12/18/2025
This Week in Texas Music History, a singer-songwriter sets the outhouse ablaze.
In December 1988, singer-songwriter Blaze Foley played the Austin Outhouse for the last time, an appearance later released as a live album. His birthday falls this week, too—born December 18, 1949 in Arkansas. Foley grew up in San Antonio, Dallas-Fort Worth, and around the South. He wandered further after dropping out of high school, a drifter, biker, roadie, and songwriter. His songcraft flowered after settling in Georgia, living in a tree house with partner and muse Sybil Rosen.
Foley moved to Austin in 1977, the progressive country boom years, and became a stalwart in spots like Emmajoe’s, Spellman’s Lounge, Hole in the Wall, and the Austin Outhouse. He grew close there to another star-crossed songwriter, Townes Van Zandt. Their hard-luck drifter ways drew them together, but their lyrical gifts cemented the relationship. Blaze and Townes could plumb the depths of human despair in one stanza and pivot to absurd silliness in the next. Foley’s craft shone in such songs as “If I Could Only Fly,” “Clay Pigeons,” and “Election Day,” but missed opportunities abounded. In 1984, he recorded an album in Muscle Shoals, but it didn’t see the light of day.
Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard recorded “If Only I Could Fly,” but it didn’t take off like the duo’s cover of Van Zandt’s “Pancho and Lefty.” Foley remained a hometown hero, though, a songwriter’s songwriter, known for the duct tape holding his boots together and sleeping rough under pool tables. In February 1989, Blaze Foley lost his life in an altercation in South Austin, defending an elderly friend. Lyle Lovett, John Prine, Gurf Morlix, and Lucinda Williams covered his songs and sung his praises in later years. Ethan Hawke told his story on screen in 2018. And the Live at the Austin Outhouse captures the city’s poet in his prime, rough and raw and ready.
Written by Jason Mellard from the at Texas State University.
*This Week in Texas Music History is brought to you by Brane Audio
