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 -- songwriter luminaries in their own right -- covered Foley's "If I Could Only Fly" in 1987.
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