Tucker played a solo gig at our small club in Lint (B) near Antwerp on April 21st,2025. Although he was very fragile, he played a two hour set, with all he had in his body! He was so full of joy to be playing that night, it was a bliss for everyone in the club. A clip from that evening is to be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_yMyoXhLaI
Geert Crauwels
Mot de Didier Bourguignon - en français
Il y a des jours ou l’effondrement des sentiments côtoie la légèreté de la vie, il reste la beauté des êtres que l’on a côtoyé, aimé, ensemble, on a partagé 1000 saisons aussi bien les hivers que les étés.
Avec Tucker et Marie Claire il y a un long chemin d’amour et d’amitié, deux présences que vous pouviez croiser au hasard d’une ballade, d’un concert, d’une lecture de poésie et quelle poésie !
Tous deux incarnaient naturellement cette rivière qui chante dans nos veines et le plus beau c’est qu’il ne s’agit pas d’une métaphore. Avec eux, je suis toujours retombé sur cette évidence, dans ce grand boucan du quotidien, il n’y a que l’amour qui traverse le temps, Tucker invitait parfois Marie Claire sur scène, leurs deux voix se mêlaient pour une chanson écrite pour nous, avec cette intensité donnée aux petites choses qui enchante la vie, au bord du blues, sous les étoiles de Belgique et d’ailleurs.
Ailleurs, Ils sont ailleurs et cet ailleurs est ici, dans ce que nous avons échangé, des mots, des moments, des chansons, des images, des livres, des sentiments partagés, quelques pas, en miles, en minutes ou en années qui ne sont mesurables dans aucune échelle.. il n’y a pas d’échelle pour mesurer l’intensité des amitiés, avec eux, la vie est et sera toujours différente.
Si vous tombez sur ce T shirt «Tucker Zimmerman is an illusion » Marie Claire n’est pas loin, et si vous ne le croyez pas, plongez dans la rivière ou montez dans leur barque, c’est facile, c’est bon, chaleureux, et la vie prend une toute autre dimension.
Bises à Quanah, Marie, Juliette et Arthur
Ditch
Words from Didier Bourguignon - in english
There are days when the collapse of feelings mingles with the lightness of life, yet the beauty of those we have known, loved, and shared through a thousand seasons, winters and summers alike, remains.
With Tucker and Marie Claire, there is a long path of love and friendship, two presences you could meet by chance on a ride, at a concert, or during a poetry reading—and what poetry it was! They both naturally embodied that river that sings in our veins, and the most beautiful thing is that it’s not a metaphor.
With them, I always came back to this truth: in the great clamor of everyday life, only love transcends time. Tucker sometimes invited Marie Claire on stage, their two voices blending for a song written for us, with that intensity given to the little things that enchants life, on the edge of the blues, under the stars of Belgium and beyond.
Elsewhere, they are elsewhere and that elsewhere is here, in what we have exchanged, words, moments, songs, images, books, shared feelings, a few steps, in miles, in minutes or in years that are not measurable on any scale… there is no scale to measure the intensity of friendships, with them, life is and always will be different.
If you come across this “Tucker Zimmerman is an illusion” T-shirt, Marie Claire is not far away, and if you don’t believe it, dive into the river or get in their boat, it’s easy, it’s good, warm, and life takes on a whole new dimension.
Love to Quanah, Marie, Juliette and Arthur
Ditch
A la Guitare du Monde
Il manquera toujours 2 cordes
Une qui brillait
Sous la lumière tendre
Qui chantait rude et douce
Qui enveloppait
Nos oreilles et nos cœurs
De la symphonie du vent
Et d’histoires si humaines
Et l’autre qui toujours
Lui tenait la main
En arrosant tendrement
Les notes et les mots
De gestes d’amour
The World’s Guitar
Will always be missing 2 strings.
26.01.2026
To Tucker & Marie-Claire
Paul Blanjean
A kind word from The K & B Music Den…. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/z7heOcTcUKA
The K & B Music Den
After years of listening to his music, and while we were organizing his concert in Namur, we had the pleasure of welcoming Tucker and Marie-Claire to our small studio at RUN Radio , in October 2022. Not only did we meet an artist who we had admired for a long while, but it was also the beginning of a friendship with this lovely couple. We deeply cherish the memories of these encounters and the moments we spent in their company. Tucker’s music will continue to hit the airwaves of RUN every Tuesday evening. With all our friendship, so long.
The Doux, Dur et Dingue radio show team
I have a feeling of intense gratitude to have ever been involved with beautiful musical and human moments with these lovely icons of kindness and wisdom. Tucker and Marie Claire were that. Fine people. Inspiring. My god, Tucker was indescribably brillant. Alabama License Plates … Meeting and collaborating with him, like with Derroll Adams, remain counted among my most precious blessings.
