How The Complete Outhouse Sessions are the Closest We'll Get to Knowing Blaze Foley
In late 1988, Blaze Foley was recorded live for the first time. Not only would his set at the Austin Outhouse make for Foley’s first live album, it’d make for the first album he had to his name. Foley had spent the last decade touring dozens of his songs across the American South, at live shows both popular and notorious. Yet his entire discography by 1988 consisted of a lone single, If I Could Only Fly, released over nine years earlier. So, for the special occasion being recorded live, Foley had a special setlist planned for his audience: “I’m just gonna do songs that, I wrote that I can think of,” he announces during the intro of My Reason Why.
Given the significance of the night, that moment amuses me. But I didn’t hear it on Live at the Austin Outhouse (1989), the album released from that night. Its only after 30 years that we have the master tapes from Foley’s two nights at the Outhouse, appropriately dubbed The Complete Outhouse Sessions (2023), in our hands. And since Foley didn’t leave much behind that reveals the man behind the songs, any glimpse is meaningful. By that standard, the nearly four hours of songs and banter on The Complete Outhouse Sessions is monolithic. It eclipses the length of his 55-minute live album from 1989. It even rivals the length of every other piece of Foley’s music archive combined.
Until now, it was just recording engineer John Crasner who got to hear those tapes, a fitting soundtrack for his time spent reminiscing about Foley. Crasner maintained a personal love of Blaze Foley ever since recording Live at the Austin Outhouse, like many who heard Foley perform over the years. That’s why Crasner hangs on to rave reviews from the 1989 album and proudly shows them to Foley’s friends. He also hangs Foley’s artwork on the walls of his home: birds and teapots, painted in bright, childish colors. And at least as late as the 2010s, Crasner was replying to fresh fans’ ecstatic emails – around three or four a week.
Foley has never been more popular than he is now. Once he was just the underdog of the infamous Austin Texas outlaw country movement, remembered for its rebellion against the glitzy country industry in Nashville Tennessee. Foley stood out, even among his songwriting-forward contemporaries, with his unerringly honest lyricism. A lover and fellow writer once asked Foley if he felt everything he sang. Foley reacted with surprise; “Why else do it?” It’s no wonder that young fans are continually falling for the humanity of Foley’s music – by now, wearing one’s heart on their sleeve in their music appears far more fashionable.
But there was a period after Live at the Austin Outhouse where limited copies of Foley’s few releases left him a local legend, and local alone. Foley’s frustratingly sparse discography was not for lack of studio sessions; he’d actually recorded an album a decade earlier, when Foley was peddling his songs with touring guitarist Gurf Morlix. Unlike Foley, who had introduced himself by multiple monikers over the years, Morlix was bestowed the name Gurf Morlix at birth. As Foley tells the story, the master tapes from their sessions were stolen from Foley’s car, and the world was robbed of Foley’s debut album with it. When Morlix asked Foley why he didn’t store something that precious in a safe place, Foley only ever replied in jest. Asked for his thoughts about it decades later, Morlix still doesn’t have an explanation.
Luckily for Foley, he got a second chance to make an album just a couple years later. Morlix was brought back to Alabama to arrange the songs and play bass, and Foley’s close friend/contemporary musician Townes Van Zandt was brought along too, Foley shares at the Outhouse. Van Zandt had a penchant for romantic songwriting and tender fingerpicked guitar, talents which were undoubtedly inspirational to Foley. But Van Zandt wasn’t brought along for these talents; he was brought along for moral support.
This moral support got the pair thrown in jail before anybody even made it into the studio. As Foley tells the story, they had landed in jail for threatening a group of armed bodyguards, having mistaken them for Nazis. “This is true,” Foley notes. Foley says he wound up in jail again before the sessions were completed for an unrelated incident. A friend at the Outhouse chimes in that she paid Foley’s bail. Like many of Foley’s shows, the Outhouse was populated with friends and fans who by then were familiar with Foley’s music – and his penchant for carousing.
