The entire recorded output of Blaze Foley's music wouldn't take up much room in your collection. There were more songs in his head than ever got committed to tape and - sadly - they died with him when he was murdered in 1989. And while you may think you've heard the name Blaze Foley before, in reality you probably haven't. It's just one of those names that you think you've heard because it sounds so cool.
But it's also a name you'll remember after you first hear a Blaze Foley song, and this record, Live At The Austin Outhouse - if you can find a copy - is a good place to start. It was recorded on cassette at the Austin club he sometimes almost lived in during his life, and was made just a month before his tragic death. An unofficial cassette recording of this show circulated around Austin for years, eventually seeing release as a CD, but this is the first time it has ever appeared on vinyl. It's been cleaned up to sound far better than the original cassette, although it still retains the club's ambience. Voices, chairs moving, doors opening and closing, a cash register noisily tallying drinks …
It all sounds great.
Foley was an incredible singer-songwriter, and the 14 songs on this LP are astonishing in the ragged simplicity and sharp-edged honesty. He's occasionally accompanied by harmonica, fiddle and piano, but Foley's deep and smokey voice is haunting and his guitar playing so economical as to almost not be there at all. But it is.
His songs are stories that capture little slices of life with gut-wrenching sincerity in a way that reminds one of Townes Van Zandt, who was Foley's friend and biggest champion. The two men occupied the same dark corners both in their songs and their lives, and as a result comparisons are inevitable.
This record is a rare thing. It's country music even Lemmy would like. It's good. Real good!
Other than his "best-known" song, If Only I Could Fly (later recorded by Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson in 1987), Foley performs Our Little Town, Picture Cards Can't Picture You, Small Town Hero and Clay Pigeons. These are songs that are considered to be among his best, and the between song banter hints at Foley's unique personality. And he really was one of a kind. This was a man who lived with his girl in a tree house for more than just a little while, which is about off-the-beaten-path as one can get. On the record you hear him complain about the price of marijuana while also acknowledging its benefits. At one point he asks Outhouse bartender, Ed Bradfield, for a glass of brandy and invites him onto the stage to play harmonica.
Foley appears to be in a good mood throughout this set. He has no idea that he will be dead in a month and will enter the sad realm occupied by Hank before him and Townes not long after. His death will be good for his legend and legacy, but it will leave the world woefully short of his music. And that's the real shame here. There isn't much recorded output to speak of - every now and then something new trickles out - but this record is as good, and as good sounding, as it will probably ever get. Included with the record is a replica of the 7" single, If Only I Could Fly (backed with Let Me Ride In Your Big Cadillac), that Foley did manage to record and release during his lifetime. Original copies of the 45, of which I think there were only 1,000 pressed, are selling for as much as $200 on the secondary market.
Live At The Austin Outhouse is a Record Store Day 2020 release. You'll probably be able to find a copy if you look because most people won't know what they are looking at and will have passed it over.
Blaze Foley's real name was Michael David Fuller and he was born in Malvern, Arkansas, in 1949. He grew up in San Antonio, Texas, and with his mother, brother and sister performed in a gospel group called The Singing Fuller Family.
Blaze contracted polio as a child, resulting in one of his legs being shorter than the other, which caused him to drag his foot while walking. In 1975, while living in a small artists' community outside Whitesburg, Georgia, he met Sybil Rosen. The two became a couple and decided to leave the artist community so Foley could concentrate on his music. They ended up in Austin, where Foley tried his hand at songwriting. But his career wasn't going anywhere and the resulting stress - and also because he always seemed to be in a bar somewhere - caused him to start drinking more and more, which complicated his relationship with Rosen. The two eventually split up.
Foley was close friends with Townes Van Zandt and the latter's influence on Foley is easily evident in his music. His stage name was inspired by his admiration for musician Red Foley.
Foley began placing red duct tape on the tips of his cowboy boots to mock the rich Urban Cowboy-crazed yuppies who frequented the clubs he played wearing silver-tipped cowboy boots. He later made a suit out of duct tape that he sometimes wore walking around town. This would eventually earn him the title of Duck Tape Messiah.
Foley did record a couple of albums. The master tapes for the first one were confiscated by the DEA when the executive producer was caught in a drug bust, and a subsequent album disappeared when the master copies were stolen with Foley's belongings from a station wagon that had been given to him and which he was then living in. A third studio album, Wanted More Dead Than Alive, was thought to have disappeared until it resurfaced many years after Foley's death. A friend discovered it while cleaning out his car.
