There are those who ride the bandwagons and those who blaze the trails. Billy Joe Shaver ain't no bandwagon rider.
He’s a man whose uncomplicated façade covers a complex, weathered soul that comes from a lifetime of cutting his own marks in the forest; an impressive mix of humbleness, confidence, strength and a strong sense of self worth.
Who else but Billy Joe Shaver would believe in their God-given talent enough to run their motorcycle into the door of songwriting legend Harlan Howard's home to attract his attention? His voice smiles with the memory as he tells the story. “When I got to town I had a motorcycle and I rode it onto his porch and hit his door with it. Then I backed up and revved the motor up. He came out of the door, he was a big old guy, scary and he said “What in the hell is going on out here, and who the hell are you?” I said “I’m Billy Joe Shaver, I’m the greatest songwriter that ever lived!” He looked at me and he said “Well, I thought I was!” He said “Park that thing and come on in.” And I did, I parked right there on his porch and went in and had a little whiskey, at least I think it was whisky. I don’t remember what it was now.” He laughs “We had a good old time and got to know each other. I had never laid eyes on him before.”
Harlan Howard wasn’t the only one left with a memorable first impression of Billy Joe. Compadre Records label mate, and longtime Waylon Jennings band member, Billy Ray Reynolds, recalls his first meeting with the now legendary Texan. “Pete Drake signed me to a writer’s contract and he said to me one morning, you’re going to run the publishing company. I said ‘Big Pete I can’t spell publishing. He said ‘Well just the same, you’re going to run publishing.’ I said ‘What’s my first job?’ He said ‘come back here.’ And he took me back to a little room and there were three huge boxes full of reel to reel tapes.”
“He said I want you to listen to all of these tapes and want you to write everyone a letter. If you like the song, keep it and send them a contract, if you don’t like the song send them an apology and tell them to keep on trying. He was that kind of guy, he said never destroy their inspiration, at least write them back and let them know that we acknowledge their tape and your letter will make them feel good. I felt that was kind of noble-istic at the time but I dug through those boxes, poured all these tapes out on the floor. I put ‘keeper box’ on one of them, and ‘send back’ box on the other.”
“The ‘send back’ box was packed full and there was still nothing in the ‘keeper box’. Out of all those tapes I picked up one and put it on the machine and I heard a gravelly voice starting to sing these songs. About three songs in it just blew my mind to the point where I just picked up the phone and called him. He lived in Waco Texas, working in a sawmill. I said ‘There is nothing I can do for you; I just want you to know that I’ve been listening, going through all these tapes and I think you’re a poet. I just wanted to tell you that, and I think you should never give up.’ Within about a week, I looked up one morning and there stood Billy Joe Shaver.”
“When he came in I had no rights to sign him or anything” Billy Ray continues, “but he wanted me to give him a contract so he could go back home and show all his friends. It wasn’t anything about money; it was ‘give me a contract so I can show people I’m a writer.’ I told him ‘I can’t do that, I’m really sorry that you’d driven almost a thousand miles from Waco.’ He went on to work for Bobby Bare and started writing and the rest is history, the Billy Joe Shaver story. About three weeks ago we went to play a date with Willie Nelson is Nebraska and asked him, I said ‘Billy Joe, do you remember me calling you one time?’ He said ‘Yeah, I sure do.” I said ‘Why did you come see me?’ He said ‘because you were the only one who had an office.’”
Billy Ray apologized for not being able to do anything for him that day, but Billy Joe stopped him. “Don’t apologize, because I lived for the next three years on you calling me on that phone call. That gave me the incentive to come.”
A little encouragement goes a long way with Billy Joe Shaver, coupled with the fact that giving up just isn’t in his vocabulary. Billy Joe picks up the story. “I’d stay there as long as I could then go back to Texas and earn more money and gather up a little summer wages and head back to Nashville and try and live off that, taking odd jobs here and there. In ’69 I had finally ran into a deal with Bobby Bare and he gave me fifty dollars a week and let me live in his office, little old one room thing. I did an enormous amount of writing there.”
Life in Nashville had its ups and downs for Billy Joe, but by the mid-seventies he was getting pretty discouraged. “I knew I had really good music and I couldn’t figure out why something hadn’t happened. I would send things around and then I’d hear things exactly like it with somebody else’s name on it. It was kind of sad, they were all originals, and it hurt me hard.” A chain-link of events began on the eve he made his final decision to leave Music City, that would end up being a major turning point in his career. “I was over at Bobby Bare’s house telling him goodbye. He was telling me ‘you know you ought to stay.’ I said I can’t, this just ain’t working out right. I’m going back to Texas and write some more songs, get my head back together. See what I can do.”
