Blaze Foley - The Dawg Years

2016 vinyl reissue, printed inner sleeve

The colorful yet tragic life of Austin singer/songwriter Blaze Foley — who was shot and killed in 1989, at the age of 39, while trying to defend an elderly friend — reads like the most heart-piercing of country ballads. It's no wonder then that extraordinary artists like Foley's friend and hero Townes Van Zandt and Lucinda Williams penned odes to him (Van Zandt's "Blaze's Blues" and Williams' "Drunken Angel").

As for Foley's craft, no less than Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard covered Foley's "If I Could Only Fly" in 1987. (Haggard would go on to re-record the song and make it the title track of his 2000 album.) Unfortunately, it seems that a good deal of Foley's energies went toward the art of living; therefore, while he has left listeners with his vivid legend, his recorded output is frustratingly scarce.

In 2010, Fat Possum Records uncovered three reel-to-reel tapes from Blaze Foley's earliest years (when he was known as Dusty Dawg) in rural Georgia that had lain at the bottom of a closet for 25 years. They released a 20 song album from these source reels entitled, Blaze Foley - The Dawg Years in the summer of 2010. Now The Dawg Years returns on vinyl.

Side 1

You’ll Get Yours Aplenty

I Should Have Been Home

Tree House Lullaby

Election Day

Let Me Ride in Your Big Cadillac

The Moonlight Song

Cold, Cold World

Instrumental

Fat Boy

Cosmic Doo Doo

Side 2

Crawl Back to You

June or September

Livin’ in the Woods in a Tree

Basil’s Song

Rudee Down in New Orleans

New Wave Blues

Big Chief Hightower

Big Cheeseburgers and Good French Fries

Blaze Foley’s 113th Wet Dream

Springtime in Uganda

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