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As originally published in Buddy Magazine, August issue — Mary Jane Farmer, Scene In Town
He may sing “It’s hard to be an outlaw who ain’t wanted any more,” but there’s certainly no one wanted around any more than Billy Joe Shaver. He gives actualism to the Tom Petty line, “…you never slow down, you never grow old.”
This septuagenarian — Billy Joe said he’s turning 75 in mid-August — has a released yet one more CD, just a couple of weeks before that birthday. “Long In The Tooth” holds 10 new songs, all of which Billy Joe wrote, some alone and some with co-writers Ray Kennedy and Gary Nicholson, who also produced the project, and the title cut with Paul Gleason.
Shaver said he has lost count of just how many records he’s recorded. Wikipedia lists 22 records and three compilations including a 2007 “Greatest Hits” CD. That’s got to be somewhere close to an accurate count. The first one was in 1973, the onset of the Progressive County/Outlaw/Redneck Rock switch from Nashville style country to Texas country music.
Shaver was one of those, as was his forever-friend Willie Nelson, in Nashville in those late 1960s and early1970s years. He had tried to hitchhike to Caifornia, but somehow got a wrong turn and was let off in Memphis, and the next ride he got took him into Nashville. He got a job songwriting. Soon Waylon Jennings, who became a co-writer with him at times, released a record “Honky Tonk Heroes,” filled with songs Shaver had written or co-written. That was the same time, 1973-ish, that Shaver released his own first project, “Old Five & Dimers,” and hit the scene as a performer as well as a songwriter.
And it was those two, along with Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Guy Clark and a few others who were, basically, fed up with trying to fit into the Nashville mold. They, many of them, outlaws they were called, moved back to Texas where they could make the music they wanted to make.
Outlaws? Does the term ‘outlaw’ get thrown around too much these days? Shaver answered that question, “There’s no way to control who uses what terms. But when we came into Nashville, 1966, when the revolution started, we were more like outcasts than outlaws. We were doing something completely different. We didn’t want to squeeze into those sequined suits. We wore blue jeans and stuff and wrote about getting’ down to the truth. I know, it’s quite a platform, but it’s proven itself to hold up.”
It was mid-70s, too, when Elvis Presley recorded “You Asked Me To,” co-written by Shaver and Jennings. Billy Joe said he didn’t know about the recording until after Presley’s death. “Someone told me, and I looked on the record that Elvis put it out on. My name wasn’t on it (the credits), only Waylon’s. I had the song pretty much written and kind of gave it to Waylon, and he put it in a different company than BMI or ASCAP (licensing). I never got any money from that recording.”
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Shaver said that Elvis actually recorded the song twice, and that he liked Elvis’ versions of it. “He had his own style and it was good.”
Billy Joe never met Elvis, nor did he meet another superstar, Bob Dylan, who recorded another of his songs, “Old Five & Dimers,” in the 70s. “He did it really well, too, two versions of it.” Again, Shaver said, he didn’t make any money off those recordings. “But I’ve not ever been one to jump on top of a desk and start screaming about it. I don’t know, it’s all right.”
That was sort of common, especially in those days, Shaver explained. “A lot of things didn’t get signed. But I wasn’t writing for the money. Music is the cheapest psychiatry there is, and I still need one of those. I live to write songs.”
He added, though, that he trusted people. “Sometimes, I trusted the wrong people. You’d think I’d care, but I don’t care. If I were a wealthy person right now, I wouldn’t have written the songs I have written. I’m in good shape. It makes me feel good to write what I write, and it’s built my character. I’ve got stuff that money can’t buy.”
One of that “stuff” is his faith. Billy Joe has not had an easy life, by anyone’s standards. His father left his mother before he was even born, and it was primarily his grandmother who raised him. He gives her, Birdie Lee Watson, the glory for giving him a “good Christian raising.” That faith kept him steadfast when he lost two fingers in a work-related catastrophe, and forced him re-learn guitar pickin’ in his own style. And in the one year that he lost his mother, his wife, and his son Eddy, faith kept him going through the grief. Since then, he has recovered from a heart attack and worked through legal problems and criminal accusations, all the while never letting up.
