Behind the Song: “Drunken Angel,” Lucinda Williams

Grammy-winner Lucinda Williams has been one of Americana’s biggest female talents for four decades, though her commercial success hasn’t been overwhelming. She finally gained major attention in 1998 with her gold album Car Wheels On A Gravel Road, produced by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s keyboardist Roy Bittan. The album featured “Drunken Angel,” a song about the life and death of Austin songwriter Blaze Foley. Foley, a friend and contemporary of legendary Texas songwriter Townes Van Zandt, was shot to death in 1989 and became somewhat of a cult figure afterwards.

Williams lived in Austin at one time as well and was an acquaintance of Foley’s and a champion of his music. He once was said to have actually made himself a suit out of duct tape and was indeed Some kind of savior singing the blues/A derelict with duct-taped shoes, as Williams called him in the “Drunken Angel” lyric. Williams discussed the song, and how it’s still part of her repertoire more than two decades later, with writer Jonathan K. Dick at the AV Club website last year.

“Pretty much every show we do now includes ‘Drunken Angel’ and ‘Lake Charles.’ Those two songs, we do every night, and it might seem old after a while, but we get requests for them. I still love doing them, but ‘Drunken Angel’ is one of those songs that finds its way into the set night after night no matter where we’re playing. We could be in Oslo, Norway, or Salt Lake City or wherever, and it’s gonna be one of those. It’s almost become like an anthem. Everybody loves that song and responds to it.”

Amy Reid is a singer/songwriter with Nashville songwriting collective Stillwater Acoustic Revival, and a former staff member of the now-defunct Country Weekly magazine. She has been performing a cover of “Drunken Angel” for years, and says it’s one of her favorite songs by one of her favorite writers.

“Any time I’m able to put a writer like Lucinda forward, it’s a treat because I think she’s written some of the best Americana material ever,” Reid said. “‘Drunken Angel’ is so graphic. People who have no idea who Blaze Foley was end up wanting to research the song just to find out, because there’s no way Lucinda could have written it about a fictional character. Just amazing lyrics.” 

Williams told AV Club that people who weren’t even alive when Foley died are familiar with the song. “I’ve met younger fans, these girls, and they have tattoos on them that say ‘Drunken Angel.’ One girl got me to write it on her back, so she could go get it tattooed. Another girl in Nashville had a tattoo of it on her arm. I mean, that song and the whole idea of it, it’s gone beyond the story of Blaze Foley. I tell the story sometimes about Blaze Foley being this tall, big-hearted guy who liked to drink. He’d get all drunk and he gets in the middle of this senseless argument and gets shot and killed. One of his mentors was Townes Van Zandt who was pretty much the same guy, and now he’s gone, too. I’ll tell people that the song has become something now that could be about Townes or Gram Parsons or Kurt Cobain or any artist who’s died too young and given up the ghost. People respond to that.” For more about the man who inspired “Drunken Angel,” see Lynne Margolis’ story about two movies chronicling Blaze Foley’s life here.