Jerry Jeff Walker

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It's nearing the end of our trip to Austin and with one No. 47 WTF daily moment after another it's pretty clear that the place we've loved so much has turned into something bitter and ugly. We probably will never return; or not until sanity returns. And that will takes years.

Today we remember why we first came to Texas. It was for the music. And Jerry Jeff Walker especially. There are so many songs he did that we've enjoyed so, as a right of passage, we visit his grave. 

Jerry Jeff  is buried in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin, Texas. His plot is located in the Statesman's Meadow, Section 1, Row E, Number 24. He passed away on October 23, 2020, in Austin during the first wave of the Covid epidemic — a reality No 45 could not gas light away.

We've passed by the cemetery in east Austin so many times since first coming to Texas back in the 1990's but have never stopped in. It's a hero's cemetery and a JJW is a deserved Texas hero. We enter through the visitors center and tell the guide, oddly a Canadian too, why we're there. She shows us where to find the grave.

At the grave we have our picture taken by others who are visiting other Texas heros.

My favorite JJW album is "A Man Must Carry On" (1977). We had the pleasure of seeing him a couple of times over the years. Notably at the El Macombo in Toronto (1982). The last time we saw him he was a guest at Ray Wylie Hubbard's 70th Birthday Bash (2016) at the Paramount in Austin (that was quite an event, but I haven't written it up). 

See also my Jerry Jeff Walker blog (2020) on his passing.