Billy Joe Shaver: Country Outlaw

The outlaw Billy Joe Shaver sat at the end of the bar nursing a bottle -- of Poland Spring -- and eating a steak. His right hand shook a little as he sliced, compensating for the first and second fingers, which are lost at the knuckles and make him a fairly unusual rhythm guitarist. Ten minutes later he was on stage at Johnny D's with his son Eddy, reaching back through the years into one of the most lived-in catalogues in country music.

Lived in, of course, by the elder Shaver himself. Although his songs were made hits by country outlaw-movement kingpin Waylon Jennings and scholarly songman Tom T. Hall in the '70s, they're drawn from his own intimacies. "The First and Last Time," for example, with the line "the very first time I fell in love was the first and last time for me," was written the first time his wife left him. (The couple's count so far: two marriages, two divorces, third marriage imminent.) Anyway, after those 25-years-past salad days, Billy Joe's pickin's got thin as he rode a tsunami of alcoholism and volatility.

He re-emerged in the '90s with his own group, Shaver, to growing acclaim and crowds. Touring behind Shaver's third CD, the new all-acoustic Victory (New West), Billy Joe stripped Shaver to the essentials a week ago Wednesday: himself and hotshot guitarist Eddy. Together they chuckled and tore through tunes, spinning virtuosic acoustic-guitar licks into stories of trial and redemption. Positive, hymn-like stuff with down-home sentiments like ("I'm Just an Old Chunk of Coal, But) I'm Gonna Be a Diamond Some Day" were followed by tearjerkers like the poverty ballad "Bottom Dollar." As Billy Joe -- who's 59 -- sang in a sweet, dry-edged voice that sounded like that coal lump in mid transformation, Eddy tossed out nuanced flash and just plain flash -- stunt solos like the capper of "Good News Blues": a battery of sliding ninth chords trailed by a flurry of wicked bent notes that slipped into a slide crescendo.

Victory sounds like the work of a man who's recently traded alcohol for God, as Billy Joe has. It's full of fire and righteous brimstone, songs of death and rebirth. Yet it's sentimental, not sanctimonious. And ripe in the straightforward dignity Billy Joe showed on stage. Live, he also dipped without heavenly regard deep into gutbucket passions, diving with trembling conviction into his hillbilly noir "The Word Is Thunderbird" -- a song about a time when "drinkin' wine and lovin' you was fun." Now he's left the wine behind, but with his love and his music, Shaver's sure as hell having fun.

Opener John Lincoln Wright's set was pleasing as he used his strong shout to bite into Texas swing and driving originals, including an ode to the defunct local country dive the Hillbilly Ranch. Wright's compadre Peter Wolf leapt on stage for an upbeat duet on the old Johnny Rodriguez hit "Is Anybody Going to San Antone." And in a memorable gaffe, Wright told the crowd that Wolf's new album, Fool's Parade (Mercury), "will raise the short hairs on your arm." That's why he's the area's most dependable country singer -- not a urologist.

-- Ted Drozdowski