Beverly Jo Scott
Dear Quanah,
This is such a terrible tragedy. I have known your parents Tucker and Marie-Claire since 1967. We had wonderful times together. I recorded your father’s first album in England. I have met with both him and your mother many times in years afterwards. David Bowie loved Tucker. Tucker went to Beckenham, Kent to sing in David’s Arts Lab night. The audience loved him. Your mother was a saint, an intelligent, gracious woman who touched the hears of everyone who met her.
If there is anything I can do, Quanah, let me know.
Love,
Tony Visconti
Ce samedi 17 janvier Tucker Zimmerman et son épouse Marie-Claire ont quitté notre monde asphyxiés dans l’incendie de leur maison. Ils avaient plus de 80 ans. C’est un véritable drame qui touche une communauté de musiciens, chanteurs et amateurs de musique ici en Belgique mais aussi à travers le monde. Et bien sûr leur fils Quanah et leurs petits-enfants, auxquels nous pensons. Ce couple était une parenthèse dans un monde de fous, une oasis dans la tempête.
Il émanait d’eux deux une intelligence profonde et subtile qui n’avait rien d’artificiel. Une intelligence humaine qui ne commettait pas l’erreur de se draper de soi-disant valeurs et autres bons sentiments de façade parce que c’était une intelligence simple, gorgée d’humour, de poésie et de recul. J’ai heureusement écrit un long texte sur Tucker, en y rendant hommage à Marie-Claire aussi, il y a quelques mois. Je vous invite à relire ce texte sur notre site 5planètes. A écouter Tucker et à penser que voilà deux amoureux qui sont partis main dans la main, ensemble…
Etienne Bours
“C’était en 1971, au mois de juillet, à Stavelot, dans les caves de l’ancienne abbaye où se déroulaient les diverses activités d’un festival de théâtre annuel.
Un chanteur américain y était programmé et nous nous sommes attablés devant une bière sous les voûtes de la cave sans savoir qui nous allions découvrir.
Tucker Zimmerman s’est installé devant nous, la douze cordes sur les genoux, et nous a fait entrer dans son univers…”
This is an article in french, written by Etienne Bours for www.5planetes.com
Read full article on this website Read it on 5planetes.com
Etienne Bours
Tucker Zimmerman est mort aujourd’hui et je suis salement triste.
J’apprends qu’il est mort avec sa femme dans l’incendie de leur maison.
Toutes mes pensées à son fils Quanah qui nous avait mis en contact et si gentiment accueillis, ma compagne et moi il y a quelques années, pour un souper chez eux et une soirée hors du temps que nous n’oublierons jamais.
Ils étaient ce qu’on appelle des irréductibles. Toutes mes pensées également pour mon vieux pote Jack Thysencqui a eu la chance de l’accompagner dans la dernière ligne droite. Et à propos de ligne droite, plus droit que Tucker, je ne vois pas. Magnifique troubadour des temps modernes, merci à toi, tu représentes exactement mon idéal.
Aucune concession, à rien ni personne, jamais.
La ligne droite.
Jean-Pierre Froidebise
A short memory to share that I thought about a lot the day after I heard the news – Marie Claire laughingly told me in the green room of the show in London in 2024 about how she’d seen Tucker throw out several pages of his writing (I think his poetry) that he’d been working on and had grown frustrated by.
The next day she went to empty the bin and of course stole the pages to hide away until a few weeks later when he was no longer frustrated. They ended up being work he was grateful to have and proud of. I think about this because of how beautiful a thing it is to support someone’s art like that. In a loving and somewhat mischievous and playful way.
Ames
4AD was privileged to work with Tucker on his 2024 album with Big Thief, Dance Of Love.
His work was a sonic memoir; a tribute to the people, experiences and sounds that have shaped his 84 years. Both he and Marie-Claire were wonderful souls who loved one another deeply and brought light to so many people’s lives. We know we are not alone in saying how honoured we are to have known them both.
4AD Team
“The guy’s way too qualified for folk, in my opinion. Degrees in theory and composition, studying under composer Henry Onderdonk, Fulbright scholarship, and he wants to be Dylan. A waste of an incendiary talent? Not in my opinion. I always found this album of stern, angry compositions enthralling.”
David Bowie on Tucker Zimmerman and his debut album, Ten Songs by Tucker Zimmerman, in a 2003 Vanity Fair interview.
