Billy Joe Shaver
Freedom's Child
Compadre Records
by William Michael Smith

What I'd give for a slice of yesterday
-- Billy Joe Shaver, "Corsicana Daily Sun"

If Willie Nelson is the oak tree of Texas music, Billy Joe Shaver must be the mesquite.

Anyone who knows anything about Billy Joe Shaver knows he's had Job's own share of trouble and woe the past couple of years, including a heart attack during a performance at Gruene Hall. Yet like those notoriously hard to exterminate mesquite trees, Mr. Shaver simply grows more gnarled and dignified and thorny in the face of adversity. His first album recorded without his son, guitarist-extraordinaire Eddy Shaver, is primarily a personal reminiscence, an examination of feelings and motives, and finally a search both for redemption and for the way forward. While it isn't an obvious post-9/11 statement like Bruce Springsteen's The Rising, there is something in Mr. Shaver's words and his craggy, imperfect, Texas country boy singing that reassures us and makes the future a little less dark and foreboding.

Just be yourself and I'll keep bein' me
If we're lucky, we'll be blind enough to see

Freedom's Child recalls what in my opinion is Shaver's masterpiece, Tramp on Your Street. Produced by R.S Field, who last worked with Shaver on Tramp, the album is a mixture of country and roots rock with small tastes of blues, swing, and Dixieland (he even reprises "Good Ol' U.S.A" from Tramp and it resonates now in ways we couldn't imagine then). The all-important trait that comes through is Shaver's deep sense of plain folks humanity and exceptional decency. There is nothing complex about Shaver's message, no attempts at brilliant metaphysical analysis, no smokescreens of pseudo-smartness. Shaver is more into raw data than analysis anyway. For him, the lessons he's distilled from a life of hard living are the eternal ones -- that our time is not long and that love and family matter most. It's not that Shaver's message is new, it's how he expresses it that matters and the way his sincere, tired, sinewy old voice caresses the words.

Life is such a hard old thing to face
When foolishly we break every vow we ever made
Dreams that yesterday were great
Oh so quickly start to fade

For anyone who knows Shaver's story, the album is filled with too-real references to his deceased wife, son, mother, and grandmother. In the rootsy "Corsicana Daily Sun," he recalls the simple joys of his childhood and how he left Corsicana and his grandmother. It's simply another version of the prodigal son, but the hard traveling and regret in Shaver's voice sell it as few other singers could.

There ain't much that's left to tell
'Cause, boy, I really went to hell
It seems like everything went wrong
Since I left my hometown
I wish that I was back there now
Mending fence and milking cows
When Corsicana daily sun was shining bright for me

His "Magnolia Mother's Love," about a tree his mother brought home as a wilted sapling in the dead of winter that lived against all odds, is a rare fine tribute. With Jamie Harford's spare mandolin accompaniment, this one will undoubtedly bring a tear to many an eye. In the hands of less accomplished artists this would be pure schmaltz, but Shaver has an unadorned way of delivering these songs that transforms them into gospel.

The kinfolk come up and gathered 'round
The day we laid my momma down
I swore I'd try and be a better man
Standing there beneath her favorite tree
I know her pride and joy was me
When a petal fell and nestled in my hand

Mr. Shaver reaches deep into his most personal recesses with "Day by Day," which is very much an autobiographical reminiscence about his entire married life. It contains a ton of raw poignancy, mentioning the passing of both his wife and his son. Catharsis can be the only reason to write a song like this that goes to darkest recesses and revives the worst of all hurt and pain.

Day by day his heart kept on breaking
And aching to fly to his home in the sky
But now he's arisen from the flames of the forest
With songs from the family that never will die

It's not all painful memory and soul cleansing on Freedom's Child. "That's What She Said Last Night" is pure Shaver hijinx in the tradition of "Hottest Thing in Town." Leave it to an old country boy come to town to write a lyric like "I went down to Kinko's to get some faxin' done/My ex-girlfriend works down there, she was my number one/She said Billy I'm busy, why don't you come around back/I'll clear the store and lock the doors and we can fax all night." The one cover here is Todd Snider's "Deja Blues," and with Snider singing one verse and the harmonies, the track gets very loose and fun. The uproarious frolic "Wild Cow Gravy" is another of the lyrical jewels that only a man with Shaver's deepwoods background could write.

Aunt Claudie she would duck walk right up to that wild cow
A fruit jar in her hand I can almost see her now
It was udderly divine the way she filled that fruit jar up
It didn't look like much, but it was always enough

Eatin' wild cow gravy and drinkin' mountain dew
It's good enough for me by goll' it's good enough for you
It'll make you live forever even if you don't want to

A surprise treat is Shaver's "Drinkin' Back." I've never made a connection between Jerry Lee Lewis's country classics and Mr. Shaver, but "Drinkin' Back the Past" with Chris Carmichael's honky tonk slow-dance fiddle and Steve Conn's piano comes from the exact same bolt of cloth as Lewis suds-and-sawdust classics "What's Made Milwaukee Famous" and "Another Place, Another Time." I can't recall another country vocal that comes closer to Lewis's unique phrasing.

But the title track is certainly the centerpiece here. Part cryptic ode to a son passed on, part post-9/11 song of patriotism and pride and an ode to all sons passed on, the track is delivered in a spirited uptempo roots rock format that is spirit-lifting and rousing without any hint of chauvinism or jingoistic bombast at all. For anyone with folks in the military right now, this one can put a lump in the throat.

With his colors flying high and his gun in hand
Volunteered to fight and die in a foreign land
Just another minor chord in a worn out song
Freedom's child is marching there singing freedom's song

Drifting through a crowded park past an empty swing
Hidden in a sparrow's eye when it's on the wing
Planted on a lonely hill with his name unknown
Freedom's child was laid to rest signing freedom's song

There is a hidden track so raw it bleeds. It is a low-fi take of Eddy Shaver solo, doing a mean electric blues called "Necessary Evil." The voice is an unpolished Gregg Allman sound, and the guitar demonstrates the full measure of Eddy Shaver's guitar virtuosity. It only serves to point up what a shame it is that Eddy Shaver never recorded his music, because he had the blues the way Stevie Vaughn had them.

Freedom's Child finds Billy Joe Shaver renewed, strengthened by his trials and loss. He's never pretended to be perfect, never tried to play any part but the wayward sinner that he knows he has been. But on Freedom's Child, he comes once again eyeball to eyeball with his memories and his regrets, and from them he has wrung songs and performances that must surely be a form of redemption for him and a source of strength and knowledge for us.

* No recipes for wild cow gravy, but just about ever other thing one could want to know about Billy Joe Shaver, a Texas national treasure, at www.billyjoeshaver.com

Contact William Michael Smith at wms-at-rockzilla.net

 
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