He includes that faith in his songs, too, powerful and yet down-to-earth lyrics like, “He told the truth and they hung Him up to die. The Son of God, who created you and I. He said it in the Good Book, letters in red. But we keep on forgetting every word He said. Jesus Christ hung on the cross for you and I.”
Oh, yeah — there’s another relative Billy Joe is pretty proud of. “My great-great-great-great-grandfather, Evan Thomas Watson, was one of the three men who formed the Republic of Texas. I’m kind of proud of him. There’s a monument in Austin forhim and the other two fellows. It was a hair job. There were a lot of outlaws and gangsters and other kinds who ran around Texas back then, and they started making sense out of it.”
Billy Joe laughs a lot and easily at earlier experiences and smiles when remembering old friends.
About Fort Worth long-timer Jerry Max Lane: “Oh, Gawd. We used to run around together. And he and I wrote a song together, ‘Poetic Justice.’ I still love him, he’s a good old boy, a good’n.”
And about playing at the Kerrville Folk Festival, and then playing around the festival campgrounds with another long-time friend, the late Townes Van Zandt. “It came a rain, like it does so much of the time at Kerrville (Festival). It was a long strip of mud like, that went downhill. We started sliding down it, and it made them mad, and they threw us out.” He laughed hard, that kind of laugh that comes from the belly up, about that one. “I went back once, to see Kinky Friedman play.”
A little harder, at 75, to laugh about the touring, but Shaver is touring still. This month, he’ll mostly be in California and Arizona, and return to feel that native Texas feel late in the month. His tour schedule is on his Website, shown below, and one of those nearby stops will be at The Mule Barn in Justin on August 29. The other August gigs are in and around the Texas Panhandle. And he’ll be closing out the Shiner Sunday series at Love & War in Texas (Plano), Oct. 5. Texas music lovers Melvis and Kerry Brooks are flying over from the United Kingdom especially for that concert.
“I just got back of hard touring in Washington DC and around. We’d play three nights in a row and have a night off, to drive 500 or 600 miles for the next gig.” He still likes playing the smaller clubs. Why? “Because they are full of people just like me. I fit well in those clubs and pack them, of course. I like the people in the small clubs. When you get up on those big stages, it’s different. You don’t get to see the people you are playing for, just see the bright lights.”
“It’s Hard To Be An Outlaw” is getting quite a bit of airplay already, as it’s already been sent to most radio stations. Billy Joe said that “Willie released it as a solo a couple of years ago, and he sings it with me this time. His version is quite different than mine, and that’s how it’s s’posed to be.”
One of tho two CD producers, Gary Nicholson said, “Getting to produce the new Billy Joe record is one of my favorite things I’ve ever done, and I’m proud of the songs Billy Joe and I co-wrote for the record. He is one of our great American music treasures — and my dear old friend.”
This newest CD could also be a “Who’s Who in Texas Music” project too. Helping out, besides Nicholson and Kennedy, are Leon Russell on keyboards, Tony Joe White on electric guitar and vocals, Larry Franklin and Stuart Duncan on fiddles, Chris Carmicahel on strings, Mickey Rafael on harmonica and juice harp, Joel Guzman on accordion, Pig Robbins on piano, Travis Toy on banjo; and more background vocals offered up by Shawn Camp, John Randall, Siobhan Kennedy, and of course, Willie himself. It is available, of course, on all the Internet music sales sites.
‘I don’t ever count on tomorrow. We’re all just here for today, but while I’m here, I’m going to write and play. I’m in pretty good shape to do it,” said the living legend.
Aug. 29 — The Mule Barn, Justin
Oct. 5 — Love & War in Texas, Plano, 4 p.m.