Billy Joe Shaver - Live At Billy Bob’s Texas
By:George Peden,Sr.Staff Journalist
On a fan value for dollars invested scale, Billy Joe Shaver delivers generously on his latest outing, Live At Billy Bob’s Texas. The laid-back Shaver comes through with an album and DVD combo that will excite those who love the talent of a guy who, sadly, missed the wider fame he deserves. The album, released late in 2012 is, for this biased fan, brilliant. With a voice made for tunes sung in barrooms with sawdust and high back stools, and with all the hits covered, and a couple of bonus cuts, Shaver is for those who like their Texas music raw and unfiltered.
Shaver has a history made for the music he plays. His CV reads like a novel and offers insight to a guy who made the struggle and scored just off target. A truth in the tune “ Georgia On A Fast Train” reveals it was his “good Christian raisin’, his eighth grade education and his grandma’s old age pension“ that steered him to where he is today.
Along the way though came the journey that shaped its way to pen and paper, and eventually to recorded vinyl.
There were the teenage years in the Navy. There was time spent trying to be a rodeo bronco. Then the succession of nowhere and nothing jobs, including time in a sawmill. It was a job rewarding Shaver with machinery slicing off part of two fingers on his right hand. There was the brawling and the wild and out-of-control times in the 70s and 80s, there were the marriages (he married wife Brenda three times and divorced her two) and happy times with the birth of John Edwin (“Eddy”) in 1962.
Eddy Shaver, credited with the reinvention of his dad’s halting career in the 90s, lived his moniker, passing to God after a lethal heroin overdose. “Fast Eddy” died December 31, 2000. He was 38.
Brenda and Billy Joe’s mother were lost to cancer a year earlier.
The life and turbulent times of Corsicana’s favoured son have built on a solid song writing career first encouraged in 1973 with Waylon Jennings. Jennings heard the potential and recorded mostly Shaver tunes for the now iconic Honky Tonk Heroes.
The Outlaw country movement had its newest recruit.
Those times come to life, as Shaver (and his hot three piece band) crank the energy and take us back to times when the song was everything. Across a ride of 20 memorable tunes and two bonus cuts, Shaver steers us through a trip of tunes that defined a time and labelled him forever.
“Heart of Texas “the poignant “Honky Tonk Heroes,” the thighslappin’ tickle of “That’s What She Said Last Night”, the dangerous tone of “Black Rose” to the Waco shootout, where Billy Joe shot a man in self-defence, “Whacko from Waco” –the best is all here.
If that’s not value enough, then there’s the DVD. Shaver’s excited laid-back drawl drives the concert. The aging denim-clad tunesmith still delivers. This is a must- have from one of country music’s best chunks of coal who is without doubt a diamond.
It’s a fair comment: this combo pack has not rested over the last week. See it. Hear it. You’ll know why.
www.billyjoeshaver.com
On a fan value for dollars invested scale, Billy Joe Shaver delivers generously on his latest outing, Live At Billy Bob’s Texas. The laid-back Shaver comes through with an album and DVD combo that will excite those who love the talent of a guy who, sadly, missed the wider fame he deserves. The album, released late in 2012 is, for this biased fan, brilliant. With a voice made for tunes sung in barrooms with sawdust and high back stools, and with all the hits covered, and a couple of bonus cuts, Shaver is for those who like their Texas music raw and unfiltered.
Shaver has a history made for the music he plays. His CV reads like a novel and offers insight to a guy who made the struggle and scored just off target. A truth in the tune “ Georgia On A Fast Train” reveals it was his “good Christian raisin’, his eighth grade education and his grandma’s old age pension“ that steered him to where he is today.
Along the way though came the journey that shaped its way to pen and paper, and eventually to recorded vinyl.
There were the teenage years in the Navy. There was time spent trying to be a rodeo bronco. Then the succession of nowhere and nothing jobs, including time in a sawmill. It was a job rewarding Shaver with machinery slicing off part of two fingers on his right hand. There was the brawling and the wild and out-of-control times in the 70s and 80s, there were the marriages (he married wife Brenda three times and divorced her two) and happy times with the birth of John Edwin (“Eddy”) in 1962.
Eddy Shaver, credited with the reinvention of his dad’s halting career in the 90s, lived his moniker, passing to God after a lethal heroin overdose. “Fast Eddy” died December 31, 2000. He was 38.
Brenda and Billy Joe’s mother were lost to cancer a year earlier.
The life and turbulent times of Corsicana’s favoured son have built on a solid song writing career first encouraged in 1973 with Waylon Jennings. Jennings heard the potential and recorded mostly Shaver tunes for the now iconic Honky Tonk Heroes.
The Outlaw country movement had its newest recruit.
Those times come to life, as Shaver (and his hot three piece band) crank the energy and take us back to times when the song was everything. Across a ride of 20 memorable tunes and two bonus cuts, Shaver steers us through a trip of tunes that defined a time and labelled him forever.
“Heart of Texas “the poignant “Honky Tonk Heroes,” the thighslappin’ tickle of “That’s What She Said Last Night”, the dangerous tone of “Black Rose” to the Waco shootout, where Billy Joe shot a man in self-defence, “Whacko from Waco” –the best is all here.
If that’s not value enough, then there’s the DVD. Shaver’s excited laid-back drawl drives the concert. The aging denim-clad tunesmith still delivers. This is a must- have from one of country music’s best chunks of coal who is without doubt a diamond.
It’s a fair comment: this combo pack has not rested over the last week. See it. Hear it. You’ll know why.
www.billyjoeshaver.com
