• Rock n' Folk

    Clay Pigeons – John Prine on Austin City Limits

    / April 27, 2008

    I was catching up on some recorded episodes of Austin City Limits this afternoon, and came across a goldmine: a repeat of the John Prine / Amos Lee episode that aired about 2 years ago. It was John’s version of “Clay Pigeons” that really affected me, and led me to the original songwriter, Blaze Foley. I wrote about that day here.

    I checked YouTube back then for the Prine ACL version, but no go. And today, after seeing John’s amazing performance again, I checked again, and lo and behold, here it is. I trust there’ll be a few of you who are just as affected as I was.

  • Acoustic,  Country

    An Afternoon with Blaze

    / November 19, 2005

    I watched a great Austin City Limits last night: John Prine and Amos Lee. During Prine’s set, he introduced his last song as one “that just about knocked me off my chair” when he first heard it. It was a song called “Clay Pigeons” by Blaze Foley. The song about knocked me off my couch last night too; a heart-wrenching, beautifully written song. It’s on John’s latest CD, ‘Fair & Square’, which I own, but it had never hit me like that before. It’s in the Texas singer songwriter vein, the finger-pickin’ akin to Townes van Zandt (a friend and hero of Blaze).

    So I went a searching to find out more about Blaze Foley. Well, like a lot of talents, he died young at the age of 39 years old in 1989. He was shot to death apparently while defending an elderly friend of his. He was a very eccentric, hard living character (he had a strange fixation with duct tape, so much so that his coffin was duct taped at his funeral). He spent most of the 70’s and 80’s playing gigs in Houston, New Orleans, and Austin. But he didn’t leave behind much of a body of work. A couple of albums were released after his death. One of them was ‘Live at the Austin Outhouse’, which was recorded on December 18th, 1988 (his 39th birthday), about three months before his death.

    So I have to thank John Prine, not only for his music, but for mentioning Blaze Foley, one of the hidden stars of Texas music, another one who faded away much too fast.

    Blaze Foley: Clay Pigeons