Sunday, Nov. 01, 2009

Billy Joe Shaver shows off his many sides

Billy Joe Shaver pushes all sorts of buttons in a memorable two-hour show.

By SHIRLEY JINKINS

dfw.com

Billy Joe Shaver is still pretty much what Kris Kristofferson once said he was: a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction.

The man who is a legend among the Kristoffersons, Bob Dylans and Willie Nelsons of the world played a captivating set on Saturday at the McDavid Studio of his songs that are everybody else’s standards. If you didn’t get the chance on Saturday to see and hear Billy Joe do them, well, that’s too bad.

"These are songs I’ve written down through the years," he said simply, though he began the show with a new one, It’s Always Been That Way (Since the Get-Go).

It is a classic Shaver composition, charging politicians with "rolling soldiers’ bones like loaded dice."

New or old, his stories and songs push all the buttons, and he will condemn and redeem himself a dozen times during a two-hour show — talking about sex, race, religion, want and excess. Shaver is gentle, profane, funny and sad, with a weathered voice and a loose choreography somewhere between sleepwalking and ceremonial dancing.

Some of Shaver’s best-known songs were Waylon Jennings hits, and it seemed like the late Waylon was in the room as he performed Honky Tonk Heroes, I Been to Georgia on a Fast Train and You Asked Me To.

Many people have recorded Shaver’s optimistic anthem I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal (But I’m Gonna Be a Diamond Someday). But seeing him perform it, still lighthearted and hopeful at 70, would lift anyone’s mood.

Shaver was accompanied by three terrific players on guitar, drums and stand-up bass, and the styles ranged from acoustic to electric country-rock, with some swing thrown in.

Some songs don’t need music, though.

It was powerful, and painful, to hear Shaver sing an a cappella ballad, You Are the Star in My Heart, to his son, guitarist Eddy Shaver, who died of a heroin overdose in 2000.

"It’s a tough-love song," Shaver drawled. "I wrote it for him, but mostly for you."

Actually, it seemed like all his songs were that way.

SHIRLEY JINKINS, 817-390-7657

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