Billy Joe Shaver invented outlaw country music, so why is he still rambling around Texas in a van?
HUNTER, Texas: A tall, sternfaced man with his arms crossed is standing in front of the stage and Billy Joe Shaver has had enough. He wraps up “Wacko from Waco”, a song he wrote about — true story — the time he shot a man during a barroom squabble. He was 70 then. He’s 77 now and a half-hour into his set at Riley’s Tavern.
“You know, you look like you’re so goddamned perturbed, it’s bothering me,” Shaver tells him through the microphone. “You’re standing up in front here and you got all these damned looks on your face like you hate the (expletive) world and you’re in front of a bunch of people who like me. Why don’t you come back yonder somewhere?”
There is laughter in the room, some delighted, some nervous. Slowly, the man makes his way to the back.
“I wasn’t picking on you,” Shaver tells him - an explanation, not an apology. “I was just telling you what it is. It distracts me.”
This is life at Shaver’s roadshow. Musically, the narrative stretches across a half- century, from the cotton fields of Corsicana to big- city Nashville, from the altar to divorce court, Jesus and Papa Joe’s Saloon. Others call it between-song banter. For Shaver, the stories are an essential part of the performance. So is the unrehearsed drama, like the beat- down of crossed-arms man.
With that score settled, the band kicks into “Black Rose”, a song that revolves around one of those Shaver lines you can’t shake: “The devil made me do it the first time. The second time I done it in on my own.”
Something else makes “Black Rose” special. It’s one of nine Shaver songs that the late Waylon Jennings recorded for his groundbreaking 1973 album, “Honky Tonk Heroes.” Bristling with attitude and electric guitars, that record marked the beginning of a new kind of music - outlaw country. Shaver’s songs were the antidote for the glossy, string- soaked sound of 1960s Nashville. But Shaver wasn’t trying to cure country music. He just wrote songs, the best he could think of.
No wonder Bob Dylan declared, in a 2009 song, that “I’m listening to Billy Joe Shaver and I’m reading James Joyce.” Mike Judge’s new animated series, “Tales from the Tour Bus,” will premiere later this year, featuring Shaver alongside such luminaries as George Jones and Tammy Wynette.
Yet while so many of his peers - Willie, Waylon, Johnny - are on a first-name basis with fame, Shaver continues his rolling attempt to introduce himself. He hopes that the next record or TV show might finally land him the recognition he deserves.
“He was so nice to me and so grateful that we were doing this,” says Judge, a fan well before the “Beavis and Butt-Head” days. “But every now and then he’d say, ‘What took you so long?’”
“He was a great guitar player,” Shaver says. “But he was a great person, too, and a good friend. He was my son. The only child I had. One night he wound up with a bunch of friends at a motel. He thought they was friends. I guess they was. I don’t know. But he wound up dead from a heroin overdose. The reason I’m telling you this is because every one of you all might have a friend or family member that’s into that s---. And it’s a good time to pull up. And you can pull up with Jesus Christ. I’m telling you. That’s all it takes. That’s all you’ll need. Jesus Christ is the one who made us all No. 2. He wants you to be yourself. So don’t worry about being a little different.”
Outcast
Different. He’s always felt that way. Forget outlaw. He calls himself an outcast. When he was growing up, his uncles mistreated him because he reminded them of his father, Buddy, a mean drunk who beat his mother. As a man, he saw his peers turn on him. Maybe it was competitiveness. Maybe he just didn’t bow down enough. Then there was Nashville. It never felt like home. That probably sealed his fate, at least commercially.
“It’s dangerous to not hang around Nashville,” says Tom T. Hall, a longtime friend who knew how to work within the industry. “If you’re around here, they know you’re alive.” Shaver has a small house in Waco, but his real home is the road. With longtime guitarist Jeremy Woodall at the wheel of his van, they drive hours at a time, across Texas, Georgia and as far as San Francisco if there’s a gig. The margins are slim. At Riley’s, he gets US$ 3,000. Half goes to the guys. Another chunk goes to tips. As the crowd files out, Shaver slips a US$ 100 bill to the sound guy. That morning, he did the same with a waitress at the Waffle House. “I don’t go to church, and when I see somebody that needs money I’ll give it to them,” he says. Shaver’s sets could serve as a master class in songwriting. Everything is grounded in reality, whether the Green Gables dance hall of “Honky Tonk Heroes” or the Mexican jail he landed in as a young man. He sings about faith and Texas pride, of unconditional love and deception. All with a hook. “Some days,” Hall says, “you wake up and you wonder how Billy Joe’s doing and you hear all the lines from his songs - ‘Fenced yard ain’t hole cards, and like is not never will be.’ “Then he’s got that line that says: ‘ I’ve got a good Christian raising and an eighth- grade education. Ain’t no use in you all treating me this way.’ That says a hell of a lot in just a few words.”