BLAZE FOLEY, the itinerant Austin songwriter immortalized by Lucinda Williams (“Drunken Angel”) and Townes Van Zandt (“Blaze’s Blues”), was a caring soul whose spare and simple songs drilled to the core of human emotions. He was also, um, colorful, from his unusual lodging habits (the BFI logo on city dumpsters was known as an acronym for “Blaze Foley Inside”) to a frightening hardscrabble anger that crept into his music. The Austin Outhouse was his haunt, and from there came his only previously available album. OVAL ROOM (Lost Art) delivers more gems and oddities from those same 1988 sessions, recorded just one month before his murder. Carefully augmented, the extra guitar, drum, and vocal flourishes—and there are many—never feel like meddling but slide onstage unnoticed behind Foley and band. Reviewed by Jeff McCord
Not a blues, reggae, alternative rock, or children’s CD, not a TV-special soundtrack of endless hackneyed duets nor a just-another-night-on-the-road live tape but an honest-to-god WILLIE NELSON recording. You’d have to go back to 1998’s Daniel Lanois—produced Teatro or, better yet, 1996’s Spirit to find a time when Nelson actually showed up to play something other than golf. IT ALWAYS WILL BE (Lost Highway) begins with a title track that’s a punch of pure sentiment, the kind only Nelson can pull off with a straight face. It’s his best song in ages, and from there it only gets better. He sings with Lucinda Williams (the new duet darling), covers Jimmy Day and Tom Waits, hits a perfect note on “Tired” (by Toby Keith, no less), and wraps up with his own 75-word love letter: “It’s the only place for me/ Where my spirit can be free/ Texas.” Reviewed by Jeff McCord
Jeff Mccord
Those around Austin in the eighties heyday of what came to be cynically labeled the “New Sincerity” movement probably recall an omnipresent gawky kid thrusting his cassettes into their hands. If you got through the amateurish musical skills on DANIEL JOHNSTON’s homemade recordings, your patience was rewarded with some delightfully insightful pop songs. Johnston has had his ups and downs since then, but every year some notable artists stumble across his songs. Eighteen of them line up on THE LATE GREAT DANIEL JOHNSTON: DISCOVERED COVERED (Gammon), including Beck and Tom Waits, for a heartfelt and remarkably consistent tribute, the best salute to Johnston since Kathy McCarty’s Dead Dog’s Eyeball. A great place for the uninitiated to learn what all the fuss is about. Reviewed by Jeff McCord
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