It’s hard out here:
hayes carll
Earns his stripes
by d.c. bloom

The Second Coming of the Duct Tape Messiah

More than two decades after his death, the legend of Blaze Foley burns brighter than ever.

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With the February release of Blaze Foley’s 113th Wet Dream, a stellar new tribute album by Gurf Morlix, plus the long-in-the-works documentary Blaze Foley: Duct Tape Messiah finally reaching the public, the late, great Foley is suddenly receiving more exposure than he ever did while he was living.

  So why does a guy who, at the time of his death, had only ever had 200 copies of one album released, deserve a full-fledged documentary? Duct Tape Messiah producer Kevin Triplett, who has been working on the film since shortly after hearing about Foley in 1996, admits frankly, “It’s not like this is going to be some life of Bob Dylan kind of huge film.” And yet, if ever there was a poster child for the “Keep Austin Weird” ideal, Foley was it.

   Austin has always been filled with off-kilter characters, and Foley ranks near the top of the heap on any rational scale of weirdness. Virtually homeless his entire adult life — he and a girlfriend once lived in a Georgia tree-house for nine months — Foley existed by living off others for most of his 39 years, sleeping on couches and in spare bedrooms, even bunking in abandoned cars and, most notoriously, under the pool table at his ostensible headquarters, the Austin Outhouse, where he was known to sleep off many a drunk.

According to friends and supporters, Foley, who mimicked the fancy “Urban Cowboy” set by using duct tape on his boots and Western outfits, could be either a most lovable, caring person or the mean, argumentative, button-pushing local drunk. He was certainly no stranger to the Austin police, and it was nothing out of the ordinary for Foley to be 86ed from the bars he frequented.

Born Michael David Fuller on Dec. 18, 1949 in Malvern, Ark., Foley was also known for his hard luck and bad timing. He would find flush backers to finance a session, only to have some catastrophe strike. The masters for his first album were reputedly seized by the FBI when the executive producer was involved in a drug bust. The tapes from his second album were stolen from a station wagon he was living in. And the masters for Wanted More Dead Than Alive were mysteriously lost shortly after Foley’s death. Squandered opportunities, intentional career self-destruction, and fractured dreams became integral to the legend of this songwriter, who was shot to death in Austin on Feb. 1, 1989, while defending an elderly neighbor from an abusive son. Foley and the man had previous altercations, and Foley had once been arrested for driving the man off his neighbor’s property with an ax handle. Friends were outraged when Foley’s killer was declared not guilty due to self defense.

But personality quirks, unconventional lifestyle, and a lifetime filled with erratic, self-destructive behavior can’t overshadow Foley’s small but intense body of work, which ranges from beautiful, absolutely forlorn lost-love songs to hilariously inventive off-center tunes and bitter political commentary. Although Foley’s entire publishing catalog only spans 65 songs, he has been covered by Joe Nichols, Lyle Lovett, John Prine, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard. Haggard’s cover of “If I Could Only Fly,” off of his 2000 album of the same name, is one of the premier recorded performances of his career. Lucinda Williams added to Foley’s posthumous legend with her song “Drunken Angel,” and Townes Van Zandt paid a touching tribute to Foley with “Blaze’s Blues” on 1994’s No Deeper Blue, Van Zandt’s final album.

  Van Zandt, whom Foley met during an ill-fated trip to New York City to open for Kinky Friedman (he was booted off the stage mid-set), was at once Foley’s biggest champion and a toxic influence. According to longtime Foley sideman Morlix, Blaze fell under Townes’ spell and sought to emulate the mercurial Texan.

“Townes was just one of those people,” Morlix notes. “I saw all kinds of people fall under his spell. There was just something very engaging and compelling about him that made a lot of people want to be like him. Blaze drank, but he didn’t become a binge drinker until Townes introduced him to vodka. They’d get to drinking vodka and those binges could last for days. It was very debilitating for both of them, and it hurt to watch.”

East Texas native Triplett notes he’d never heard of Foley until he moved to Austin in 1995. “When I got to Austin, my cousin and a friend were recording a Blaze tribute album, just basically trying to get all 65 of his songs covered, when they first told me about him,” Triplett says. “At first, I just thought they wanted me to invest in their recording project.

