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(THREAD) A couple of days ago after John Prine sadly passed away I started going through his (very extensive) catalog. I wasn’t all that familiar with a lot of it, aside from the obvious hits, and in doing this I found out that he famously covered “Clay Pigeons”, by Blaze Foley.
Blaze Foley was a country singer-songwriter who moved to Austin with his wife and struggled with depression for most of his life. One night after doing a live session at the Austin Outhouse he was shot at 39yrsold trying to protect his elderly friend Concho from his abusive son.
Townes Van Zandt who became close with Foley described him as “One of the most spiritual cats I have ever met”, and when he died he said that “He’s only gone crazy once. Decided to stay”.
The beauty of Blaze’s music has to do with raw honesty he shows when addressing the human condition in all its facets from the perspective of a depressed country artist. Although this may sound like too specific of a gaze, it’s very much universal.
There are three songs in which this can be truly appreciated: “Clay Pigeons”, “Big Cheeseburgers & Good French Fries”, and “If ICould Only Fly” in that order. Arguably his three most popular songs. This is as honest as “pop” gets.
Clay Pigeons addresses depression and the fixed need that a lot of us have: the need to leave the place we’re currently inhabiting in order to “start singing again”. This is a rare live recording of Blaze singing a shortened version of the song:
“Big Cheeseburgers & Good French Fries” was Blaze’s wedding song. Here is when he seems the most afar from the idea of becoming a country star, he sings to and for who was the love of his life and it’s the lightest he has ever been:
And that brings us to “If I Could Only Fly”. In her book, Blaze’s wife Sybil said that after hearing the song she knew two things: That he had finally made a song that would transcend time, and that they were breaking up. She could hear it in his voice:
Years after they’d broken up, Sybil heard from friends that all that time Blaze felt she had broken up with him after listening to the song. The night that Blaze died, during the live session he said that he should’ve called it “If We Could Only Fly”
Blaze will forever be one of the most unsung, and ironically influential voices in music history. Everyone should listen to the Austin Outhouse tapes at least once; To me Blaze Foley is country music’s Van Gogh, and he should be celebrated as such. (END OF THREAD)
