Album: Gurf Morlix, Blaze Foley's 113th Wet Dream (Rootball)

Blaze Foley was quite a character, even by the standards of the Austin new-country scene. In the 1970s, he lived in a treehouse, and never quite became accustomed to home life thereafter, preferring to sleep beneath the pool table in his local bar.

He wore a suit fashioned from duct-tape; and he drank to a point that exasperated friends like Gurf Morlix. But he could write like a demon, both lighthearted ditties like "Big Cheeseburgers and Good French Fries", and more tender material like the wistful "Clay Pigeons". John Prine covered the latter, and Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard had a hit with "If I Could Only Fly", both rendered here with a gentle regard by prolific country-rock producer Morlix, on a moving tribute to a talent cut off in its prime, shot dead defending an older man from his violent son.

DOWNLOAD THIS Clay Pigeons; If I Could Only Fly; Baby Can I Crawl Back to You