After literally months of procrastinating and ignoring this little blog of mine, I have decided, finally, to actually write something. I will begin with an explanation of the blog's title:
When I was thirteen, full of life, and developing into the sardonic know-it-all that I have since become, I decided I wanted to play guitar and got my first one for Christmas. Since then, I have been obsessed with music - both making it and listening to it.
In the nine years since that fateful December 25, my musical tastes have evolved and become far more sophisticated than I am. From nineties rock to blues to county to jazz to bluegrass to indie rock and back again - literally I just started in on a Fastball kick. There is nothing I love more than finding some artist that none of my friends have ever heard of and showing them the light.
As such, I am a faithful Pandora devotee. It am convinced that it is quite possibly the greatest method devised for the proliferation of music since the radio. Pandora has led me to a countless number of artists that I now consider among my favorites: Uncle Tupelo, the Old 97's, Ryan Bingham, Adam Carroll, Grant Green, Charlie Mingus, and Josh Ritter among others. One Such artist is Blaze Foley, whose song "Clay Pigeons" was the inspiration for the title of this collection of dribble.
Blaze Foley is, I am convinced, one of music's great lost personalities. A troubadour in the truest sense, Foley spent much of his adult life homeless, sleeping on friends couches, and writing songs. He was a man who lived for music and people and died protecting a friend. And, though he never achieved popular success by any stretch of the imagination, his legacy has lived through tributes such as the Townes Van Zandt song "Blaze's Blues" and the Lucinda Williams song "Drunken Angel" and coutless covers of Foley's work by the likes greats such as Merle Haggard and John Prine.
His music is simple: lyrics, about a life lived hard and to the fullest, propelled by cowboy chords. But, I don't think I'd want to hear his songs done any other way. If you've never heard Blaze Foley, look him up. His story is enough to make a fan of anyone, and his music ain't bad either.
