Tasty Brew Music features Blaze Foley, Sixto Rodriguez and Mike Finnigan – wha?

Host Diana Linn is still basking in the afterflow of Americanafest 2018 but there are some earworms that have made their way into her listening space this past week and KKFI listeners will help occupy some of that ground.

First up, Kansas’ own Mike Finnigan is returning this week for a show at Knuckleheads with birthday boy Nick Schnebelen opening.  Finnigan has toured and sessioned for Jimi Hendrix, Joe Cocker, Etta James, Sam Moore, Crosby Stills and Nash, Dave Mason, Buddy Guy, Manhattan Transfer, Taj Mahal, Michael McDonald, Maria Muldaur, Peter Frampton, Cher, Ringo Starr, Leonard Cohen, Tower of Power, Rod Stewart, David Coverdale, Tracy Chapman, Los Lonely Boys, and Bonnie Raitt.

Next, Sixto Rodriguez appears because of a late night trip down memory lane on Netflix this past weekend with a documentary on Rodriguez Searching for Sugar Man.  Sixto Diaz Rodriguez, known professionally as Rodriguez (born July 10, 1942), is an American singer-songwriter from Detroit, Michigan. His career initially proved short lived in the United States, but unknown to Rodriguez his albums became extremely successful and influential in South Africa. Because of scarce information about Rodriguez, it was incorrectly rumored there that he had committed suicide shortly after releasing his first album. In the 1990s, determined South African fans managed to find and contact Rodriguez, which led to an unexpected revival of his musical career. This was told in the 2012 Academy Award–winning documentary film Searching for Sugar Man and helped give Rodriguez a measure of fame in his home country. Rodriguez has been living in Detroit’s historic Woodbridge neighborhood, through which he is seen walking in Searching for Sugar Man. He is known to live a simple life, possessing no telephone or cell phone of his own, and occasionally visiting bars in the Cass Corridor section of Detroit near Woodbridge and Midtown Detroit.

Blaze Foley, a frequent occupant of past Tasty Brew playlists gets a revisit…a biopic on his crazy short life produced by Ethan Hawke and starring Ben Dickey as Blaze is opening in Kansas City this week. Foley was born Michael David Fuller in Malvern, Arkansas on December 18, 1949. He grew up in San Antonio, Texas and performed in a gospel band called The Singing Fuller Family with his mother, brother and sisters. In the spring of 1975, he was living in a small artists’ community just outside Whitesburg, Georgia, when he met Sybil Rosen. Rosen and Foley were in a relationship and decided to leave the artist community together to support his music. He went on the road and performed in Atlanta, Chicago, Houston and, finally, Austin, Texas. Foley was close friends with Townes Van Zandt and was greatly influenced by him. Foley’s stage name was inspired by his admiration of musician Red Foley and his nickname “Duct Tape Messiah” …because he placed duct tape on the tips of his cowboy boots to mock the “Urban Cowboy”-crazed folks with their silver-tipped cowboy boots. He later made a suit out of duct tape that he wore walking around. In 1989, Foley was shot in the chest and killed by Carey January, the son of Foley’s friend, Concho January.  Blaze had confronted Carey January accusing him of stealing his father’s veteran pension and welfare checks. Carey January was acquitted of first-degree murder by reason of self-defense. He and his father presented completely different versions of the shooting at trial. At his funeral, Foley’s casket was coated with duct tape by his friends. Townes Van Zandt told a story where he and his musicians went to Foley’s grave to dig up his body because they wanted the pawn ticket that Foley had for Townes’s guitar.

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