Up two stints in jail and one completed studio session, Foley had a brand-new debut album in his hands. Right at the finish line to release, the executive producer was arrested on drug charges, and the FBI confiscated the master tapes and the pressed records. But some records survived in a local warehouse, enabling Foley to muscle forward: with a pressing in hand, all he needed was some determination and an album distributor. Foley chose, instead, to barter his limited supply of records off for six-packs of beer and cab rides. Foley was a man of many talents, and getting a good deal, evidently, was not among them.
It's hard to talk about these missed opportunities without pondering what could have been. While Foley undoubtedly deserved the fame these albums might have brought him, the lack of fame didn’t seem to be of much concern for Foley, who craved something greater. Foley cited country legends like Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, and Merle Haggard as his model musicians, admiring them on a level that had nothing to do with the number of albums they sold. Their legend was about their image, their craft, and the long shadow behind their names. The lesson Foley learned from these men was to never make compromises in the name of true art.
Foley enjoyed an eclectic group of singer-songwriters alongside his inspirations, their only trait in common being a heart on their sleeves. Above all else, Foley adored the middle-class cowboy John Prine, who filled his albums with tracks both hilarious and heart wrenching. Near the start of Foley’s career, he told his friends at a John Prine show that, one day, he hoped he could write a song as meaningful as his favorite song of Prine’s (and that’s Sam Stone, for the curious). Foley would pass away before Prine covered a Foley fan favorite, Clay Pigeons. At the Outhouse, Foley plays around 30 of his own songs, and just one cover: a faithful rendition of John Prine’s keening, Bob-Dylanesque, The Late John Garfield Blues.
The full spectrum of Foley’s songwriting is heard during his set at the Outhouse, but for the most part, it’s a typical live show. At least, as typical a Blaze Foley show could be. He shakes off any initial nervousness after he sings some songs and drinks some brandy. Throughout his set he seems chattier than usual, telling plenty of stories between his songs, often apologizing for spending too long talking. The bar is noisy in the background, with the shuffle and chatter of patrons. But Foley doesn’t mind. He says it all belongs – the chiming of the cash register, the hum of his microphone pack, the dogs barking outside.
Foley shares, and sometimes butchers, jokes Van Zandt taught him. Foley breaks off his songs at random with a familial excitement when his friends walk into the bar. Even though Foley’s recording his first live album, he frequently invites his backing instrumentalists to perform their own songs, advertising how premium their songwriting is. They politely decline. In other moments, Foley launches into embarrassing stories about his friends from the stage. They politely tell Foley to can it. This paints a picture of Foley as both eager and affectionate – although he clearly had a habit of overstepping personal boundaries.
But the remainder of Foley’s banter is more eccentric. He chats about many subjects: music, movies, and of course, drugs. Sometimes he opens questions to his audience: “Has anybody in here ever seen crack being sold?” On another track, he explains how to cheat on court-mandated urine testing – the trick, apparently, is drinking half a cup of vinegar. He chats about painting people’s shoes with markers and varnish and getting high off the fumes. These moments are erratic and usually brief, but what Foley mentions more frequently than any other subject is The Muppets, readily slipping into his Kermit the Frog voice to crack jokes about infidelity.
The downright strange chatter found on The Complete Outhouse Sessions is the closest any listener under the age of 35 will get to sitting in a room with Blaze Foley. Not only is it a vivid portrait of Foley in the later years of his career, the recording makes for an uncannily timely snapshot of working-class Texas in late 1988. Foley performed his set at the Outhouse just a couple weeks before president George H. W. Bush was sworn into office. And the weight of the Reagan wave finally breaking seems to permeate Foley’s performance.
Foley talks, as casually as one could, about how prisons became overcrowded with drug offenders. He plays songs from his repertoire like Election Day, saying “it’s kind of apropos,” straight into his song WWIII, a song sardonically prodding the government to start a new war because the news has been too slow. He converses with his audience between the songs: “have you ever noticed they’re advertising joining the army as much as they are [advertising] shredded wheat?” It’s just one of his many existential observations that has no light explanation.
