In memory of Eddy Shaver

The last song on Billy Joe Shaver's Victory album is about a girl born on the farm who would dance "every time she got the chance," who started "stepping out late at night when she was just 13 years old."
Shaver sings, with his usual conviction, "she just danced her young life away, from dusk 'til dawn, 'til the cows come home, as long as the music would play . . . I made her my wife and she danced through my life like a whirlwind in a storm."

Shaver is perhaps the best and most unlikely songwriter-poet of several generations. He married the girl, Brenda, when she was 16. And divorced her. And married her again. And divorced her again. He's seen the world from top to bottom, and today he lives with her again -- not so far from where he grew up in Central Texas -- as Brenda fights a hard fight with cancer.
Brenda is, in one way or another, in a lot of Shaver's songs, which are often autobiographical. His mother, Victory Odessa Watson, lends her name to the title of Shaver's album, Victory, which is perhaps the best and most unlikely spiritual album of 1998.   Listening to Victory and the next album, Electric Shaver, tells us all we need to know about Billy Joe Shaver. Sure, his other albums -- the ones he's released and the ones other people released without ever paying him a dime -- are essential to any serious Americana fan, but the two newest ones share the contrasts and complexities that, in shifting proportions, make people interesting and create rare artists.
Victory is a simple tribute to family and spiritual yearning, right from the opening, a cappella "Son of Calvary." Billy Joe and his son, Eddy Shaver, did the album together, alone, in Hollywood; Billy Joe wrote and sang the songs and added a little guitar, while Eddy added guitar and
dobro.
Electric Shaver, also from New West Records, blends country, rock, and blues so naturally that the mix seems simple.
"A fan came up to Billy in Amsterdam and said what's cool about the band is that Billy doesn't know he's in a rock 'n' roll band, and that the band doesn't know the singer is country," Eddy said, laughing. "The band has turned into a power trio. At times it sounds like ZZ Top with Billy
singing, and at times like the Tennessee Three."
Eddy cited the Rolling Stones as a rock band "that's done some great country tracks."
"We just love doing what we do, and we love all those types of music," Eddy said. "It's not supposed to work, but it does. We started to find the sound when we dropped the fiddles and harmonica."
Eddy dropped out of school in the 10th grade to play guitar on Willie Nelson's Redheaded Stranger tour and began bringing his own sound to his father's band. He's also toured with Dwight Yoakam and others.
"I don't think I was very good back then, but I've learned a lot," he said. "Everything we do is real honest," Eddy said. "If you see us on stage, we're just being honest. Our music is about as close to the soul as you can get."
 Billy Joe said Eddy is "a lot like I was when I was his age. We had to grow up together. Luckily this thing is working now. We went through all kinds of hell trying to play these little country joints and having people tell us we weren't country. As if we gave a shit. That was just the direction he came from with his playing, and where I was coming from with my lyrics, and I'm glad we stuck to it."
Other musicians, critics, people who care about words, and hard-core honky-tonkers come close to worshipping the denim-clad Billy Joe. People who've recorded his songs include Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, The Allman Brothers, David Allen Coe, Tom T. Hall, Patty Loveless, Roy Acuff, BR 549, and many others. Four scored No. 1 country hits: Bobby Bare with "Ride Me Down Easy," Johnny Rodriguez with "I Couldn't Be Me Without You," Waylon Jennings with "Just Because You Asked Me To," and John Anderson with "Old Chunk of Coal." Billy Joe wrote or co-wrote 10 of the 11 songs on Jennings' 1973 breakthrough album, Honky Tonk Heroes, which some say launched the outlaw movement in country music.
As a child in the early 1940s, Billy Joe danced for nickels at the Waco bar where his mother served drinks to roustabouts, soldiers, and gamblers. Growing up, he fought often, "cranked and drank," got kicked out of the Navy, did odd jobs, worked as a cowboy, and somewhere along the line began to write and perform personal songs that bleed authenticity.
"I have been lucky to be born again, really," Billy Joe said. "When I wrote 'Old Chunk of Coal,' I was born again. There was the old bad-ass guy that a lot of people didn't like and a lot did. I think the world of him because he died, and now I'm here. I'm young again.
"When I go back and look at old songs or some I haven't completed, it's like co-writing with somebody else. That guy -- as bad as he was -- was good enough to die for me, so this part of me could live. I was carousing, drinking, fighting, and didn't give a damn. Everybody else would get a lawyer; I would just punch people in the mouth. I did a lot of stuff I'm not proud of.
"Today, I'm still as tough as the other fellow, but I realize a lot of things I didn't then. I grew up to my songs, actually. Each day, I try to be more like Jesus. But we've still got our salt. We still come out and kick ass," Billy Joe said.
"The writing comes from down on the street level. I ain't never got above that. I know my limitations. I know what I write best about. I write about things that happen to me, and they pretty much happen to everybody. I'm lucky enough to still be kicking around and rubbing elbows with everyday folks. And it's still coming out. I'm lucky, gifted, to be able to put these things into words that a lot of people try to say, but can't." He called writing an inexpensive form of psychiatry. "You get inside yourself, and it creates some kind of release when you get your thoughts down on paper," Billy Joe said. "Everybody ought to write."
Talent and fame don't always come together. "As long as I'm satisfied with what I'm doing, I'm a success," Billy Joe said. "I'm my worst critic. The people in the industry know what I'm doing is genuine. I'm not copying anybody. That's why I get respect from them. Popularity matters, but doesn't matter that much." Eddy agreed. "If I was him, I wouldn't trade places with anybody," Eddy said. "We could all, as artists, put down our guns and go the other way to make a bunch of money, but we stick to what we believe in. Everybody in the industry knows who we are."
Billy Joe said his son has influenced him by "being so good. I'm having to keep up with him, really having to go for it. We have a lot of respect. A lot of it I had to earn. And he did too. But I had to earn it back. I lost it when I was out carousing around because he was getting a real good look at what not to do. I know that he knows the difference between right and wrong, and that's about as much as you can ask. The rest is up to him." Such high quality over so many years creates high standards. "Shaver is the band's name, and it took a while to earn being half of that title," Eddy said. "We finally got the music up to the words, which is a hard thing to do." Eddy has written a few songs with his father. One, "Live Forever" from the Victory album, includes the lyrics, "You're gonna miss me when I'm gone, nobody here will ever find me, but I will always be around, just like the songs I leave behind me."
With Brenda's illness, touring to support the new album is difficult. Eddy said it is hard to put into words what the family is going through. "Sometimes I still refuse to believe anything is wrong with her. Other times, I might break down and start crying. My mother has been a great inspiration to me. It's just me and my dad and my mom -- no brothers and sisters. She's pretty much been everything." Doctors are not optimistic about Brenda's chances. "The best they can do is make it recede, but God is able," Billy Joe said. "I've seen stranger things happen." On the last song on the new album, Billy Joe sings, "She can dance, Lord God, she can dance. She's still dancin' to this very day. She can dance, Lord God, she can dance. She's still dancin' my heart away."
Tom Geddie

