“Sitting in a barroom counting my dough, running out of money and places to go,” the album starts appropriately with the line that perhaps best sums up the way Blaze Foley lived. “Baby Can I Crawl Back to You” is an affable song about a loser trying to talk his way back into his lady's good graces (or at least her warm living room). The low-rent good times keep flowing with “Big Cheese Burgers Good French Fries.” Morlix also hits on the jaunty celebration of poverty “No Goodwills in Waikiki.” Foley's best known song is probably “Clay Pigeons” which was covered by John Prine on his album Fair and Square. Here Morlix layers a haunting organ into the background and his world-worn voice adds resonance to lines like “I'm tired of running around looking for answers to questions that I already know, I might build me a castle of memories just to have somewhere to go.” Foley himself had a gritty voice, two parts blues, one part country and one part road dirt. Morlix's voice is a smoother, more evocative instrument, but it still has enough grit and pain to make Foley's songs shimmer. And he hits some of Foley's most beautiful and desperate songs. “If I could win your love again someday, you know I would, I'd try my best. But I've looked around and I don't think that I can settle for anything less” he croons on “For Anything Less.” He keeps the moods soft and reverent on Foley's songs of busted beauty,. Picture Card and Down Here Where I Am. But Morlix strays out of the reverent, somber, well traveled folk sting grove that marks so many Blaze Foley Covers. A single electric guitar provides a snarl that matches the vocal growl that Morlix unleashes on “Small Town Hero.” Under Morlix's command, “Rainbows and Ridges” becomes a meandering thing with a a delicate instrumental undertow halfway between a barroom waltz and a side show hurdy gurdy. This combination is perfect for underscoring lines like “they only take horses down memory lanes, if everything passes, what past will remain?” Morlix gives the audience a moment to laugh and catch their breath with the title track, a song that manages to make “Blaze Foley's 113th Wet Dream” into a charming and witty event. The album comes to a close with stately, almost hymn-ike rendition of Cold, Cold World, a song which allows Morlix to channel the full force of his morning for his friend. It’s a strong selection that highlights the care taken in the balance of this album. You start with the easy fun of the kind of hard drinking, hard living life and things start to slowly pull away until, in the end, all that is left are wet dreams and that dime you still owe the bus driver.
Once upon a time there was a genius. He came to a city of brilliance, he laughed, he sang and he wrote a lot of songs. On February 1,1989 he was shot and killed while defending a friend. Blaze Foley was 39. “You saw the wrong and you saw the right, bout the same as black and white, code of honor hammered down hard,” Morlix wrote in a song about his friend, “you had to do what you had to do, but you didn't have to have that done to you.” Morlix and Foley were close, with the kind of mutual admiration that only two talented artists can have for one another against a back drop that offers room for their art and eccentricity. Austin is a city that makes and keeps its own legends. This is their story, and it is one sweet hell of a good one.
You can support Gurf Morlix (and the estate of Blaze Foley) by purchasing this album at Amazon.
If you prefer to own a physical copy of the album, you can purchase it at Amazon.
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