Gurf Morlix and the traveling Blaze Foley road-show rolled through San Francisco last night in the Amnesia. The Mission district bar was packed and it house showed a strong interest local interest in the current Austin-based Americana legend and David Fuller aka Blaze Foley, an until recently forgotten homeless, drunken singer/songwriting that could pen transcendentally lovely and aching songs that was tragically killed at 39 while protecting an elderly friend.
The event opened with Kevin Triplett, the producer and director of the documentary Blaze Foley: Duct Tape Messiah, setting up a projector and handling the remote control, all in the true DIY spirit in which he took the 12 years that it took to make the film. Family, friends, fellow songwriters - including Mr. Morlix – and a past love, Sybil Rosen, who was on hand to read from her biography with her life with Foley Living in the Woods in a Tree, , make appearances in this edited version of the doc to tell the extraordinary tale of a peculiar man who moved in the 70s and 80s Austin singer/songwriting circles along with Morlix as well as Lucinda Williams and Townes Van Zandt who were all friends with Foley and posthumously wrote songs about him.
Morlix then took the stage to sing songs from Foley that appear on his latest and great release Blaze Foley’s 113th Wet Dream. The room remained mostly silent as Morlix with a single parlor guitar performed song after song with palatable reverence – If I Could Only Fly, Cold Cold World, Clay Pigeons…each one making you wonder how Foley couldn’t see fame and fortune in his lifetime even with high profile artists like John Prine, Lyle Lovett, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard covering his songs (the latter taking the time to praise Foley in the film.) But as the documentary made clear as Foley followed his muse, and rejected material comforts in that pursuit, oftentimes caused him to alienate people and undermine his own career.
Gurf Morlix Official Site | Blaze Foley: Duct Tape Messiah official site
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSxUDRB5jRU&feature=player_embedded#at=132[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRkYTBERTvE&feature=related[/youtube]
sweet