Eddy Lives

He was born in 1962 / with a guitar in his hands he was meant to be a legend and play in his daddy's band before he was even 15 / he knew what life to choose he loved those smoke filled honky tonks and playng the white mans blues Eddy had a way / to make that fender come alive the way he used to bend those strings / you'd swear he made 'em cry he could play for hours and had a soft spoken way I 'm glad I got to meet the man / before he went away Eddy was a good man / just like ol' Billy Joe Eddy was the arrow / Billy was the bow Eddy had to leave us / for another show he had a gig in heaven and couldn't tell Jesus no Eddy's gonna live forever / cuz I heard it in his song with the angels watching over him / the eagles wings are strong with Jesus in the audience and Brenda oh so proud Eddy's gonna live forever and forever play it loud Eddy was a good man / just like ol' Billy Joe Eddy was the arrow / Billy was the bow Eddy had to leave us / for another show he had a gig in heaven and couldn't tell Jesus no

Jeff Sullivan 2001

From: Brian Burns 
Sent: Monday, January 01, 2001 2:34 PM
Subject: Eddy Shaver

I received word of Eddy Shaver's death shortly before midnight on New
Years Eve, just before the ringing in of the new millennium. Eddy was a
maverick who dared to bring his masterful rock 'n roll sensibilities into the
more country-flavored styling of his father's music and, although I never
got the privilege of meeting Eddy, I have always had, and will always have,
tremendous respect for artists who are not afraid to cross boundaries
and make music from the heart and soul. Together, Eddy and his father made
musical magic. Eddy's life and his music brought us to the precipice of
a new millennium, and now it is up to us to follow him into the
future...continuing our fight to take "Our Kind Of Music" boldly to the
masses, remembering the great ones who got us as far along as they could
before they left us: B.W. Stevenson, Townes Van Zandt, Stevie Ray
Vaughn, Doug Sahm, Faron Young, Lefty Frizzell, and now...Eddy Shaver.
Thank you for the music, Eddy, and may you travel gently and peacefully
tonight upon God's own open road.

 --BB