Austin: Blaze Foley Gravesite

The day Austin buried Blaze Foley, an ice storm shut down the city. Cars spun doughnuts on South Austin streets, and plenty of mourners never made it. The Blaze Foley gravesite sits in Live Oak Cemetery in deep South Austin. Somebody at the graveside pulled out a roll of duct tape. Then his friends wrapped his coffin in it.

Blaze Foley began life as Michael David Fuller. He came into the world in Malvern, Arkansas, in 1949. His family soon moved to Texas. He called himself Depty Dawg for a while. Then he picked a new name, borrowed from Red Foley and the burlesque star Blaze Starr.

The Two Blazes

Blaze refused to hold a day job. He slept on couches and in a treehouse. He also patched his boots, jeans, and jackets with duct tape. When he saw a BFI dumpster, he claimed the letters meant “Blaze Foley Inside.”

His hero and drinking partner was Townes Van Zandt. After Blaze died, Townes told a reporter, “There’s kind of two Blazes.” One was tender, generous, and funny. The other was loud, drunk, and impossible.

Blaze befriended an old man named Concho January, then tried to protect him from his son. On February 1, 1989, that son, Carey January, shot Blaze dead. He was 39. While he lived, Blaze released only a single and an album nobody distributed.

A Legend After All

Then the songs started traveling without him. Merle Haggard recorded “If I Could Only Fly” and made it a title track. Lucinda Williams wrote “Drunken Angel” about him. Later, Ethan Hawke turned his life into the 2018 film Blaze.

Townes himself added to the legend. He liked to tell how he dug up Blaze’s grave to find a pawn ticket for his guitar. True or not, it sounds exactly like them both.

Today the black granite stone shows Blaze’s profile and a guitar engraved with his song titles. Fans leave picks, beer cans, and duct-tape roses. Bring a roll of tape if you visit. Blaze would appreciate the gesture more than any flowers. Compare it with Austin’s other monument to an outlaw, the Willie Nelson statue downtown.