  “I have to be honest, I didn’t really even connect with most of the songs at first,” Triplett continues. “His music hadn’t had much reach, and outside Austin he was virtually unknown. So the obvious question was, why a documentary on Blaze? I had no good answer in the beginning. But I eventually grasped that he wrote good songs. Then it dawned on me that he wrote those songs directly about his life and that he had lived a life that had a lot of meaning. He was one of those people who didn’t seem to ever look back. Add to that the fact that he died protecting someone from a wrong, and that seals his legend as far as I’m concerned. And that’s what makes it a worthy project and a film of value.”
Triplett traveled to a dozen states and conducted 127 individual interviews for the film, eventually compiling over 300 hours of footage. Merle Haggard is the only “celebrity” in the film. “I’m actually proud that Merle is the only famous person in the film,” Triplett says. “But I’m glad we got him.”

Longtime Foley associate Lost John Casner provided the connection to Haggard.
“Around 2000 Merle had cut ‘If I Could Only Fly’ after hearing it during some Willie Nelson sessions at Pedernales Studios, and he told Willie he wanted to cut it,” Triplett explains. “Once we got into filming, Merle came through Austin several times but we never got him. But apparently Merle wanted to know everything he could find out about Blaze, and he would hook up with Casner when he came through town. So Casner was on Merle’s bus and told him about the project.

“We sat up our equipment on a street corner across from Merle’s bus and waited,” Triplett continues. “It was about three hours before Merle got comfortable I guess, but eventually he decided to walk over and talk to us. He was very wary and hesitant at first, but once he realized we were for real he opened up and said some truly beautiful things. The footage shows that Merle really thought a lot of Blaze.” In the film, Haggard calls Foley “a hero” for the way he lived and died.

Triplett will be touring with the film throughout the coming year, with as many showings as possible coupled with sets by Morlix performing Foley’s songs. He is also entering the film into numerous festivals and plans to do screenings in Europe in the fall.

Meanwhile, Morlix is busily promoting his Foley tribute album with shows of his own in addition to his appearances at the film screenings.

  “Not to overstate it,” the taciturn Morlix says, “but this is noble work, and he was a noble man. Blaze Foley is worth knowing and remembering.”

by William Michael Smith

Q & A: Gurf Morlix
Let the Rhythm Rule

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Austin producer, picker and songwriter Gurf Morlix has been waiting 20 years to record a tribute album to his late friend, Blaze Foley, and he finally got around to Blaze Foley’s 113th Wet Dream in late 2010. The 15-track album, a wonderful cross-section of Foley’s small but impressive publishing catalog, hit stores in February. Morlix’s choice of material is impeccable and he absolutely nails the essence of Foley’s work with his interpretations.

  Outside folk and roots rock circles, Morlix is not exactly a household name. Yet inside the Americana musical world, he is almost universally acknowledged as a gentle giant. Probably best known as a producer, he rests on the same pedestal as people like T Bone Burnett and R.S. Field, prolific producers with important bodies of work that don’t necessarily follow the obvious commercial path but who conjure choice records that get noticed. Known for his no-nonsense, bare-bones approach, Morlix broke into record production with Lucinda Williams’ acclaimed breakthrough albums Lucinda Williams (1988) and Sweet Old World (1992), and has since produced albums by an all-star list of Americana acts: Robert Earl Keen, Slaid Cleaves, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Tom Russell, Hot Club of Cowtown, Butch Hancock, Mary Gauthier and BettySoo.

  Morlix’s traumatic split with longtime musical partner Williams may mark the most public part of this relatively private man’s life. With 90-percent of Williams’ album Car Wheels on a Gravel Road finished, Williams decided to scrap the project and start over in Nashville. Shortly after the sessions began, Morlix and Williams butted heads and he decided to quit the project, ending a highly successful 11-year association with Williams as her band leader and guitarist. Redone in Nashville with Steve Earle, Ray Kennedy and Roy Bittan, the album went on to receive a Grammy and was voted the top record of 1998 in the Village Voice Pazz and Jop poll.

