Billy Joe Shaver . . .
Howdy all,
Long time no post . . . still trying to balance work and pleasure. Funny, it never used to be a problem! Anyways, here's a few things to keep some reading material for a quiet day. The first is an Billy Joe Shaver interview/tribute:
Billy Joe Shaver is a name most of us have heard, like the late
Townes van Zandt, Delbert McClinton, etc., he just never got the
lucky break, the right spark to lift him into permanent stardom.
Dallas News 5/2 has what can only be called a tribute ... well
deserved. I thought of the Jones cut on the Haggard album, "The
Brothers." "I'm still here in Nashville, writing songs, and getting
older ..."
By MARIO TARRADELL / The Dallas Morning News
WACO - Willie Nelson, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash sang the songs
that paid for Billy Joe Shaver's house. Bob Dylan, Waylon Jennings
and Kris Kristofferson, too. But you'd never guess it.The brown, two-
bedroom home, with its unkempt yard and faded blue porch swing, sits
in the middle of an average neighborhood not far from Interstate 35.
Inside is a tribute to the forgotten '70s - dark wood paneling, shag
carpet, ornate columns and mirrored squares haphazardly arranged on
the kitchen wall.
The house looks almost abandoned, a tattered relic once filled with
life. Years of physical trauma weathered Mr. Shaver's body - a
sawmill accident that severed the fingertips of his right hand, a
broken back, a battle with substance abuse, a quadruple bypass.
Burying his family bruised his soul - parents, in-laws, the
grandmother who raised him, the wife he married three times, his only
son. He lives alone now, except for a pair of pit bulls.
Billy Joe Shaver's music career spans three decades. His career, too,
has been a series of missed opportunities. After more than three
decades of writing and making music, he's an unsung figure with a
loyal if modest Texas following. Outside the perimeters of his home
state, he's at best a cult curiosity.
Yet a lifetime of hard knocks hasn't been able to shake his bedrock
optimism.
"I'm always bubbling under," Mr. Shaver, 64, says while nursing a
sandwich and tortilla chips. "I think people are finally figuring out
I wrote these songs, and they're starting to have a love affair with
writers. That's fine with me.
"I assumed that I would die before it happened."
And now he's hoping for a commercial breakthrough. A documentary
film, The Portrait of Billy Joe, screened in March at Austin's South
by Southwest Film Conference & Festival and last month in Nashville.
It's also headed to Las Vegas, Melbourne, Australia, and Oxford,
Miss.
This fall, Houston-based Compadre Records releases a new studio
album, the follow-up to 2002's acclaimed Freedom's Child. Tentatively
titled Billy and the Kid, the CD features Mr. Shaver adding lyrics
and vocals to unreleased, mostly instrumental tracks recorded by his
son, the late Eddy Shaver. Mr. Shaver hopes a proposed collaboration
with rap-rocker Kid Rock will come through and give him hip cachet.
"Billy Joe is living proof that faith and good music and friends will
get you through the hardest of times," says Casey Monahan, director
of the Texas Music Office in Austin. "His integrity is unquestioned
as an artist and a person. Sure, he understands pain, but he also
understands redemption and joy. His songs are exactly who he is, his
faith is exactly what he believes in, and his strength is an
inspiration to anyone who knows him and who listens to his music."
Among Mr. Shaver's best-known gems are "I'm Just An Old Chunk of Coal
(But I'm Gonna Be a Diamond Someday)," a Top 5 country hit for John
Anderson in 1981. There's also "You Asked Me To," covered by
Elvis; "Georgia on a Fast Train," done by Mr. Nelson and one of three
Shaver tunes recorded by the late Mr. Cash; "Old Five and Dimers Like
Me" (Mr. Dylan, among others); "Good Christian Soldier" (Mr.
Kristofferson); "Live Forever," a modern-day classic; "Sweet Mama"
(Allman Brothers Band); and "When Fallen Angels Fly" (Patty
Loveless).
And don't forget Honky Tonk Heroes, an album the late Mr. Jennings
recorded in 1973. Eleven of the 12 tracks are by Mr. Shaver.
Mr. Shaver also inspires a younger generation of songwriters.
