Blaze Foley was Southern in the way Ben Affleck is Bostonian. He insisted upon his Southernness so much it hurdled over parody and reached charm. Born in Arkansas and raised in Texas, Foley became part of Austin’s outlaw country scene in the 1970s.
Though he never found commercial success, his songs were later covered by Merle Haggard, Lyle Lovett and Willie Nelson.
A voice humble like a worn-out flannel, comforting but honest. He had a beard. A big and leafy one, like he tried to make a forest on his face. He wore a cowboy hat and there are no pictures of him without it. It could be hiding a hairline or a halo of words. Judging by his music, it could be both.
The name Blaze Foley sounds shot out of a forgotten spaghetti western, the kind where everybody looks a little like Clint Eastwood. It reads like a flame decal on a Chevy. It sizzles, it blazes. Blaze Foley. Name of a thousand cigarettes. His name was explosive, his words were all the opposite.
The letters drew out and swung like a hammock. The twang lazied the ear, sinking the tongue in every lyric. His voice was wide, it was deep enough to confuse you, but true enough to make you feel. His eyes wandered in blue. Eyes that had seen too much road but made it pure all the same.
The road was Foley’s home; his ankles had a few miles on them. He was homeless, sometimes playing for a couch or a drink in return. His songs melted pavement in a sorrow that only dripped from street lights and smoke.
He hid pain under playfulness, drawing with colored pencils and erasers. “Sittin’ By The Road” makes his grey world a rainbow.
“Sittin’ by the road
Yes, take off your shoes, play with your feet
Knees need a rest, don’t need nothing to eat.”
Even when he joked around, you could hear truth creak through his rasp. His pen liked a laugh, a true one, at that. Foley played the dumb guy while he wrote; his words carried few letters but so much weight.
He made music for the everyman, a type of man he knew very well. Vulgar, uneducated, drunk, any words used to describe your uncle on Thanksgiving. Foley articulated the pains of the Southern working man without needing much articulation.
Themes of poverty, dignity, loneliness and love. He had an affinity for saying an entire book in ten words; he could make you cry and laugh with a syllable. “Officer Norris” makes you chuckle until you realize what he’s really telling us.
“You read us our rights but you read them too fast
Officer Norris would you please kiss my ass
Officer Norris, Officer Norris, get down on your knees.”
He could be silly beyond repair. The man has a song with the word “Doo Doo” stapled to its title. He was unapologetically country. Foley was the South and everything it stood for.
The homeless, drunk arrestee was a product of prejudice and disadvantage in America. His beard grew longer as he covered bruises, yet the cowboy hat stayed on. Blaze Foley was from the South. The South was him. “Cosmic Doo Doo” is an eccentric take on life in the South versus the North, and he explicitly tells us which one he prefers.
“Cosmic girls got covered-up pimples
Country girls got plain ole dimples
I like country girls the best
Danced that night away”
Blaze Foley met the wrong end of a gun at 39 years old, in Austin. Most of his songs died with him, played only for himself and any stray bird lucky enough to listen. His voice still whispers in the wind of the Southern plains. It whistles, but no one can recognize it. Familiar, but without a name.
