Post by tcb on May 5, 2004 12:02:10 GMT -5
His lyrics tell of hardship, but Billy Joe Shaver may see his fortunes turn
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.
Allison V. Smith / DMN
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.
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.
Allison V. Smith / DMN
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.