If you know your country music, then you know that it was Billy Joe Shaver that started the “outlaw” style of country music by chasing down Waylon Jennings and getting him to record a complete album of gritty originals like “Five and Dimers”. This album, recorded in (of course) Luckenbach, Texas back in 2009, has Shave singing and playing guitar with a road kill band of Jeremy Woodall/g, Nick Gaitan/b, Jason McKenzie/dr and NC Lawlor/slg, singing his songs like he means it.
Shaver was a guy who lived it all, and knew deeply about sin, salvation and forgiveness. His songs never held back, and he sings like a street preacher with a limp, as on the classic “The Devil Made Me Do It The First Time” and “Honky Tonk Heroes”. But more than anything else, Shaver knew he was forgiven by his Savior, but he didn’t sugarcoat the message, as on “I’m Just An Old Chunk Of Coal (But I’m Gonna Be A Diamond Someday)” and the classic gospel tract “If You Don’t Know Jesus, Go To Hell”. Real music by a real man. Boy, do I miss him!