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| Townes Van Zandt and Blaze Foley |
Every week is a new music adventure for me these days,
and as the mystery and the history unfold in front of me, I am constantly learning
from different mentors. Hosting a radio show which professes to be about
songwriting, I feel honor bound to up my game every week, and to research some of
the music about which I know comparatively little. As I begin to connect the
dots, I rely on the rich oral history to enlighten me. Songwriters know songwriters. In my capacity as radio
how host of Lyrical Workers, I have now had extended conversations over the
phone with several very different and interesting songwriters. Each time I have
one of these conversations, it peels back another layer of the onion. I learn
something about the writing process and am reminded of how much I don’t know.
Last week, at 12:30AM, during the first half hour of Shauna’s
60th birthday, I had a 45 minute phone conversation with a guy named
Gurf Morlix. Gurf was originally from Hamburg, N.Y., just south of my hometown
of Buffalo, and I first learned of him listening a compilation CD of Buffalo artists distributed
by the Buffalo Music Hall Of Fame. I fell in love with his haunting song Drums From New Orleans, and it inspired me to learn more about Gurf Morlix, the man with the unusual name. Buffalo
was full of great musicians but I’d never heard of most of the guys on that Buffalo Music Hall Of Fame CD.
As I began to explore Gurf’s career, I discovered that this hometown boy had
made it pretty big in the music business. He left Buffalo in 1975 and headed down to Austin, Tx., and he never looked back. He told me that when he left Buffalo in his 20s, he
was looking to spread his wings as an artist, and to add his own creative two
cents to the genre of country music, a genre not widely embraced in Buffalo. He
joked about the fact that he picked Austin because it was warm. I was impressed
by his experience. He’d worked with/ co-written with of artists like Lucinda
Williams, and he’d toured with the legendary Warren Zevon.
This Thursday night, I'll be featuring clips from my phone conversation with Gurf, placed throughout a show prominently featuring the music of Gurf
and a now-deceased songwriter named Blaze Foley. Foley will likely become better known with the imminent release of a film made about his short life,
produced and directed by actor Ethan Hawke. The movie has already received critical
acclaim at The Sundance Film Festival, and I look forward to its release. Blaze and Gurf arrived in Austin around the same
time and became close friends shortly thereafter. Sadly, Blaze suffered from
some of the self-destructive forces that plague so many creative artists. He never received the recognition he might have, had he not been held back by his
demons. Hearing Gurf talk about his friend Blaze, I was reminded of the oldest story in
entertainment: another creative genius falls prey to substance abuse and self-destruction.
As I have said on numerous occasions, made even more
evident as I enter my 4th year as host of Lyrical Workers, there
is a universe of good music about which I know very little. As the door opens a
crack, thanks to mentors like Gurf Morlix, Jon Brooks, Gordon Shawcross, Rob Lutes, Bobby Cameron, John Campbelljohn, Noah
Zacharin, and a few dozen other contemporary songwriters, I am lit up by yet
another creative bright light. It's always been my mission to get better at this, and knowledge
is power. Ultimately, I want what most songwriters want: to connect with others through my personal interpretation
of all that has come before me. With every new artist I discover, I can place
another piece in the ever-expanding puzzle of the music I love, and I become a better
songwriter because of it. Last Friday night I had the extreme pleasure to see blues phenomenon Matt
Andersen perform in Huntsville at the Algonquin Theatre. Two years ago I did
not know who Matt Andersen was, and now I am a huge fan. With each new discovery comes
the growing realization that the field of talent around me is limitless, and so then is
the potential for my own growth as a songwriter.
- Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c 2018 ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED
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