"He's one of the most prolific writers I've ever seen and heard,"
says Cory Morrow. The 32-year-old singer from Austin has covered
Shaver songs such as "Live Forever" and "Georgia on a Fast
Train." "His music speaks the truth."
Mr. Morrow says that if he had to pick a hero, he'd choose Mr.
Shaver.
"Knowing the tragedies he's been through, and how close together
they've happened, it's almost as if these things aren't bringing him
down, they are lifting him up. He's so full of life and positive
energy and love. He walks in a room and he just glows. I can't stand
next to him without smiling."
Dallas concert promoter Mike Snider has booked Mr. Shaver about a
dozen times, most recently at Sons of Hermann Hall in April.
"He's one of the best Texas songwriters," Mr. Snider says. "Even
Willie or Waylon are more song stylists than Billy Joe. He's the true
country poet."
Music as a lifeline
"I'm a songwriter, and I guess I was born to be a songwriter," Mr.
Shaver says. "Yeah, the songs have really kept me sane. They are
quite a comfort to me now. I didn't realize that in pulling myself
out of all these holes that I've been in, it helped others also. I
didn't intend to help others. I did it to help myself.
"I mean, I've been in quite a few holes."
Whenever he's feeling melancholy, he says, "I write my way out of
it."
Songs have been with Mr. Shaver since he can remember. They are a
constant and a lifeline, validating and comforting when everything
else seems to be falling apart. Cast off by a mother who was too busy
being a honky-tonk girl and abandoned by his father, a military man
he barely knew, little Billy Joe was raised by his grandmother. When
he thinks of her, he vividly recalls buying groceries.
"She'd go down to the store and say, 'Can I get an extension on my
credit?' And the lady would say, 'Yeah, if you could make your boy
sing.' They'd stand me up on a cracker barrel, and I just sang my
heart out. I'd sing 'Needle in My Heart,' 'Great Speckled Bird' and
all that stuff. We didn't have radio at the time, and if I'd get to a
snag where I only remembered so much, then I'd just make the rest of
it up.
"Then I got to making things up myself. Whatever was going down with
me, I just started singing about it. People would really like that,
and sometimes they'd give me nickels or they'd give me candy. And
sometimes nothing. I just liked to sing."
And write, too. That's where Mabel Legg, his eighth-grade homeroom
teacher, comes in. She encouraged him to write poems and immediately
spotted his talent.
"You can't really call yourself a poet until someone else does," he
says. "You kind of know, but once somebody verifies it, it really
makes it so."
Ms. Legg told the kid he'd always be able to fall back on his
writing.
"When I quit school to go in the Navy, she came to me and said, 'You
shouldn't quit. You should stay in school.' I said, 'Ma'am, I got a
lot of living to do, and I can't do it here.' She said, 'Do what you
feel's right.' That's the kind of teacher she was. She was all for
you."
Her validation gave him the courage to take his songs to Nashville
and try his luck. But his road to stardom would be littered with
potholes and dead ends, his perseverance tested again and again.
The long road
In the early '70s, while his contemporaries Kris Kristofferson and
Johnny Cash were scoring hits, Mr. Shaver languished. He bounced
among record labels, a victim of bad timing, shutdowns and personnel
changes. Jokingly, he refers to himself as a curse to the labels.
Monument, MGM and Capricorn all folded shortly after releasing his
recordings.
"My track record didn't look good to anybody," he remembers. "Nobody
wanted to give me a record deal."
Mr. Kristofferson helped him get a contract with Monument after the
release of The Silver Tongued Devil and I featuring Mr.
Shaver's "Good Christian Soldier."
"He's as real a writer as Hemingway," Mr. Kristofferson says by phone
from his Hawaii home. "He is timeless. The more he hangs around, the
more people are going to know him. I felt lucky to be in a position
to help people get to know him. He's not as famous as he ought to
be."
Mr. Shaver's struggle to get noticed in the '70s prevented him from
holding down a steady job, much to the dismay of his wife, Brenda,
who was raising their son, Eddy. He tried his luck as a sawmill
worker (until he cut off his fingertips in an accident) and a
carpenter (until he fell off a roof and broke his back). He was also
a car salesman, a horse trainer and a rancher. Meanwhile, he made
periodic trips to Nashville trying to sell his songs. The grind led
him to substance abuse.