Later in his set, Foley says he’s gonna do a song for First Lady Nancy Reagan. He picks “Wouldn’t That Be Nice,” a song “about people who are afraid of somebody for no reason.” The song draws on an incident where a clean-cut woman took one look at Foley, and not liking the vibe of the long-haired hippie cowboy, locked her car doors. The song itself is brief and humorous, but it barely conceals the bruised heart that marked much of his songwriting. Then Foley moves into his song Oval Room: “this one’s for [Ronald Reagan] ... when Bush gets into office, I’ll just leave [off] that one verse,” referring to the verse about Reagan starring in B-movies. In Foley’s mind, it’s the only meaningful difference between the two presidents. Foley sings on Oval Room,
In his oval room, in his rockin’ chair;
he’s the president, but I don’t care;
he’s a business man, he’s got business ties;
he got dollar signs, in both his eyes;
got a big airplane, take him everywhere;
got a limousine, when he get there;
everywhere he goes, make the people mad;
makes the poor man beg, and the rich man glad...
…while the audience claps along to Foley’s slap-beat strumming of the strings. Foley ends the song with this: “Everything [Reagan] leaves behind he’s gonna wanna hide... I don’t mean to get political but sometimes it's hard to keep from it.” Foley clearly suffered from the alienation of being pushed to the margins of American society. After all, Foley was a perennially unhoused artist, the ire of the previous administration twice over. But Foley took many other ails of American society just as personally.
Foley was uncommonly honest among musicians about what feelings and stories inspired his songwriting, going as far as admitting who was the subject of what songs. His stories of one lover inspired Officer Norris, and Picture Cards Can’t Picture You, which both made it onto Live at the Austin Outhouse. Fellow writer Sybil Rosen was the subject of several others, including If I Could Only Fly, the sole single of Foley’s career.
“This is a Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson song that I wrote,” Foley jokes as he intros If I Could Only Fly. Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson – legends of the outlaw country movement from the generation before Foley – released their cover of If I Could Only Fly in 1987. It was a radio hit in the American South, and by far the most attention Foley drew during his lifetime. Haggard, in an article interview, proudly dubbed it the “best country song in fifteen years.” Foley carried the article around in his boot for months, showing it to anyone he could.
The success of the single brought Foley some tangible money, and the attention made a European tour possible for the first time. But the significance of this moment for Foley had little to do with newfound fame – it was a sign that he was walking down the right path. For his song to play to that many ears meant thousands could be filled with the existentiality, the yearning, and the sorrow of Foley’s songwriting at the top of his game. Foley’s own self-doubt meant he perhaps wouldn’t admit to himself what he was accomplishing, but Foley’s friends and peers were touched by the soul of Foley’s songwriting regardless.
And the road Foley was walking down now was a far cry from where he stood some 15 years earlier. Although he had moved to Austin to peddle his songs, he arrived to town and just couldn’t do it. He was held back by his deepest fear: that the Austin country scene would chew him up and spit him back out. But rent was due and Foley was down to his last pennies. Feeling he had no other options, Foley tried to pawn his only guitar to none other than Merle Haggard at one of Haggard’s concerts. Foley did not own said guitar. Unfortunately for Foley, touring musician Merle Haggard already owned a guitar, and declined Foley’s offer.
During a break before Foley performs If I Could Only Fly, he says this: “I get tired of it sometimes… it seems like there’s always days like some of the days… in the song like dismal days,” referencing a lyric from the song. He immediately changes the subject. “I have a new Christmas song for Jewish people: tis the season to be Jewish, fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la, Christmas shopping sure is foolish…” The dissonance of moments like these encapsulates how uncomfortable Foley felt laying his emotions bare on stage, an unavoidable fate for a man who felt everything he sang. At other times he reacted more intensely to the responses of his audience; he was known to pick fights with bartenders and crowds who talked over his deeply personal songs, permanently losing those venue opportunities.