“I said I might go back to rodeo-ing or something like that, but I was so beat up I couldn’t do that, I just said that.” he recalls with a laugh “Anyway, a ring came on the phone and Bobby answered it. It was Kris Kristofferson and Vince Edwards. They were out swarmin’ and they came around. Bobby said ‘wait Billy, I want you to meet Kris.’ I had already met Kris kind of fleetingly. They all came in and I said ‘Well, I’ll just leave’ and Bobby said no, stay there. Sit down there and play him one of your songs. Kris said alright, but neither one of us really cared if I stayed. I played him a song I didn’t think he’d really care that much about. I played him a song I’d just written called Christian Solider and he just grab a hold of it and said ‘I’m going to record that song.’ For some reason I thought they were all making a joke of me because I’d had that done to me before.” Wishing them cursory good luck, Billy Joe got into his truck and left Nashville.
Kris Kristofferson was indeed serious and recording Good Christian Solider on his Silver Tongued Devil album. Billy Joe got word that Kris had followed through on his promise and headed back to Nashville one more time. The friendship became cemented, and Kris took an active interest in Billy Joe’s career, helping get his first album off the ground. “He actually went in and borrowed money and did my first album, he produced my first album. He was so good to me, he said he just felt compelled to help me because the songs were so good. He borrowed the money from the bank for Old Five and Dimers, my first album and we got it done. I got on Monument Records and they held my record up for a whole year because Kris’ album was coming out and there was no way in the world you were going to beat that, so they waited a year and then the label folded before they could really get mine out good.”
Proving that success is getting up one more time than you fall down, his perseverance ended up not only changing his life, but the history of country music.
“During that time right after I recorded that album I went down to Texas to the first Dripping Springs Reunion.” Going along for the ride with Sharon Rucker, (who later married Harlan Howard) so she could have a man along to change tires on the station wagon if need be, Billy Joe found himself back in Texas on the Fourth of July, 1972. “Everybody was there. Tex Ritter, Sons of the Pioneers, all the guys I used to love. Kris Kristofferson was there, he was as hot as a firecracker, Waylon and Willie, just everybody I knew and loved. I didn’t really know them but I did love them.”
Splitting off from Sharon, he soon found himself sitting in a trailer with a guitar in his hand. “They were passing a guitar around. Someone passed the guitar to me and I played Willy, the Wandering Gypsy and Me. Someone came storming out of the back room. It was Waylon, and Billy Ray was the one that was with him, of all things. Waylon said ‘Who’s song is that?” I said mine. He said “Well I’ve got to have it. I’ll record that right now” I said well you can’t. He said well when I get to Nashville you got anymore of those cowboy songs? I said yeah, I got a sack full of them. He said well I’ll do a whole album. Of course that was crazy talk, but I believed him.”
“I actually went against my own wishes and went back to Nashville again. I chased him around for nearly six months. He just wouldn’t listen. They’d say he was on another line and I knew that he didn’t have but the one phone.” he laughs “I kept trying and trying and trying and I was running low on money and everything. I was down to do or die.”
Billy Joe’s tenacity and belief in his songs had kept him going for over a decade. Before leaving Nashville for the next last time, he gave one last shot at getting Waylon to listen to his songs. “I caught him over at Studio A. The walls were lined with girls, and all kinds of people. They knew Waylon was really fixing to do something big, they just didn’t know when or how. Everybody knew that including myself, everybody but Waylon. He came out of the studio and I was down at other end of the studio and Captain Midnight had just come by and handed me a hundred dollar bill. He said Waylon said he had caught a glimpse of you, take this hundred and leave. I told him to tell him to take that hundred dollar bill and stick it where the sun don’t shine.”
“Of course I think Midnight just pocketed it.” he adds with a chuckle, “I come out of that hall mad, and Waylon was coming out of the booth at the same time and I hollered at him: ‘Waylon.’ He turned around and glared at me and I said it’s me Billy Joe. I’m the one you told you were going to do a whole album of my songs. I don’t care if you do a whole album of my songs but I tell you what you’re going to do – you’re going to listen to them now or I’m going to whip your ass right now in front of everybody.’”
“There was a bunch of old bikers with him, and they were just foaming at the mouth. They were going to kill me in a few seconds. Waylon held them back, and grab me by the arm and steered me into another room. Of course, I had my guitar with me because I was fixing to leave. I was hitchhiking then, I’d lost my truck, it just went out. I was going to hitchhike back to Texas. He said “Hoss, don’t you ever do anything like that. You could get killed. If it had been anyone else but me you’d have been killed. I said Well, I’m down to do or die anyway, it don’t make much difference.”
“He said ‘I remember that one song, and I’ll do that one song. I tell you what; I’ll make you a deal. You play me a song and if I don’t like it I’ll stop you and out the door you go. Is that fair enough? I said yeah. I played him Ain’t No God in Mexico of course he said okay, I’ll do that one too. Then I played him Five and Dimers and so on, all the songs that were on that album. When I got to Honky Tonk Heroes he said ‘I’m going to do them regardless of what’s going on. I’m going to do them.’”
