Billy Joe Shaver Albums (20)
'Everybody's Brother'
Release Date 9/25/2007
Tracks 15
Label Compadre
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What The Critics Say
Billy Joe Shaver is one of the finest songwriters country music has produced in the past 50 years, a poet of the honky tonk who can write about wild nights and the troubled morning after with equal eloquence. Shaver is also a devout Christian whose faith has guided him through more than his share of hard times -- including the death of his wife, mother, and son within the space of 18 months -- and if you find that at all off-putting, you won't be especially comfortable with his album Everybody's Brother. While not strictly a gospel set, most of the songs on Everybody's Brother deal explicitly with issues of Christian faith, and Shaver doesn't pull any punches in these tunes, drawing a line in the sand between salvation and the fallen world. Shaver doesn't pretend that walking in the light is an easy or simple task, and "Get Thee Behind Me Satan" and "Jesus Is the Only One That Loves Us" speak with rough-hewn conviction about the temptations of drugs, booze, and flesh with the honesty of a man who knows their allure all too well. Shaver also has little use for Christians who lack the conviction to help their struggling brethren, an issue he confronts on "No Earthly Good" and "If You Don't Love Jesus." But Shaver also unashamedly celebrates his faith and the peace Jesus has brought to him, and the sincerity and lack of pretense on "Winning Again," "When I Get My Wings," and "Everybody's Brother" may be a bit strong for those who don't share his beliefs. While John Carter Cash's sympathetic, straightforward production serves this material well, the guest vocalists who appear on several songs are another matter -- Kris Kristofferson's voice is in sad shape on "No Earthly Good," and John Anderson's roughhouse style doesn't mesh well with Shaver on his two songs here. But there's no denying the emotional power and passion of these performances, whether Shaver is singing about romantic love ("Played the Game Too Long," featuring a cameo from a game Tanya Tucker, and "To Be Loved by a Woman") or divine love, and the final track, an archival selection in which Shaver and Johnny Cash duet on "You Just Can't Beat Jesus Christ," is superb. Plenty of country acts have recorded pretty and polished gospel albums over the years, but Everybody's Brother is something different, a flinty but unerringly honest testimony from a songwriter who loves Jesus and has no use for false piety. It's a remarkable set that deserves to be heard regardless of your spiritual affiliations. ~ Mark Deming, All Music Guide
'Storyteller: Live at the Bluebird'
Release Date 9/11/2007
Tracks 14
Label Sugar Hill
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What The Critics Say
Simply put, somebody -- mostly likely either songwriter Billy Joe Shaver or Sugar Hill -- had this tape lying around for the better part of 15 years. Only God really knows why. It's a live gig from 1992, by Billy Joe accompanied by his late son Eddy Shaver and Keith Christopher on acoustic guitars and bass, and sometimes singing backing vocals. Unfortunately, it's edited and not the complete concert -- maybe the folks at Sugar Hill felt like Shaver's fans wouldn't lay down for a double disc, or perhaps the other tracks got flubbed one way or another (not like any fans of Billy Joe would care). But what is here is simply stunning. It's not that the show is atypical of a great Shaver performance, the point is that it is. For that reason alone, Storyteller: Live at the Bluebird belongs on the shelf. It doesn't matter if you have a boatload of BJS recordings with the same songs on them; you don't have them done like this. From "Georgia on a Fast Train" to "Wally the Wandering Gypsy and Me" to "Black Rose," "The Cowboy Who Started the Fight," and "Honky Tonk Heroes," to the truly chilling "Moonshine and Indian Blood," "Highway of Life," "Live Forever," and the heartbreaking closer "You Asked Me To," it's all gold. When you combine them with the introductions to the songs and his ranging folksy stories, which you can never hear too many times, and Eddy's picking, it's awe-inspiring. But there's something else that makes this set special. Todd Snider's liner notes (he was there at the Bluebird that night, driving from Memphis, bringing his fledgling band to hear the man), it appears that Shaver's then ex-wife Brenda was there in the front row to hear her son and her former husband play this gig (Shaver announces it himself in one of his stories). It's clear he's playing the gig for her, and you might have known something was up by the simple intensity in the deliveries. The pair reconciled for the third time sometime after this set. Both Brenda and Eddy are gone now. Shaver lost them both, and his mama, in the same year. But the intimacy and straight-ahead no-bullshit focus in delivering these songs is something that Shaver can doe better than literally anybody. The sound is fine, it conveys what's happening on that stage without a net. It would be impossible to recommend this one highly enough. We also owe a special thanks to Snider (no slouch himself when it comes to songwriting) for giving us the play by play from memory. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
