If I Could Only Fly

He wrote it in March 1977 and played it to Sybil Rosen shortly before he went back to Austin. In her account, used in the film Blaze, she heard in it that he had arrived as a mature artist, and felt at the same moment that they were breaking up. The singer wishes he could fly into the arms of a lover far away.

He recorded it again and again: as a mid-1970s demo later issued on Sittin' by the Road, as his 1979 Zephyr single with Gurf Morlix, and in 1988 at Bee Creek Studio with Kimmie Rhodes, a version that appeared on Wanted More Dead Than Alive. A video of him singing it at a friend's wedding in 1985 circulates online.

Other voices

Willie Nelson got the demo from his daughter Lana, and he and Merle Haggard recorded it on Seashores of Old Mexico in 1987. Haggard called it one of the best country songs he had heard in fifteen years, and in 2000 made it the title track of his fiftieth studio album. Joe Nichols and Lee Ann Womack recorded it in 2007, Nanci Griffith in 2012, and Lucinda Williams on the 2026 tribute Sittin' with Blaze.

At his funeral in 1989 the mourners sang it from handed-out lyric sheets, and Ethan Hawke plays it out in full in Blaze. The upload in the hypersongs web is the live version recorded at the Austin Outhouse in December 1988, from the Live at the Austin Outhouse CD.