Media Roundup: Outlaw Legend
At 75, honky-tonk hero Billy Joe Shaver may be “Long in the Tooth,” but he’s still an ornery threat to pop-country imposters.
By Jesse Hughey
Photography: Jim McGuire
Shaver is the man whom Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and other Outlaw country artists emulated in the early days. This is a man who lost his son, his wife, and his own mother in the span of two years — and, in the case of his son and mother, he went on to play shows the very same night each died. This is a Texan who has worked as a rodeo cowboy, lost two fingers to a sawmill, had a heart attack onstage, and shot a man in the face outside a bar just south of Waco. This is the songwriter who wrote almost every song on Jennings’ breakout 1973 album, Honky Tonk Heroes.
At age 75, he is indeed a legend. And with the release of 2014’s widely acclaimed Long in the Tooth, his first album of new songs in seven years, it is clear that he is still very much a living one at that. In fact, Long in the Tooth marks his first album to make the Billboard 200, peaking at No. 157.
“I’m proud of it,” Shaver says about the album by telephone from New York City. It’s the day after he and Nelson partnered up on The Late Show With David Letterman for a memorable take on “Hard to Be an Outlaw,” the track that kicks off Long in the Tooth (and is also featured on Nelson’s 2014 Band of Brothers). “We worked so hard on that thing.”
Shaver marvels at the album’s appearance on the Billboard charts: “It’s amazing, isn’t it? ... I don’t watch them things — I never had any reason to.”
Similarly, he never had much reason to watch awards shows such as the upcoming Blake Shelton- and Luke Bryan-hosted Academy of Country Music Awards. The chances of him ever winning an ACM award are slim to none, and that suits Shaver just fine.
“I’ve never gotten any awards from them, and I’ve never tried to,” he says. “I just write and sing. Waylon told me a long time ago, ‘If I ever catch you trying to get an award by writing a song, I will shoot you right between the eyes.’ ... If it happens, fine. If not, fine. That ain’t the reason I write.”
It’s ironic that his one album to achieve success as measured by Billboard has a song like “Hard to Be an Outlaw,” which laments the state of country music and mocks the chart-topping posers. (“Some superstars nowadays get too far off the ground/Singin’ ’bout the backroads they never have been down.”) Shaver has little to say about the prevalence of pop country, as “that ‘Outlaw’ song kind of laid it out there,” but he is optimistic that his latest record’s success shows that there is still a desire for the genuine article.
In fact, decades into his career, he still describes himself as a trendsetter, noting that artists he has influenced over the years are gaining in popularity.
“I think the worm is gonna turn,” he says.
No matter which way the country winds blow, Shaver will be working all the while in his denim uniform, soldiering on come what may, as he has in times of triumph and tragedy alike. For all the hardships he has endured, he says, he has no time for self-pity. He meets people at his shows who’ve had it as bad or worse. “I never thought I was in bad shape anyways,” he says. “It seems like stuff like this happens to people, and I just happen to be one of them. It’s life. You have to play the cards that’s dealt you.”
As for what would cause him to cancel a show — other than not knowing about the show in the first place, as can happen with incompetent booking agents — he tries to think of something. Along with performing a show the very day he lost his son and the very day he lost his mother, he drove three hours to make a gig the day he was acquitted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, charges that stemmed from the 2007 shooting in Lorena, Texas.
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