At breakfast with Zach, MC and Shane, we were discussing Tucker’s feelings about playing to large audiences and how he’d rarely done that. He told us about playing a folk festival in the pouring rain in Northern CA or the PNW or somewhere. It was early in his career, and he was really nervous. He sat down on stage to play and Derrol Adams, who had written the well-known song Portland Town, tapped him on the shoulder and said, “It’ll be okay.” And that’s how he got through it. They remained friends for many years, then Derroll passed away. Tucker said that when stage fright would creep up on him, he’d feel that same tap on his shoulder, and he knew it was Derroll telling him that everything was going to be okay. So if you should ever feel a tap on your shoulder…
Caity
I am completely devastated by this news, and trying to put my feelings into words feels almost impossible.
Marie-Claire and Tucker have been part of my life for as long as I can remember, ever since they met my father in Rome in the 1960s. They were so deeply loved that they came to feel like family — a feeling that was only confirmed when I first stayed with them in the early 1990s, and through the many times I stayed with them over the years, welcomed into their home, their lives, and their hearts.
Over the years, I shared many letters and long conversations with Marie-Claire — about life, language, and learning. She had an extraordinary thirst for knowledge, a rare patience, and a tireless devotion to her family and those close to her. Her love was genuine, generous, and unconditional in the truest sense of the word.
Tucker’s wisdom and gentleness have stayed with me. His warmth, openness, and generosity of spirit made time spent with him — in conversation, in his studio, and in his home — precious memories.
But above all, what stands out most is the extraordinary love they shared for each other, and the deep love they had for Quanah.
Quanah, you and your family are in our deepest thoughts, and Marie-Claire and Tucker will remain in our hearts always.
With all my love,
Rachel Cato
It’s going to be impossible to sum up the influence that Tucker Zimmerman and Marie-Claire Lambert have had on my life. I have only known them for a little over 4 years, but I genuinely can’t imagine who I would be without that timeless time. I think it was on the first night we met that we, all three, decided time did not exist. And then we laughed, and in that laughter a parallel universe was born, expanding into infinite complexity before re-compacting into a psychedelic, little stone to hold. As Tucker put it, in a poem he wrote about our first tour, it was “THE FIRST HOUR AFTER TIME WENT PEAR-SHAPED & THE UNIVERSE OPENED ITS MOUTH & WELCOMED US INTO THE JAWS OF ITS COMPLETE & DELICIOUS ILLUSION”.
In other words, we became really good friends. Subsequent tours and the recording session at Adrianne’s house for Dance of Love were some of the greatest times of my life, and I have heard that Tucker said the same. When we all got together, it was a numinous high. I had to learn the word numinous to be able to describe it at all — monumental, spiritual, ecstatic, complex. You can hear it in the music. On long drives and late night conversations I became a vessel for their stories. I try to remember them all—Tucker hiding in the closet, listening to the same Bob Dylan 45 over and over again at Marie-Claire’s birthday party where they met in Rome—Taking LSD in the english country side with Tony Visconti, where Tucker showed Marie-Claire that he could reach up in to the sky and stop the movement of the clouds—Introducing Belgium to the game of Baseball— There are many more, and we made many of our own too — Watching Tucker play his first ever concert in the USA, after half a lifetime of European exile — Walking into a DQ in the So-Cal desert and playing his song Showdown at the Dairy Queen for the employees — MC would always bring up this one…
On a Drive between shows Marie-Claire mentioned her childhood friend who lived in the town we were driving through. I pulled over the car, looked her up and found an old address. So we drove over and knocked on the door to find the cutest old couple watching foreign films on their couch. “Christianne” said Marie-Claire, “Marie-Claire!!” said Christianne, and then the most beautiful hug of two best friends, reconnected after decades — I held Tuckers hand in a German hospital bed while the doctor inserted a catheter after a middle of the night painful episode. Outside in the waiting room MC told me stories of more difficult times from the past that she has rarely shared, this love wasn’t always easy, at times it was very difficult.
Tucker still sang that night in Berlin with the shredded voice of a toad. It was one of the greatest shows we ever played. Ask me about highway robbery, ask me about a cat named Sangha, ask me about the tiny robotic mice that scatter speaking the pre-recorded message “Be not unkind to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise”. Tucker and Marie-Claire lived long real love. They walked away from many chances for backwards, music fame, and shallow, fool’s “success”. Marie-Claire worked, teaching community language classes to support their life style (she spoke many languages, and her surreal wit seemed to appear sharp in them all). They just squeaked by ok, and at the end of their lives, when I was lucky enough to meet them, they were happy, curious, present, and full of sweet, weird, creative, playful life-force. I’ll miss them so much. You will too.
Zach Burba