'I was just a mess'
"I tried everything," he says. "Cocaine, alcohol wasn't a big deal
then. And speed. I loved speed, 'cause then I could write songs all
night long and stay awake. That was my main thing. If it didn't knock
me down, I enjoyed it. I was not into things like heroin or downers.
No downers. That's a lazy man's drug. I wanted up. I drove my wife
crazy. My hands were yellow from smoking those damned Camel
cigarettes. I was just a mess. I'd get in fights every night. It was
terrible."
One day in the mid-'70s, he drove up to a cliff near Kingston
Springs, Tenn., took off his boots and intended to jump. But, as he
tells the story, God intervened.
"This was the lowest point of my whole life," he recalls. "I knew I
was going to die so I figured I'd just go ahead and kill myself. I
thought I jumped. But I was on my knees asking God for
forgiveness 'cause I had always been a Christian. When I left there,
I put my boots on. It was a dark night. God put this song in my
heart, 'I'm Just An Old Chunk of Coal.' That's how it happened. When
I got back to the bottom of the trail, I had written half the song.
It came through me that way. Saved me. I became born again. I was
like a little kid."
He quit drugs cold turkey. He says he's sober to this day.
But Mr. Shaver had not yet shed the influence of drugs on his life:
His son Eddy died in 2000 from a heroin overdose.
Eddy, whose shy demeanor belied his blazing guitar skills, wasn't
just a son. He was also a musical partner and best friend.
"That hurt me real bad because the last 20 years or so I've been
straight as an arrow. I thought that I'd made up for the past.
There's a certain amount of guilt, yeah. But I'm not guilty. It's
something I have to deal with. You can't explain it; it's a mystery.
People are going to do what they're going to do. And if they're going
to quit, they're going to quit. I wanted to quit."
A year before Eddy died, Mr. Shaver lost his wife.
Brenda and Billy Joe married when she was 17 and he was 21. They
divorced, then remarried twice more. They were together for the
better part of four decades.
"We kept splitting up and getting back together. It was dumb-ass
stuff. I tell you, she should have said no. I just knew she was the
one for me, and she knew it, too. There was never another woman for
me. She was my first and my last."
She fought rectal cancer for three years. After spending so long
chasing fame in the fickle music business, he put his career on hold
to become her full-time caregiver. She died in July 1999.
"She was tougher than I ever knew she was. We loved each other very
much. I know I loved her, and I'm sure she loved me."
For 2000's Freedom's Child, his first disc for Compadre Records, he
paid homage to Brenda with "We." On the lovely, melancholy ballad, he
sings: "We were so innocent and free/You know we tried our best to
be/We had all of everything/Until I gave my love to you/Until you
gave your love to me."
A heavenly reunion
That record includes "Day by Day," a song that traces the tumultuous
Shaver family history, from his marriage to Brenda to Eddy's death.
Accompanied only by a 12-string guitar, Mr. Shaver sings of his
undying love for wife and son and of what he believes will be a
heavenly reunion:
"Day by day their love keeps on growing/Their light keeps on growing
and glowing so bright/There's hope for the family that God holds
together/'Til they all meet again in the sweet by and by."
When asked about that song, Mr. Shaver pauses to collect his
thoughts.
"I'd been writing it, and people just kept dying," he says. "If I
don't do it now, I never will, and I need to get it out of me. It was
like pulling teeth writing about all that stuff. But it was good to
get it out. I labored over it."
Songs to relieve the pain - Billy Joe Shaver's been writing those all
his life, at least 200 to 300, by his estimate. They've made the
hardships bearable. They've become his calling card. They've
outlasted many of the legends who recorded them. And Mr. Shaver knows
they'll live long after he's gone.
"I don't feel sorry for myself because it seems like the lower I am,
the more I write and the better songs I write," he says.
"And they're really profound, too. It might be the reason Hank
Williams was broken-hearted all the time - great songs came out of
him."
Posted by rayzon1
at 12:28 AM EADT