  As a player, Morlix has been an in-demand sideman since he first moved south to Austin to escape the icy winds of his native Buffalo, N.Y. Not long after arriving in Austin in 1975, Morlix teamed with legendary Dallas folk-rocker B.W. Stephenson. Subsequently, along with his new musical partner Foley, Morlix became a fixture on the burgeoning Houston folk scene in the late 1970s, before parting with an increasingly off-the-rails Foley and leaving for Los Angeles in search of a wider pool of musicians. It wasn’t long before a fateful phone call had him working with Williams, who was just finding her true stride after years of dabbling in bluegrass and folk music. Since his split with Williams, Morlix has gone on to play with respected Austin acts like Hubbard and Cleaves. Along the way he’s worked with a list of people that reads like Who’s Who of roots music: Warren Zevon, Buddy and Julie Miller, Robert Plant, Patty Griffin, Jim Lauderdale, Ian McLagan, Troy Campbell, Jimmy LaFave and Eliza Gilkyson. Morlix also worked on four tracks for the movie Great Balls of Fire with Jerry Lee Lewis. He was named the Americana Music Association’s Instrumentalist of the Year in 2009.

  The consummate sideman, Morlix eventually found the impetus to record an album of his own material. His 2000 debut, Toad of Titicaca, served notice that there was a major new talent on the Austin scene. He has since released six more albums to broad critical acclaim; each record has been something of a concept, from the dark rock ’n’ roll of Fishing In the Muddy (2002) to the neo-country Cut ’N’ Shoot (2004). But it was 2007’s dark, spiritual Diamonds to Dust that seemed to suddenly vault Morlix’s work up a notch. Last Exit to Happyland (2009), an exploration of mortality and life-meaning, produced some of the most beautiful work of his career. Austin songbird Patty Griffin added vocals to several of the most memorable tracks.

  In fact, Griffin is part of very small team that Morlix has assembled who seem absolutely committed to his art and vision. Morlix seldom records with anyone but Rick Richards on drums, and while he has worked with Ruthie Foster, BettySoo and a few other women, Griffin remains his go-to voice for harmonies. The loyalty of Griffin and Richards are simply further testimony to Morlix’s integrity.

  We caught up with Morlix at his Rootball Studio just outside Austin as he prepared to play the first shows of what will be a year-long tour paired with Kevin Tripett’s documentary, Blaze Foley: Duct Tape Messiah.

When did you get your start in music?

I knew very early on that I wanted to play music, really ever since I heard the Everly Brothers on the radio when I was in elementary school. And then I was in that generation that got to see the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show, and that event altered my life just like it did so many others.

So how did you get into being a professional musician?

I learned bass and was actually playing in bands by the time I was in high school. It was one of those times when everybody wanted to be in a band, that was the coolest thing. The thing I find really funny now is that I made as much at some of those early gigs when I was in high school as I do now.

Your parents were supportive?

Yeah, they were. We had our talks about learning a trade to fall back on, that kind of stuff, but I just kept telling them I wasn’t going to need that fall back. But they were great. I can remember my father taking me to gigs at biker bars and dropping me off, then coming back to pick me up. I’m sure it took a lot for him to lay back and let me do my thing, but he did.

What’s on memory from that high-school band period that stands out?

Peter Case also grew up in Buffalo, and I remember him coming to some of my gigs. So we found out he was also a musician and we let him get up and do some songs between our sets one night. He got up there and pounded out some old blues stuff on piano and sang. That was the first time he was ever onstage.

Wow, that is quite a mile-marker.

Funny thing is that we reconnected out in California much later in the ’80s. I was playing steel guitar then and he asked me to join the Plimsouls. Peter was just getting into exploring his folkier side at that juncture and he felt like a steel guitar sound would be cool. So I ended up playing with them during the final few months of their existence before he went solo.

What was the impetus to leave Buffalo?

I was tired of the cold [laughs]. I just decided I wanted to try someplace warm. I tried Key West for a while, but Austin seemed to be the happening place, so I moved here for the first time in 1975 and landed right in the middle of the Cosmic Cowboy thing.

You landed a great gig with B.W. Stephenson, who was very big at that time. What caused you to take that route rather than, say, join a rock ’n’ roll band?

I’m drawn to lyrics and songs. Austin was just brimming with great songwriters during that period. Even today, I’m much more into singer-songwriters than I am guitar pyrotechnics and whatnot. When someone asks me to produce an album, my main criteria is whether I connect with the songs.

How did you get connected with Blaze Foley?