On February 1, 1989, Foley was at a house in the Bouldin Creek neighborhood of Austin when he was shot in the chest and killed by Carey January, the son of Foley's friend Concho January. Carey was acquitted of first-degree murder by reason of self-defense after he and his father presented completely different versions of the shooting at the trial.
At his funeral, Foley's casket was covered in duct tape by his friends. Townes Van Zandt later told a story about how he and a few of his musician friends went to Foley's grave and dug up his body in order to retrieve a pawn ticket for Townes' guitar that Foley had accidentally been buried with and which is said to have been found in his shirt pocket. Turns out it was.
Townes Van Zandt wrote the 1990 song, Blaze's Blues, in honour of his friend and initially released it on his 1991 live album, Rain on a Conga Drum - Live in Berlin. Van Zandt would drink himself to death eight years later.
In 2009, at the request of Foley's estate, Texas singer-songwriter and old-time music historian, Jon Hogan, was asked to add music to lyrics found in Foley's handwriting after his death. The three resulting songs - Every Now and Then, Safe in the Arms of Love and Can't Always Cry were recorded by Hogan for his 2010 tribute album Every Now and Then: Songs Of Townes Van Zandt & Blaze Foley. That's a record I don't yet have but will be looking for!
This record is a treasure, and also …
The entire recorded output of Blaze Foley's music wouldn't take up much room in your collection. There were more songs in his head than ever got committed to tape and - sadly - they died with him when he was murdered in 1989. And while you may think you've heard the name Blaze Foley before, in reality you probably haven't. It's just one of those names that you think you've heard because it sounds so cool.
But it's also a name you'll remember after you first hear a Blaze Foley song, and this record, Live At The Austin Outhouse - if you can find a copy - is a good place to start. It was recorded on cassette at the Austin club he sometimes almost lived in during his life, and was made just a month before his tragic death. An unofficial cassette recording of this show circulated around Austin for years, eventually seeing release as a CD, but this is the first time it has ever appeared on vinyl. It's been cleaned up to sound far better than the original cassette, although it still retains the club's ambience. Voices, chairs moving, doors opening and closing, a cash register noisily tallying drinks …
It all sounds great.
Foley was an incredible singer-songwriter, and the 14 songs on this LP are astonishing in the ragged simplicity and sharp-edged honesty. He's occasionally accompanied by harmonica, fiddle and piano, but Foley's deep and smokey voice is haunting and his guitar playing so economical as to almost not be there at all. But it is.
His songs are stories that capture little slices of life with gut-wrenching sincerity in a way that reminds one of Townes Van Zandt, who was Foley's friend and biggest champion. The two men occupied the same dark corners both in their songs and their lives, and as a result comparisons are inevitable.
This record is a rare thing. It's country music even Lemmy would like. It's good. Real good!
Other than his "best-known" song, If Only I Could Fly (later recorded by Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson in 1987), Foley performs Our Little Town, Picture Cards Can't Picture You, Small Town Hero and Clay Pigeons. These are songs that are considered to be among his best, and the between song banter hints at Foley's unique personality. And he really was one of a kind. This was a man who lived with his girl in a tree house for more than just a little while, which is about off-the-beaten-path as one can get. On the record you hear him complain about the price of marijuana while also acknowledging its benefits. At one point he asks Outhouse bartender, Ed Bradfield, for a glass of brandy and invites him onto the stage to play harmonica.
Foley appears to be in a good mood throughout this set. He has no idea that he will be dead in a month and will enter the sad realm occupied by Hank before him and Townes not long after. His death will be good for his legend and legacy, but it will leave the world woefully short of his music. And that's the real shame here. There isn't much recorded output to speak of - every now and then something new trickles out - but this record is as good, and as good sounding, as it will probably ever get. Included with the record is a replica of the 7" single, If Only I Could Fly (backed with Let Me Ride In Your Big Cadillac), that Foley did manage to record and release during his lifetime. Original copies of the 45, of which I think there were only 1,000 pressed, are selling for as much as $200 on the secondary market.
Live At The Austin Outhouse is a Record Store Day 2020 release. You'll probably be able to find a copy if you look because most people won't know what they are looking at and will have passed it over.
Blaze Foley's real name was Michael David Fuller and he was born in Malvern, Arkansas, in 1949. He grew up in San Antonio, Texas, and with his mother, brother and sister performed in a gospel group called The Singing Fuller Family.