If any album will bring Texas legend Billy Joe Shaver the widespread acclaim and commercial success he has deserved for 30 years, The Real Deal is it. Recorded for Compadre Records, it features 14 new songs and a redo of his and his late son Eddy's classic "Live Forever" with Nashville hotshots Big & Rich. The tune's been duded up some and doesn't have the stark power the original does, but as an anthem it works like a charm. In fact, the words still shine through the mix here because at age 66, Shaver's become one hell of a singer. There are other duets here as well. Nanci Griffith makes an appearance on "Valentine," a spare, acoustically driven ballad. Kimmie Rhodes -- another Austin songwriter who deserves far more than she's received -- duets with him on his "West Texas Waltz." The new version is elegant, deep, and soulful. And Kevin Fowler shows up on the honky tonk strutter "Slim Chance and the Can't Hardly Playboys" with the fine lyric "They've got a new song out on Polish Records/It'll be a Polish hit real soon." Country gospel makes its appearance on "Jesus Christ Is Still the King." "You Ought to Be with Me When I'm Alone" is one of Shaver's great broken love songs. The shuffling title track lays out the truth of Shaver's own story, and it's as down-home, dirt-filled, and dusty as the West Texas landscape. The Real Deal boasts nothing it can't deliver, and it is the album Billy Joe Shaver's been waiting to make all his life. It is full of heart, blood, grit, and poetry. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
'A Tribute to Billy Joe Shaver: Live'
Release Date 5/17/2005
Tracks 16
Label Compadre
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What The Critics Say
If ever there was a mixed bag, this is it. Billy Joe Shaver's well-deserved, substantial reputation as a songwriter has been established by his straightforward, heartfelt narratives whose melodic craft is elegant and deceptively simple: In other words, he makes what he does look easy. And while many have covered his songs, no one performs them like him. This well-meaning tribute album to an American cultural giant is no doubt well-meaning. There are a three generations of songwriters and musicians on this concert, form Billy Joe's own time are Guy Clark, as raggedly graceful a Texas bard as there is, with Verlon Thompson; Texas-cum-Nashville stalwart; Sonny Throckmorton; cowboy-roots rock songwriter Joe Ely and his Lubbock compatriot, the original cosmic cowboy Jimmie Dale Gilmore. Coming up immediately after are hardcore honky tonk man, Dale Watson; Texas frat boy and poet-hero Robert Earl Keen, and the enduring Geezinslaws. The younger generation is represented by Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis, Jack Ingram, Todd Snider, and Cory Morrow. The performances are wildly uneven. Shaver is in great form here except when backed by Texas barroom country rockers Diamondback Texas on "Georgia on a Fast Train" which feels forced. But his mini set of "You Wouldn't Know Love" (done in blues a cappella), "Try And Try Again," ad his latter day classic "Tramp on Your Street," are just fantastic. Guy Clark's "Randall Knife" is, as usual, powerful. Willis and Robison score big on Shaver's "Ride Me Down Easy." Ely's "Honky Tonk Masquerade" is resolutely fine, as is Gilmore's version of Billy Joe's "Hearts-A Burnin'. The rest falls short of the mark, not for lack of trying, not for any reason except that the gap between the first and third generations is by and large unbridgeable in terms of literacy, the mechanics of the craft, and the heroic times the elders lived through. Enough said. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
The very nature of this project -- Billy Joe Shaver and producer Tony Colton collecting and "finishing" some songs by Shaver's late son, guitar wrangler and songwriter Eddy -- is fraught with wrenching emotion and struggle; evaluating it is perhaps pointless. But Billy Joe Shaver has done not only an admirable thing, but a worthy one aesthetically. He lays his own broken heart out for the listener on the opening track, "Fame." Raw, accompanied only by his faltering guitar, Shaver digs deep in to offer his gratitude for what he still has -- his unchanging nature, his friends, his life -- in spite of everything -- losing his mother-in-law, mother, wife, and son inside of a year -- and reflects the confounding nature of fame and desire. Billy Joe sings on three more tracks, all of them demoed by Eddy, and a rhythm section; his vocals finish them. On "Lighting a Torch," with its squalling hard rock guitar edge and plodding lyric line, Billy Joe sings Eddy's words with a razored wisdom he wished he didn't have, and indeed, sings them into the ether expecting a response: "I never seen a darker sunrise/I've never felt a deeper pain/The very moment you were dust on the rise/ I was lighting a torch with a brand new flame/You can see me on the dark night/A shadow down in the neon light/ I take my whiskey and I wait for the pain/Lightin' a torch with a brand new flame..." The other seven cuts are all Eddy in one form or another. There's "Baptism of Fire," from a live date in Nashville. It proves him not only a smoking player, but a fine songwriter and worthy frontman. His lyrics, sung in a tense, barely restrained bluesman's baritone, are full of iconic images, metaphors for spiritual and fleshly truth. The demos of Eddy playing guitars and singing, like "Eagle on the Ground," are rough but full of finesse, vision, and heart nonetheless."If It Don't Kill You," which Eddy wrote with Colton and Lacy J. Dalton, is a burning metallic rocker, full of riffing and menacing force and is poignant in its appropriation of Nietzsche: "If it don't kill ya' /It's got to make you strong." The sheer drifting atmospherics on "Window Rock," with Billy Joe singing over Eddy's ghostly guitars across the curtain of mortal existence is hunted, beautiful, and desolate. The album ends with Eddy playing the blues on "Necessary Evil." Just a guitar and his voice, moaning them out and piercing them with his leads. Then profound silence. This is a last testament, finished out of love and agony; it should be embraced for that, but also for its considerable evidence of the depth and beauty of Eddy's talent. That silence is deafening. