set for Record Store Day in April 2016.

Amazon.com has only 4 1 copy left for sale in North America. Check below for other sources.

For my full review of the movie see Heartworn Highways Outlaw Country Film Re-Released After 40 Years

The Box Set is the ultimate collectors edition of the movie with everything you need and more to enjoy the experience.

In the Box

The Heartworn Highways 40th Anniversary Box Set includes all the items in the picture above –

1. The original movie on DVD,
2. 2-LP vinyl on brown vinyl of the soundtrack,
3. Download key for 26 song movie soundtrack (@ 320 kbps),
4. Sam Sweet’s 80-page 12″ x 12″ book about the movie and cast,
5. Reproduction of original film poster ( 24″x36″)
6. Packaged in a handmade wooden box.

The DVD has been color corrected and restored. The film looks better than the clips on YouTube that come from an Australian 2005 re-issue. The audio has been remastered at 48 bits and is excellent. It’s hard to imagine they captured the guitars and vocals so clearly with one microphone and a Nagra portable recorder.

There are also 61 minutes of out-takes and performances cut from the movie to keep it around 90 minutes. One of the last edits was the perfect performance Townes Van Zandt singing “Pancho and Lefty.”  Van Zandt slows down the pace a notch and leans into the words where it matters creating the definitive version of his song in my opinion.

Townes Van Zandt  at Seymour Washington’s home in Austin, Texas performing”Pancho and Lefty” Austin 1975 outtake from “Heartworn Highways”

Townes Van Zandt played to the camera capturing his boyish charisma. His introduction alludes humorously to “a medley of my hit” almost a decade before the song went #1 for Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard.

It was a huge job restoring the soundtrack as complete songs since many of them had been shortened to match scenes in the movie.

The sound on the vinyl is intimate and pristine. The sound track stands on its own as a great record. The brown vinyl is special to the Box Set, a tribute to Jack Daniels the preferred lubricant of the musicians.

The MP3 songs download in both Mac and Windows formats. I imported mine into iTunes where it has stayed in rotation for 2 weeks.

Sam Sweet’s 80-page book that accompanies the box set is frank, well documented and an interesting account of the film, artists and crew. It fills in the blanks on the questions left after watching the movie.  I couldn’t believe how well he researched everyone and the movie.

The standalone DVD and CD’s include a 20-page version of the booklet in a smaller format.

Where to find the Heartworn Highways – 40th Anniversary Edition Box Set

You can get the box set for a limited time at Amazon.com where there are 4 copies left. There are also 2 copies listed on Amazon.co.uk in the United Kingdom and 8 copies available from Amazon.de in Germany.

Some box set contents are available separately:

• Heartworn Highways CD soundtrack
• Heartworn Highways 2-LP vinyl
• Heartworn Highways DVD – see note
• iTunes HD movie Heartworn Highways – James Szalapski
• iTunes Heartworn Highways (Original Soundtrack)
• Amazon.com rent or buy the movie Heartworn Highways

The DVD may be old stock from the 2005 Australian release. The publisher Light-In-The-Attic Records don’t show this as released yet. The iTunes download is newly remastered with excellent quality except none of the extras (outtakes) are included.