Blaze contracted polio as a child, resulting in one of his legs being shorter than the other, which caused him to drag his foot while walking. In 1975, while living in a small artists' community outside Whitesburg, Georgia, he met Sybil Rosen. The two became a couple and decided to leave the artist community so Foley could concentrate on his music. They ended up in Austin, where Foley tried his hand at songwriting. But his career wasn't going anywhere and the resulting stress - and also because he always seemed to be in a bar somewhere - caused him to start drinking more and more, which complicated his relationship with Rosen. The two eventually split up.
Foley was close friends with Townes Van Zandt and the latter's influence on Foley is easily evident in his music. His stage name was inspired by his admiration for musician Red Foley.
Foley began placing red duct tape on the tips of his cowboy boots to mock the rich Urban Cowboy-crazed yuppies who frequented the clubs he played wearing silver-tipped cowboy boots. He later made a suit out of duct tape that he sometimes wore walking around town. This would eventually earn him the title of Duck Tape Messiah.
Foley did record a couple of albums. The master tapes for the first one were confiscated by the DEA when the executive producer was caught in a drug bust, and a subsequent album disappeared when the master copies were stolen with Foley's belongings from a station wagon that had been given to him and which he was then living in. A third studio album, Wanted More Dead Than Alive, was thought to have disappeared until it resurfaced many years after Foley's death. A friend discovered it while cleaning out his car.
On February 1, 1989, Foley was at a house in the Bouldin Creek neighborhood of Austin when he was shot in the chest and killed by Carey January, the son of Foley's friend Concho January. Carey was acquitted of first-degree murder by reason of self-defense after he and his father presented completely different versions of the shooting at the trial.
At his funeral, Foley's casket was covered in duct tape by his friends. Townes Van Zandt later told a story about how he and a few of his musician friends went to Foley's grave and dug up his body in order to retrieve a pawn ticket for Townes' guitar that Foley had accidentally been buried with and which is said to have been found in his shirt pocket. Turns out it was.
Townes Van Zandt wrote the 1990 song, Blaze's Blues, in honour of his friend and initially released it on his 1991 live album, Rain on a Conga Drum - Live in Berlin. Van Zandt would drink himself to death eight years later.
In 2009, at the request of Foley's estate, Texas singer-songwriter and old-time music historian, Jon Hogan, was asked to add music to lyrics found in Foley's handwriting after his death. The three resulting songs - Every Now and Then, Safe in the Arms of Love and Can't Always Cry were recorded by Hogan for his 2010 tribute album Every Now and Then: Songs Of Townes Van Zandt & Blaze Foley. That's a record I don't yet have but will be looking for!
This record is a treasure, and also …
BONUS TRACK
In recent years, the “derelict in duct tape shoes” of the 1998 Lucinda Williams’ song, Drunken Angel, - who everyone knows is Blaze Foley - has become a bonafide legend. Merle Haggard and Lyle Lovett, among others, have recorded his songs.
There's also a movie based on his life starring Ethan Hawke, and several tribute CDs.
Foley met 66-year-old Concho Jannuary in 1988. One afternoon he was jamming and picking on his porch with half a dozen other musicians. Concho was there, too. At some point Carey January, Concho's son, showed up and started yelling at his father to get home. Foley objected, and the acrimony planted then between Foley and Carey - who had spent four years in prison for a 1975 charge of heroin delivery - grew.
On Aug. 9, 1988, police received a disturbance call and arrived on scene to find Foley and a friend holding ax handles. Carey was across the street, yelling to the cops that they had beat him with the axe handles. Foley admitted hitting Carey across the back and on the head, but said he was defending Concho from the latest beating at the hands of his son. The police report described Foley as very intoxicated, and he received 180-days probation and a court order to attend at least two Alcoholics Anonymous meetings per week.
Friends say Foley managed to stay sober for a couple weeks at a time after that but would then disappear on prolonged binges. He was certainly on a tear on the last night of his life, January 31st, 1988, when he was tossed out of the the Austin Outhouse for getting in the face of a regular who had used an anti-Arab slur.
His next stop was another club, The Hole In The Wall, which had recently lifted a Blaze ban at the request of Timbuk 3, a singing duo who were at the height of their Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades fame and played there often. But once inside it didn’t take long for Blaze to be shown the door again
He made the rounds of a few more (probably really annoyed) friends and then dropped in on Concho, who was entertaining a lady friend, at about 5:00 o'clock in the morning. Blase and Concho and his unnamed lady friend talked and drank wine until Carey emerged from his bedroom with a .22 rifle and shot Foley in the chest. When police arrived Foley was outside, lying face down on the ground. Officers asked Carey what had happend, but he said he didn't know. Foley was still conscious but bleeding badly. “He shot me," he said. Who? the officer wanted to know. “The guy you’re talking to,” Foley replied.
