I'm listening to Joe Ely as I type, I'm digging it.
A friend of mine named Martin Flanagan passed away yesterday. I met Martin through my friend Steve "Juicy" Judice. Martin was a singer songwriter from Louisiana. He wrote some fine songs. "Screen Door" and "Wings" are as fine of songs as you could ever hear anywhere in the world.
We had some real good hangs at some festivals in South Texas many years ago. He was the illegitimate son of Hank Williams Sr. From the story I remember around a fire and weaving between whiskey and beers goes like this. He was adopted and raised by a beautiful family, the Flanagan's. And that was either Mississippi or Louisiana. His birth mother was a waitress in an all night diner in Montgomery Alabama. And the father on his birth certificate is Hiram (or HR) Williams. And the physical resemblance was spooky, as was his sound. I remember one time we were sitting around a fire, and when the guitar got to me I played my best version of "Lost Highway". You know, that ol Hank Sr tune, my favorite line goes "Just a deck of cards, and a jug of wine , And a woman's lies makes a life like mine". I don't think it impressed him none. He just sat there beside me, squatted down like an old catcher waiting on the delivery.... I kinda thought that was impressive.
Martin will be missed by many, I sure wish we could've hung out more. Our thoughts and interests seem to walk down the same old road.
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