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Billy Joe Shaver
Try And Try Again
Compadre Records 6-16892-55692-3
By Marianne Ebertowski
 I'm
gonna live forever, I'm gonna cross that river
I'm gonna catch tomorrow now.
You're gonna wanna hold me, just like I always told you,
You're gonna miss me when I'm gone.
The tall white-haired man on stage, his arms raised as if
to embrace the audience, sings a cappella his voice a slurring,
slouching, shaky, tender mess that makes the hair on your arm
stand up. His acoustic guitar leans against the wall, the rest
of the band is sitting at the bar enjoying a well-deserved break.
When this old world has gone asunder
and all the stars fall from the sky
Remember someone really loves you
We'll live forever, you and I.
When he has finished, you could hear a pin drop. A moment
later, the silence is broken by a roar of applause. There's
a big smile on the man's face, which gets even bigger when he
asks his son Eddy back on stage. Billy Joe, the father, is proud
of Eddy, even if "the kid" doesn't particularly seem
to appreciate his father's "cowboy stuff." He wants
to play his electric guitar as loud and fast as possible, and
when he does, the audience loves him for it. Off stage Eddy is
an amiable, chain smoking, somewhat shy young man who accepts
compliments for his guitar skills with a slight embarrassment.
Billy Joe off stage is just as impressive as he is as a performer.
With his friendly pale blue eyes illuminating a weather-beaten
face and a hand shake to bring tears to anyone's eyes, he's the
sort of guy you would buy a second-hand car from without thinking
about it twice.
Shaver, father and son, playing the Brussels Thunderbird Café
belongs to my fondest memories, musical and otherwise. This
was in 1998, if I remember it well. Since then, life has not
been very kind to Billy Joe. First, his mother and Brenda, the
woman he had married and divorced three times, both succumbed
to cancer. Then, at New Year's eve 2000 Eddy, 38 years old,
died of an overdose of heroin - just a couple of days before
he was supposed to start the recordings for a new solo album
and only three months after he got married. As if that wasn't
bad enough Billy Joe Shaver had to undergo major heart surgery,
leaving him in a delicate state of health that forced him to
cancel two European appearances already. However, in his native
Texas Shaver, the cowboy poet with "a good Christian raisin'
and an eighth grade education," continues to prove that
he is in great musical shape.
The album Try and Try Again, recorded last summer at
the KUT-FM studios in Austin in front of a quietly appreciative
and reverend crowd, features 13 of Shaver's best songs, including
his "testimony" "Live Forever" (co-written
with Eddy) and the lesser-known "L.A. Turnaround" from
his very first record. The cover of the album shows Shaver in
a defiant position, waving his fist in the face of fate. In
the picture on the back he is on his knees in front of the mike
next to his guitar, head bowed down in silent prayer. On the
photo on the inside, Billy Joe is happily stomping about on stage.
These photos and the 13 songs sum up the mighty Texan pretty
well: a fighter, a shit-kicking hell-raiser at times, and a believer
at the same time, but most of all: one of the finest traditional
poets and songwriters this world has ever known.
For this show Billy Joe is backed by a bunch of very fine
musicians: Mark Petterson on drums, Cornbread on bass, Jerry
Hollingsworth on guitar and multi-instrumentalist Bob Brown on
just about everything else. It's a band that truly rocks even
if they cannot make forget the way Shaver sounded when Eddy was
still around, but then again, nobody could.
The album opens with an impressively rebellious and life-embracing
"Try and Try Again" with Shaver stirring up the audience
almost like Robert Duvall's apostle character, which took me
by surprise: I do not remember Shaver being so outspoken about
his religious beliefs. But, of course, it's his party and he
can pray and preach if he wants to. "Live Forever"
sounds as moving as ever in a quiet acoustic version with very
fine guitar picking by Hollingworth (I suppose), followed by
a raucous and speedy version of Billy Joe's life story "Georgia
on a Fast Train."
The mixture of noisy honkytonkers and acoustic songs continues
with "When Fallen Angels Fly," another of my personal
favorites. On "Honky Tonk Heroes," so much better
known in Waylon Jenning's version that a lot of people seem to
think he was the one who wrote it, Bob Brown provides some great
Western swing fiddling. After that, the honkytonking continues
with "Hottest Thing in Town," followed by a stunning
bluesy, jazzy and, most of all, angry a cappella version of "You
Wouldn't Know Love."
After obvious choices like "Old Chunk of Coal,"
"You Asked Me To" (co-written with Jennings and recorded
by Elvis Presley) and "Black Rose," the real surprise
is a poignant interpretation of "L.A. Turnaround,"
a song from his very first album.
"Tramp On Your Street" featuring some beautiful
slide by Bob Brown and great gospel harmonies by the band (especially
Cornbread) sounds like a worthy closer, but Shaver ("Remember
if you don't love Jesus go to hell!") has greater things
in mind. "You Can't Beat Jesus" is his farewell message
to the crowd with Bob Brown playing his slide guitar so heavenly,
he almost makes it sound like Sacred Steel.
Well, you may not be able to beat Jesus, but it seems to me
that you can't beat Billy Joe Shaver either. Try and Try
Again has become a contagious celebration of life by a man
who has walked the valley of the death and survived. What he
has to say is not necessarily what we want to hear. After all,
as Tom T. Hall once said: "If the world is God's television
set, Billy Joe Shaver is on Monday mornings at 3.00."
(Try and Try Again is only available in the US on-line
or at Billy Joe Shaver's show.)
*www.billyjoeshaver.com
www.compadrerecords.com
Contact Marianne Ebertowski at ebertowski-at-rockzilla.net
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