A lot of country singers wear ten-gallon hats, but Billy Joe Shaver is the only one who rode a bull in the rodeo, saw Hank Williams Sr. perform in person, lost portions of four of his fingers to a sawmill, worked at three Texas ranches at once and has, as he says, “done everything with cows and horses that you can do.” Although his official vocation is singer-songwriter — he’s responsible for “Georgia on a Fast Train,” “Live Forever” and most of the late Waylon Jennings’ classic “Honky Tonk Heroes” — he’s really a cowboy.
“I’ve just got it in my blood,” says Shaver by phone from his home in Waco, Texas. “I don’t own any horses or cattle or anything, but I still have that John Wayne attitude: ‘Don’t lay hands on me and I won’t lay hands on you. Don’t push me.'” Then he pauses, realizing that last bit may have been a shade too aggressive: “I’m not a sorehead or anything.”
Shaver, 75, has been around country music forever. After serving in the U.S. Navy as a 16-year-old, then unsuccessfully riding bulls (“You get throwed off a lot”), he hitchhiked to Nashville, Tenn., and hooked up with songwriter Bobby Bare, who paid him $50 a week to write for his publishing company. Shaver began to write beautiful songs in plain-spoken language for big-time stars, from Kris Kristofferson (“Good Christian Soldier”) to Elvis Presley (“You Asked Me To”) to the Allman Brothers Band (“Sweet Mama”). One day in the early ’70s, as the vague story goes, Shaver was strumming a song called “Willy the Wandering Gypsy and Me” on the streets of Texas, and Jennings happened by to listen. The country star asked, “You got any more of them cowboy songs?”
Shaver had “a whole sack full of them,” as he recalled to the Tennessean newspaper last year, and Jennings’s 1973 album established what came to be known as the outlaw country movement. Shaver kept writing songs and putting out solo albums, but his career never quite combusted, and he evolved into a behind-the-scenes Nashville character. “A lot of downs but then a lot of ups too,” Shaver says. “The downs make the ups go much nicer.”
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In 1993, Shaver put out his comeback, “Tramp on Your Street,” showcasing his hotshot son, Eddy, a guitarist who turned “Heart of Texas” and “Georgia on a Fast Train” into lost Carl Perkins steamrollers. Shaver seemed like he had finally redefined himself as a rock star, but he went through a terrible stretch in 1999-2000 when he lost his wife, Brenda, his mother and, finally, Eddy (to a heroin overdose). Shaver kept touring, although he took a conspicuous break from writing songs. He mostly kept it together until a bizarre, violent incident in 2007.
One night in March, a man named Billy Coker approached Shaver and grabbed his shoulders while he was drinking beer with his ex-wife at a saloon in Lorena, Texas. In Shaver’s retelling of the story, the man harassed him, flashed a knife and led him out the back door. Shaver followed, the man made a move and Shaver shot him in the jaw with his pistol. He was charged with aggravated assault, acquitted, then wrote a song about the incident called “Wacko From Waco.” After the trial, Shaver said, “Hopefully things will work out where we become friends enough so that he gives me back my bullet.”
Shaver finally returned to making albums when singer-songwriter Todd Snider encouraged him to do so. “I’d kind of given up on stuff,” Shaver says. They hooked up with veteran Nashville producers Gary Nicholson and Ray Kennedy, who hired session guitarist Dan Dugmore. “Ray said, ‘I picked a guitar player that plays close to how Eddy played,'” Shaver says. “He surprised me; he’s really great. I got real lucky. I don’t usually get lucky.”
Knopper is a freelancer.
When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Where: Space, 1245 Chicago Ave., Evanston
Tickets: $22-$36; 847-492-8860 or evanstonspace.com