In Loving Memory of Eddy Shaver 6

Eddy Shaver at Lone Star Cafe, Dallas - 1999

photo by Leigh Anne also at Lone Star Cafe >>

Eddy Shaver, Rockin R, Denton
March 17, 2000

Irene, Eddy, Tina
Picture taken Dec. 10, 2000 at Texana Grill in Arlington, TX.

Picture taken Dec. 31, 2000 at Poodie's Hilltop Bar by Jonmark Pierce.
Willie Nelson showing his support.

Respected guitarist Eddy Shaver, son of legendary Texas singer-songwriter Billy Joe Shaver, died in his sleep early Sunday in Waco. He was 38.

No official cause of death has been confirmed, said Shaver spokesman Mark Pucci. Services are scheduled for Thursday at the Heritage Memorial Funeral Home in Waco.

Mr. Shaver was the rock-guitar counterpart to his father's country-folk core. Since 1993's Tramp on Your Street album, his Hendrix-like guitar licks have been a part of the Shaver sound. He recorded five more albums with his dad, including 1999's Electric Shaver and the upcoming The Earth Rolls On, which is scheduled for release March 20.

"If he wasn't my kid, I couldn't afford him," the elder Shaver remarked often in interviews.

Onstage, Mr. Shaver was the brooding one, usually dressed in black, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, eyes and fingers firmly focused on the guitar's six strings. Before teaming with his father, he toured with Dwight Yoakam in 1987 and 1989. He also backed Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Guy Clark.

Mr. Shaver was scheduled to begin work on his first solo album this week in Austin.

His wife, Irene Triola Shaver, whom he married Oct. 19, survives him. His mother, Brenda Shaver, died in 1999 after a long bout with cancer.

- Mario Tarradell

By Tom Geddie

Today, I imagine I am sitting in a room listening to Billy Joe Shaver's
thoughts. His son, Eddy, is in the background, quietly playing a guitar
and then a dobro.
Billy Joe's thoughts come directly from the lyrics of Victory, a
tribute to family and spiritual yearning that he and Eddy recorded one
week in February 1998 in Hollywood. Eddy's playing on acoustic guitar and
dobro shined through the blues, country, and gospel songs.
Eddy is, of course, gone now.
With his long black hair and long black overcoat and
ever-present cigarette, he died on New Year's Eve from a heroin overdose. He
was 38 years old, and he was one of our best guitar players.

I see the faces in the liner notes of Victory, in the dark
black-and-white photo, of the same person years apart. Billy Joe's face is
older and creased; Eddy's is smooth. Both faces are intense, wary, reflecting the
contrasts of roadhouse and religion, and of loss and renewal.
Today, I sit in one of those little rooms in my mind, and listen
to Billy Joe's thoughts in the lyrics, and respond as best I can.
Billy Joe talks quietly and directly of trembling in the
darkness like a bird about to die, of melting into the likeness of his own
loved ones.
He talks of Jesus being "the one who paid the price."
"Ain't no reason to deny it, I owe it all to Jesus Christ," he
says. And I nod, and listen.

He shares the words that he and Eddy wrote on the prophetic,
now-often-quoted "Live Forever:"
"I'm going to live forever. I'm going to cross that river. I'm going to
catch tomorrow now," he says. "Nobody here will ever find me, but I will
always be around just like the songs I leave behind me.
"You fathers and you mothers," he says, "be good to one another.
Please try to raise your children right. Don't let the darkness take
them."

On the less-quoted, but equally meaningful "If I Give My Soul,"
Billy Joe talks of walking down the dangerous road of time to where he
now stands, "with a heavy heart and my hat clutched in my hand.
"I had a woman once," he says about Brenda, who he married three
times and divorced twice. "She was kind and she was gentle, (she) had a
child by me who grew up to be a man.
"I had a steady job til I started in to drinking. Then I started
making music, traveling with the devil's band. Oh, the years flew by
like a mighty rush of eagles. Our dreams and plans were all scattered in the
wind. It's a lonesome life when you lose the ones you live for."
His faces turns upward, eyes looking for his Jesus.
He asks, "If I give my soul, will He stop my hands from shaking?
If I give my soul, will my son love me again?
"If I give my soul, and she knows I really mean it, if I give my
soul to Jesus, will she take me back again?"

Billy Joe recalls a Bible story about the eagle growing old -
"how it grows new sets of feathers, then becomes both young and strong. Then
itspreads its mighty wingspan out across the open sky.
"We will have the wings of eagles when the fallen angels fly," he says.

As he thinks of flight, he thinks of presents from the past that
"go floating in and out of time til they come resting like a snowflake,
falling on this heart of mine.
"Oh, what a peaceful kind of payment for all the joy we left
behind," he says.
Now, as I sit and listen, he stops and looks over at Eddy, as
silent as he often was, letting the guitar talk.
"My only son, my precious one, come listen here to me," he says.
"I am the bow and you are the arrow, and now you must fly free.
The bow is bent so the arrow is sent on its long and graceful flight, and
the path you make will become your fate. God is on your side."

A Billy Joe Shaver performance can be like a tent revival, filled with
joyous noise and intense, human conviction.
"Praise the Lord, guitar," he will say, and Eddy will get a
solo. Would get a solo.
"The Lord loves you when you dance," Billy Joe will say.
Or he will talk openly about one or another of the stories of
his life that haven't yet made it into songs.
One night he talked to a hushed audience about a night many
years earlier when he put on his finest Saturday night clothes and, in a
dark moment, angry with himself, lay down on a bed and put a gun to his
temple. Instead of shooting himself, he fired the gun into the wall and then
went out and got drunk.
One night he talked about getting thrown in jail, and about
Brenda coming to rescue him. Or so he thought. She told him she had enough
money to either pay his bail or fly back to Texas, and that she was going to
fly back to Texas.
He looked at her and said, "If you would take a train instead of
flying, I might at least get a song out of it."
She paid his bail.
One night not too long ago, before a show, he walked to a bar
across the street to hear a local band because a friend was playing
drums. Instead of hiding in a corner like many famous musicians would do, he
sat right at the bar right by the door and talked with everybody who
recognized him.
Billy Joe has suffered more loss than any one person ought to,
including the loss of: his son, and his wife and Eddy's mother, Brenda,
who died of cancer a year or so ago.
In his simple, straight forward style, he is, without doubt, one of our
best songwriters.
"The writing comes from down on the street level," Billy Joe said.
"I ain't never got above that. I know my limitations. 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."
"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."

One night at the Lone Star Café in Dallas, I spoke to the enigmatic Eddy
before a show. He said hello, then turned his back and walked away. On
the first break during a long show, he searched out my table and talked with
me for 20 minutes, openly and intelligently, sharing personal details.
Eddy and I talked again a couple of weeks before he died, and
the talk was about his future, his new wife, and the album he was recording.

Today, in the imaginary room, Billy Joe looks me in the eye and,
thinking of Old Five and Dimers he's known, tells me, "I've spent a
lifetime making up my mind to be more than the measure of what I thought
others could see."
Billy Joe Shaver is a treasure we all can share.
We are sad for his loss; we are glad he is with us