His friends and fans still question the verdict that acquitted Carey, who had admitted to shooting Foley. The defense portrayed Foley as a 280-pound bully who was injecting himself into a family dispute and Carey as someone who had acted in self defence.
There wasn't enough money to hire a police escort to the cemetery after Foley's funeral, and as a result the procession got smaller with each red light. Almost everyone got lost, but someone who did manage to make it to the burial pulled out a roll of Foley’s favourite fashion accessory - duct tape - and his casket was soon covered in it.
A couple of weeks later someone set Concho’s house on fire while he slept. The arsonist was never found, but the police report noted that Concho was a state’s witness against Carey. Concho wasn't intimidated and testified at his son's trial, saying Carey shot Foley in cold blood without provocation. But he was drunk and wasn't taken seriously
Years later, when asked to comment on the death of Blaze Foley, Carey January said, “It was 15 years ago. I was acquitted. I’ve moved on with my life. I’m not O.J. Simpson. I don’t want any publicity.”
In recent years, the “derelict in duct tape shoes” of the 1998 Lucinda Williams’ song, Drunken Angel, - who everyone knows is Blaze Foley - has become a bonafide legend. Merle Haggard and Lyle Lovett, among others, have recorded his songs.
There's also a movie based on his life starring Ethan Hawke, and several tribute CDs.
Foley met 66-year-old Concho Jannuary in 1988. One afternoon he was jamming and picking on his porch with half a dozen other musicians. Concho was there, too. At some point Carey January, Concho's son, showed up and started yelling at his father to get home. Foley objected, and the acrimony planted then between Foley and Carey - who had spent four years in prison for a 1975 charge of heroin delivery - grew.
On Aug. 9, 1988, police received a disturbance call and arrived on scene to find Foley and a friend holding ax handles. Carey was across the street, yelling to the cops that they had beat him with the axe handles. Foley admitted hitting Carey across the back and on the head, but said he was defending Concho from the latest beating at the hands of his son. The police report described Foley as very intoxicated, and he received 180-days probation and a court order to attend at least two Alcoholics Anonymous meetings per week.
Friends say Foley managed to stay sober for a couple weeks at a time after that but would then disappear on prolonged binges. He was certainly on a tear on the last night of his life, January 31st, 1988, when he was tossed out of the the Austin Outhouse for getting in the face of a regular who had used an anti-Arab slur.
His next stop was another club, The Hole In The Wall, which had recently lifted a Blaze ban at the request of Timbuk 3, a singing duo who were at the height of their Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades fame and played there often. But once inside it didn’t take long for Blaze to be shown the door again
He made the rounds of a few more (probably really annoyed) friends and then dropped in on Concho, who was entertaining a lady friend, at about 5:00 o'clock in the morning. Blase and Concho and his unnamed lady friend talked and drank wine until Carey emerged from his bedroom with a .22 rifle and shot Foley in the chest. When police arrived Foley was outside, lying face down on the ground. Officers asked Carey what had happend, but he said he didn't know. Foley was still conscious but bleeding badly. “He shot me," he said. Who? the officer wanted to know. “The guy you’re talking to,” Foley replied.
His friends and fans still question the verdict that acquitted Carey, who had admitted to shooting Foley. The defense portrayed Foley as a 280-pound bully who was injecting himself into a family dispute and Carey as someone who had acted in self defence.
There wasn't enough money to hire a police escort to the cemetery after Foley's funeral, and as a result the procession got smaller with each red light. Almost everyone got lost, but someone who did manage to make it to the burial pulled out a roll of Foley’s favourite fashion accessory - duct tape - and his casket was soon covered in it.
A couple of weeks later someone set Concho’s house on fire while he slept. The arsonist was never found, but the police report noted that Concho was a state’s witness against Carey. Concho wasn't intimidated and testified at his son's trial, saying Carey shot Foley in cold blood without provocation. But he was drunk and wasn't taken seriously
Years later, when asked to comment on the death of Blaze Foley, Carey January said, “It was 15 years ago. I was acquitted. I’ve moved on with my life. I’m not O.J. Simpson. I don’t want any publicity.”