Billy Joe continues. “Chet Atkins was all over him to do these certain songs and he just pushed him aside and started doing mine and boy did they get mad at him. Waylon really stuck his neck out. He was the one who took the heat. I didn’t know what heat was, I was just the guy that was around hollering at him every once in awhile telling him he was ruining my melody and stuff like that. I didn’t have sense enough to know the greatest singer in the world was doing my songs. He finally got them done and it did just exactly what people said it wouldn’t do, and everybody started writing like that then.” Billy Joe then makes the understatement of the century. “It changed things around a lot.”
Along with the good comes the bad – and life changed dramatically for Billy Joe as the success of “Honky Tonk Heroes” grew. “I went kind of crazy. I was having a lot of fun, maybe too much fun. I went and married my first wife again. I married her actually three times. I married her for the second time and brought her and my boy up. I was writing like crazy. But then again I was doing a lot of other things like crazy too. But she helped me a lot, corral myself a little. And Eddy, it really helped to have Eddy back. From then on no one had to give me awards. I got nominated for a Grammy about 5 times but I never got one. When someone else was recording my songs that’s when it was really great for me.”
Eddy was like a prodigy. He started playing when he was about five or six. He could play anything. Drums, it didn’t matter. When he was about thirteen Dickey Betts gave him a 57 Stratocaster and then he gave him a 335 that belonged to Duane Allman. Dickey saw a lot more than I did. I was busy writing songs. When Eddy turned thirteen I went ahead and took him on the road with me. I took Eddy out of school. I remember the principal told me ‘Isn’t this a little early to be taking a kid out of school? But if you promise not to bring him back I’ll cover for you.’ I said alright! Eddy always was a little cocky.” he adds.
“He came from Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Winters and Dickey Betts and those guys and he made it pull in towards me. Of course I was just country as an onion. Actually it was Texas music, that’s the way we play down in Texas. When you come down here you have to play that way, have that extra kick like Waylon did. You just kind of have to have that or somebody will throw something at you. It worked out real good for both of us because we grew up together.” Then Billy Joe’s voice becomes quiet, a little ragged with emotion “I sure hated to lose him.”
Life delves out tragedy as offhandedly as it seems to shell out blessings. There wouldn’t be much argument from many that between 1999 and 2001 he was given more than his fair share. Billy Joe lost both his mother and his wife Brenda to cancer within a month of each other in 1999. Tragically Eddy Shaver died Dec. 31, 2000 of a drug overdose. Grief compounds when it's a child. Children aren't expected to pass first. "It’s not natural. We all got insurance on me. We never got insurance on anyone else. Everyone thought I’d go first."
Billy Joe did what he knew best, and finding new strength from being brought to his knees, he carried on, releasing their last album as ‘Shaver,’ The Earth Rolls On posthumously in the spring of 2001. About the same time Billy Joe suffered a heart attack on stage at Gruene Hall in New Braunfels, Texas
In these days of glitz, gloss, glamour and mega stardom more often than not it’s the recognition of the songwriter that go by the wayside. Although unrecognized via mainstream industry channels, there are those who appreciate and understand the impact that Billy Joe’s music has had over the course of his career. The Americana Music Association honored him in September with the “Lifetime Songwriting Achievement Award”. This award, save for a few BMI songwriting nods over the years, was surprisingly his first.
“I didn’t know I was going to get it or anything and it was great. I’d never felt that feeling before. I’d thought there wouldn’t be anything to it, but it’s nice to get a pat on the back every now and again, and that’s exactly what that was. Of course at my age it could be fatal if they hit you too hard.” he quips, “The people who gave it to me, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Joe Ely and Butch Hancock, are old friends of mine, they made a hoot out of it. They went through some stories I’d been trying to live down for years.”
With genuine humbleness he continues. “I never expected anything mainly because, and I know this sounds like some kind of hero, but I actually it didn’t bother me. This is a hobby to me. I love to write. It’s just a labor of love to me. BMI has given me awards just because they had to but this here meant a lot to me, especially from the Americana Music Association.”
“I enjoy Americana music. It makes it a little easier for me to turn the radio on. I used to not listen to the radio and now I do. I listen to the Americana stations. Just about everybody I know listens to them. Not anything against the others. The others are a different kind of deal and a lot of people like that kind of stuff, that’s fine, but this here I get to hear some really good songs. You don’t know you’ve missed it – ‘til you turn it on. It’s almost like going back in time like with Fats Domino and all those guys were singing on the radio. You can turn on the radio listen to some newcomer or somebody who’s been around for awhile. It’s wonderful music. It’s like art. To me it’s like a manifestation of art and I expect the whole world to tune in and turn around to Americana.”
As the music industry struggles to find sure-footing, Billy Joe continues his straightforward trek. On November 19th he’ll release his first solo album, Freedom’s Child in many years on Compadre Records. The project finds him reunited with R.S. Field, gifted roots-rock producer of Billy Joe’s 1993 album with son Eddy, Tramp On Your Street. Go to Part 2
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