Big Cheeseburgers & Good French Fries — a humble, human hymn to simple joys and a songwriter who lived on the margins
There’s a soft smile hidden inside “Big Cheeseburgers & Good French Fries,” the kind of smile that appears when a song returns you to a time when life felt uncomplicated — when happiness could be held in your hands, tasted, shared, or sung about with someone you loved. Written and recorded by the wandering Texas troubadour Blaze Foley, the track first appeared on his 1984 album Cold Cold World, though it remained largely unknown in the mainstream during his lifetime. Foley, who spent most of his career in small bars, back porches, and dusty corners of Austin, never saw a chart position from the song — but that was never where its magic lived.
The story behind this song, like much of Foley’s life, is steeped in tenderness and quiet tragedy. Blaze was a man who drifted through the world with a guitar, a patchwork jacket, and a heart far too soft for the hardness around him. He wrote songs not to impress or to chase fame, but to carve out a little corner of truth in a world that often felt too heavy. “Big Cheeseburgers & Good French Fries” is one of his warmest creations — a simple tune, yes, but simplicity can carry more meaning than sorrow when it’s written by someone who understood how fragile comfort could be.
What makes the song so endearing is its plainspoken honesty. Foley wasn’t trying to dress life up; he was trying to love it as it was. His lyrics sway with easy charm:
“Big cheeseburgers and good french fries,
I could eat them every day of my life.”
You can almost see him — boots dusty from a long walk, guitar slung over his shoulder — settling into a roadside diner booth, the glow of a neon sign reflecting off the window. For a moment, everything is okay. The world stops spinning so fast. In a life marked by poverty, couch-surfing, heartbreak, and an endless struggle to find steady ground, the small joys gave Blaze a kind of peace he rarely found elsewhere.
And perhaps that’s why the song resonates so deeply with listeners today, especially those who have lived long enough to understand that happiness isn’t always found in the grand moments. Sometimes it’s a plate of fries shared with a friend. A warm summer night. A familiar melody humming through the kitchen. Foley had a gift for turning the everyday into something sacred, reminding us that the things we overlook might be the very things that keep us going.
His rough-hewn voice in the recording carries the weight of someone who has seen both sides of life — the laughter and the loneliness — but still chooses to sing about joy. There’s a tenderness in his delivery, a childlike innocence peeking through a man who endured more than he ever deserved. That paradox, that gentle soul inside a battered body, is what made Foley so beloved to fellow musicians and songwriters who sensed the purity of his craft.
Though Blaze never reached commercial success, songs like “Big Cheeseburgers & Good French Fries” have survived him — kept alive by admirers, tribute albums, and the devoted community that gathers around his memory every year. The tune has become a small treasure among Americana fans, a reminder that the simplest songs sometimes carry the longest echoes.
And when we listen today, we hear more than a playful lyric. We hear a man searching for goodness in a world that too often withheld it. We hear someone who found joy in the little things — not because he had much, but because he understood how precious they were.
In that sense, Foley leaves us with a gentle lesson: sometimes a good song, a warm meal, and a moment of peace are enough to remind us that life, even in its roughest patches, still has sweetness worth singing about.