Shaver remains the real deal
Billy Joe Shaver threw us for a scare in January with a last minute cancellation of his show at The Heights Theater. He was on tour and his arms began to ache, which made him think he was having a stroke. Turns out he had the flu.
So Shaver will roll into town Thursday for that rescheduled gig.
And he arrives perhaps at peak renown, thanks in part to a plum episode of Mike Judge’s “Tales From the Tour Bus,” an animated series about some of
the most mythical drinking and brawling country music players. Worth noting: Of the seven musicians represented in the series, only Shaver and Jerry Lee Lewis are still alive.
Shaver was also a featured guest on comedian Norm MacDonald’s new TV show.
Yet Shaver remains something of an underappreciated commodity outside of the scrappy legion that has over the past 40-plus years gravitated toward his rough-and-tumble, poetrylike songs that helped define the sound of the 1970s outlaw country movement.
Bobby Bare once told me of Shaver, “All that outlaw business was PR stuff, people building Waylon Jennings up in that image. But underneath, Waylon was a softhearted, sweet person. Billy Joe was the real deal. He was what everybody thought Waylon was.”
Which is to say Shaver can be warm — he signs memorabilia with a “Bless you, (name), your friend Billy Joe” — but also on the belligerent side of pugnacious.
He’s a guy who lost two fingers in a sawmill accident and survived quadruple bypass surgery after suffering a heart attack on stage. Initially, he thought he felt poorly because the venue was just too hot. He also shot a guy in the face and has found himself engaged in more brawls than he’s likely able to count.
Back in 1999, Shaver lost his wife and his mother just months apart, and then his son and guitarist died the following year. Kinky Friedman observed, “His life and art are so intertwined. As his life would be unraveling, his writing got sharper.”
Shaver found heartbreaking songs in the deaths. Check out “Star in My Heart,” about his son Eddy, who died of a drug overdose.
And he found some humor in the sawmill accident. Years ago, I asked Shaver what it felt like the moment his fingers came off:
“It hits you in the heart real quick. It never did bleed. It was real weird, I looked for my fingers in the saw dust and found ’em. Back then, nobody tried to help you with anything. So I picked up my fingers and got in the truck and drove to the doctor’s office. He was an old Navy doctor, Dr. Tabb, a big old tall guy. He said, ‘Damn son, looks like you got a little trouble there. What’re you doing with them fingers?’ I said, ‘I’d read something about Japanese people sewing them back on, so I thought maybe you can, too.’ He said, ‘Nah, this is Waco, Texas.’ ” Lessons learned: 1. Back then, nobody would help you with anything. 2. Don’t lose your fingers in Waco. This is all a long-winded way of saying Shaver is a survivor. But he’s put a lot of mileage on his body, so it’s always worth trying to catch somebody like Shaver while he’s still out on the road.