“This is for Kermit and Miss Piggy,” Foley says before finally starting If I Could Only Fly. Foley gives a sublime performance of If I Could Only Fly, aside from a moment where he stumbles a line. The crowd pays no mind, rewarding Foley with massive applause. It’s perhaps their most effusive response to any song of Foley’s set. As Foley finishes the song, he has this to say, his voice suddenly low, and his words spilling into each other: “I always wish I’d named that song ‘If We Could Only Fly,’ instead of ‘If I Could Only Fly,’ because I felt like that wasn’t…” He trails off. “That was selfish.” Foley half-heartedly slips in some jokes before and after this moment. The crowd pays no mind.
Foley wrote If I Could Only Fly at a time where long tours were severing the tethers of his relationship with Rosen. Their only lines of communication, letters or the rare phone call, were straining under the weight. Many country songwriters have willingly sacrificed personal stability in the name of their careers, including Foley’s friend Townes Van Zandt. But Foley’s choice wore on his soul in ways that friends struggled to avert their eyes from. Gurf Morlix and fans contend that Foley never got through performances of If I Could Only Fly without tears in his eyes.
Every side of Foley is on display on The Complete Outhouse Sessions. He brings his audience humor and solemnity, hand in hand. When Foley laughs, and he often does, it’s a rich and infectious sound that rolls out of him like a river. When Foley gets lost in himself, and he often does, the mic feeds on that tense silence of the room. But of all Foley’s reminiscing, perhaps the hardest to listen to now is Foley chatting ambiently about his elderly friend Concho. “I wish Concho was here tonight, maybe he’ll be here tomorrow night.”
Foley spent the last Christmas of his life in jail, after an argument with Concho’s son ended violently. Concho had told Foley some time earlier that his son was stealing his welfare checks, a fact which Foley took characteristically personally. Foley told friends that he would defend Concho from the injustice, even if it killed him. Foley was released from jail a day before recording at the Outhouse. One month after Foley’s performance at the Outhouse, Foley laid face-down in Concho’s front yard, shot by Concho’s son. It was the last of the world’s abuses that Foley would take to heart.
Friends, discussing the man Foley became, suggested a personality of self-destruction. Foley had been kicked out of every bar in Austin, banned from several. Foley’s heart was always in the right place, but his bouts of intensity often offset people’s good will towards him. He was kicked out of the Outhouse the very night he was shot, after raging at a patron who said an anti-Arab slur. Ultimately it was Foley’s death as the lawful cowboy that sealed his legendary reputation. But his friends and peers undoubtedly would have chosen Foley in the flesh over some story of what his life amounted to.
Foley died before Live at the Austin Outhouse could be funded and released. But his archival discography has grown a great deal since his first live album. A different tape of his 1979-80 studio sessions was discovered and released as Cold, Cold World (2006). And the album confiscated by the FBI was repressed and re-released as the Lost Muscle Shoals Recordings (2017). What these albums lack in live rawness they trade for studio refinement, still held aloft by Foley’s singular songwriting.
I will still always prefer my first Foley, Live at the Austin Outhouse. After all, Foley was not a clean-cut guy, and his more honest live performances encapsulate his essence better to me than any studio project. The Complete Outhouse Sessions is, on the other hand, a different measure of project altogether. It’s a behemoth of nearly 50 songs, many of them just banter and ambient chatter. Whereas Live at the Austin Outhouse is a tight compilation that contains many of Foley’s best tracks, The Complete Outhouse Sessions is cumbersome, unpredictable, overly bleak, often hilarious, constantly eccentric. But this has significant value unto itself – it is a complete picture of Blaze Foley, which epitomizes him better than any story can.
Anecdotal references were pulled from the book: Living in the Woods in a Tree: Remembering Blaze Foley by Sybil Rosen.
Photo credit (thumbnail): CP Vaughn