I saw him sing a few songs one night and thought, “This guy is just completely different.” So I introduced myself and we started hanging out and eventually working together.

What led you two to move to Houston in 1978?

Money. Houston just had this great, bustling singer-songwriter scene with a dozen or so clubs with live music. And there were these great writers like Shake Russell and Dana Cooper, Danny Everitt, Michael Marcoulier, John Vandiver, Lucinda. It was just so much more lucrative financially than Austin. Blaze and I rented a place in Montrose right in the center of the action for $50 a month. Three or four gigs and we not only had our month made, we could eat out all the time. And that scene was so hot, it wasn’t unusual for us to play 20-25 gigs a month. And lots of nights we’d play gigs at two different venues. It was the busiest I’d ever been, and it was the most money I’d ever made. Plus it was just a cool scene to be part of.

What happened to that?

Things changed. Some of the oil money dried up. But for me it was Blaze. His drinking got real bad and he’d go off to Austin and then phone me to say he couldn’t make it back for a gig, stuff like that. So I finally told him I was moving to Los Angeles. When I moved out, he moved back to Austin.

You hooked up with Lucinda Williams not long after moving to L.A., and Lucinda Williams was the first album you ever produced. How did that come about?

We had a great band and were getting a lot of attention out there. Then out of the blue, Lu calls up and says she’s got a record deal, but who’s she going to get to produce it? And I said, “Me.”

What were your credentials to take on something like that?

My whole career I’ve always been the guy with the tape recorder. I was always the guy who’d get things to sound right. I think I knew what a good record was supposed to sound like. Anyway, that’s how it came about and it turned out okay, I guess.

You’re very much in demand as a producer these days. How do you decide which projects to take on?

It’s really all about connecting with the songs. I probably pass on 75-percent of the offers I get, and that’s usually just because I don’t personally connect with it.

How did you get into having your own home studio?

When I moved back to Austin in 1991, things were really changing. Equipment was getting more affordable, and the business was changing. Before that you needed a record label behind you to get into a studio and do a record. But suddenly it was getting where anyone could do one. My buddy said we should build a studio and just record all the time.

It seems like you use Rick Richards exclusively as your drummer, not only on your records but on the other albums you produce, too.

I met Rick way back in the day and thought he was just okay. But we reconnected when I got back to Austin and I was just blown away by how accomplished he’d become.

So what makes you guys click?

His pocket is so tight. If I had to play drums, his pocket is exactly the one I’d want to lay down myself.

Ray Wylie Hubbard is always singing your praises, and you’ve produced four albums for him. How did that collaboration come about?

I’d actually met Ray back in the ’70s in Austin and thought he was very talented, very funny. He had this kind of charming persona. Then I lost track of him for quite a while. Anyway, we reconnected in the ’90s and he came out to look at my studio. He asked me what I was listening to right then and I said I was really into prison chain-gang stuff. And he said he had been listening to field hollers, so we just sort of instinctively knew that we were on the same wavelength. And once I heard some of his songs, I thought, “He’s as good as anyone at this,” so I wanted to work with him.

Slaid Cleaves had bounced around for a little bit, too, but it all seemed to come together for him after you started working with him.

The first thing I loved about Slaid was that voice. He’s no opera singer, but he really puts his songs across, and that was the first attraction for me. We did No Angel Knows in ’97 and it didn’t do all that well and Slaid started to get a little discouraged. But when we were finished with Broke Down [2000], I told him, “Your life is about to change, this record is going to grab some people.” And he was like, “You really think so?’”

You finally put out your own first record, Toad of Titicaca, that same year. Why did you wait so long to begin to do your own thing?

Having my own studio is what really made that possible. I’d been writing songs for maybe 30 years, but I was just never sure they measured up. That’s a funny thing; I can usually tell right off about someone else’s songs, but I go back and forth about my own.

So why did you decide to do the Blaze Foley record at this juncture in your career?

I’ve been in touch with Kevin Triplett about the documentary for some years and have watched that develop. With him finally deciding to take the film public, it just seemed like the time was ripe to put out the Blaze record.

What are you doing next?

I’ve got quite a few songs for the next record, but I probably won’t start working on that until sometime next year. For the rest of this year, I’m going to play as many gigs as I can, and we’re trying to coordinate as many of those gigs as possible with showings of the film.

by William Michael Smith