Willie Nelson says "Billy Joe Shaver may be the best
songwriter alive today," and legions of fans agree that
Billy Joe is the real deal. Many describe his songs as pure
poetry. Shaver sings about a life that's been full of hard
times, wild living, and a forty-year-long passion for his
late wife Brenda. His songs are raw, honest, and so true
that people hear the story of their own lives in his music.
No wonder, then, that his songs have also been recorded by
artists such as Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings,
Kris Kristofferson, George Jones, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley,
Patty Loveless, John Anderson, Tom T. Hall, the Allman
Brothers, the Oak Ridge Boys, and Tex Ritter.
In
this compelling autobiography written with the assistance of
Brad Reagan, Billy Joe Shaver looks back over a life that
some might call a miracle of survival. His father abandoned
the family before Billy Joe was born. Troubles in school and
in the military turned him into a fighter, and a sawmill
accident claimed two fingers and part of a third on his
right hand. Yet his innate musical talent and the
encouragement of an English teacher set him on the road to
being a songwriter—and he never looked back. Shaver recounts
his long struggle to break into the music business in
Nashville and the success that came when Waylon Jennings
recorded his songs on the 1973 album Honky Tonk
Heroes, which became a landmark of outlaw country
music. Shaver movingly describes his own thirty-year,
up-and-down career as a singer-songwriter in Nashville and
Texas, his bouts with alcohol and drugs, his pleasure in
touring with his son Eddy and their band Shaver during the
1990s, and the pain of losing Eddy, Brenda, and Billy Joe's
mother all within the year 1999-2000.
As full of
life, heartbreak, and drama as any of Billy Joe Shaver's
songs, Honky Tonk Hero is the story of a man
who not only walked on the wild side and lived to tell about
it, but also got it all down in songs that many people
consider to be some of the finest country music ever
written.
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