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Outlaw country legend Blaze Foley \u2014 a guy who not only lived that life but died that death, shot by the son of his friend Concho January at age 39 \u2014 is the subject of a new tribute album. Sittin’ With Blaze<\/em>, due out in August, features covers of the Austin singer-songwriter’s work by artists including Lucy Dacus, Lucinda Williams, Joshua Ray Walker, John Moreland and Lydia Loveless, and more. <\/p>\n The songs on the comp are early Foley tunes from his “tree house” days in Georgia, based on recordings released by Lost Art Records in 2010 under the title Sittin\u2019 By The Road<\/em>. Lost Art is introducing the album today with two tracks: a version of “If I Could Only Fly” by the spectral country band Phosphorescent and a spin through “Election Day” by Austin country-rockers Uncle Lucius.<\/p>\n \u201cDriving a cab in Austin and trying to make it in music brought me a lot of Blaze stories,\u201d said Kevin Galloway of Uncle Lucius. \u201cBlaze is this big man with the biggest heart and nobody was below him. And he was a little eccentric as South Austin is or used to be. And that\u2019s perfectly okay. That\u2019s what makes him what he is.”<\/p>\n There’s also this from Matthew Houck of Phosphorescent: “I came to Blaze a while back. Like anybody who\u2019s interested in songwriting you\u2019re going to eventually find Lucinda, Townes Van Zandt, Blaze, Guy Clark. But Blaze was kind of a mystery to me. It wasn’t hard to capture the lonesomeness of ‘If I Could Only Fly.’ So really, it was just kind of, like, stay true to the song.”<\/p>\n Intriguingly, Phosphorescent’s “If I Could Only Fly” cover opens the album, and Williams’ take on the same song closes it. Hear the Phosphorescent and Uncle Lucius tracks and check out the tracklist below.<\/p>\n