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Billy Joe Shaver is a man who has long known more than a little about hard times, and he was certainly put to the test between 1999 and 2001 -- his wife and mother succumbed to cancer; his son and musical collaborator, Eddy Shaver, died of a drug overdose; and he came face to face with his own mortality after suffering a heart attack on-stage while touring behind his final album with Eddy, The Earth Rolls On. Combine all this with the national malaise which struck America in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, and it seems appropriate that Freedom's Child, Billy Joe Shaver's 13th album, released in the fall of 2002, eases back on the flinty country-rock he crafted with his son and aims for a quieter, more traditional approach and a contemplative tone. On Freedom's Child, Shaver's thoughts often turn to family, relationships, and home, and whether he's thinking back on a rugged but happy childhood ("Wild Cow Gravy"), the hometown he left behind ("Corsicana Daily Sun"), relationships that didn't quite work out ("We"), and one that might just pan out yet ("Hold on to Yours [And I'll Hold on to Mine]"), he sounds sentimental without being cloying, with just enough grit to make it clear it's the hard-won little victories that often make the difference. The less-explicitly self-referential songs, most notably "Honey Chile" and "Day by Day," prove that Shaver is still a master storyteller, and if the playful patriotism of "Good Ol' U.S.A." is just a mite overplayed, the blunt realities of "That's Why the Man in Black Sings the Blues" serve as a balance. (And "That's What She Said Last Night" is on hand to prove that Shaver still has plenty of rowdy roadhouse stomp left in him.) The primarily acoustic arrangements of Freedom's Child put the emphasis squarely on Billy Joe Shaver and his songs, and the gruff warmth of his delivery and the honest emotional heft of his lyrics are more than strong enough to carry the burden; it's a fine and moving album from one of country's least-appreciated major talents. [The CD version of Freedom's Child also includes as a bonus an unreleased performance from the late Eddy Shaver, a solo blues workout called "Neccessary Evil."] ~ Mark Deming, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
In the photos that accompany The Earth Rolls On, veteran country-rocker Billy Joe Shaver looks as if he's lived through some hard times, and indeed he has: His son Eddy, a key member of his band Shaver and the lead guitarist on this album, died suddenly on December 31, 2000. The year before, Bill Joe's lifelong love, Brenda, died after a lengthy illness. Shaver had divorced her twice over the years -- and married her three times. Experiences like these are reflected throughout this album, which is perhaps the most powerful of Shaver's career. "Hearts a Bustin'" is about Brenda, and so is the moving title cut ("The earth rolls on/Even though you're gone/The earth rolls on, and on, and on...); several of the other tracks, including "You're Too Much for Me" and "Star in My Heart," concern Shaver's reportedly rocky relationship with his son. But don't get the idea that everything here is somber: "Blood Is Thicker Than Water," also about Eddy, will bring a smile, and "Leavin' Amarillo" gets downright silly. Musically, this is fine stuff, thanks to Shaver's singing, Eddy's spirited guitar, and sterling backup from the likes of the E Street Band's Garry Tallent and Wilco's Jay Bennett and Ken Coomer. ~ Jeff Burger, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
The fourth and last of Billy Joe Shaver's Columbia Records albums of the 1980s, Salt of the Earth was the singer/songwriter's first album of all-new material in six years and his last recording for another six, making it by definition a pivotal album in his infrequent recording career. It effectively encapsulates his characteristic style, from the hard-rocking honky tonk of "Whiteman's Watermelon" to the gentle "Hill Country Love Song." Shaver's conflicted morality allows him to announce fervently that "You Just Can't Beat Jesus Christ," then follow that song with "The Devil Made Me Do It the First Time" (the inevitable punch line being, "the next time, I done it on my own"). In Shaver's world, men work hard and play hard, too, and faith is observed more in intention than practice. Self-referential, funny, and moving, Shaver's songs, sung with cracked-voice conviction and played with gutbucket force, define outlaw style, here as on his other recordings. This album didn't get a lot of attention when it was first released in 1987, and Sony's Lucky Dog imprint did fans a service on September 19, 2000, by remastering and reissuing it as part of its "Pick of the Litter" series of deserving, underappreciated vintage albums. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
