Billy Joe Shaver – HuffPost 7.27.12

Mike Ragogna: Billy Joe, what advice do you have for new artists?

Billy Joe Shaver: New artists? Are you saying artists or songwriters? It’s going to be long before people are so in tune with where their money goes and how much they’re getting for their money that I believe one day, it’s going to be where people want to hear what the person’s singing, they want to be sure that person wrote that. Soon, there’ll be no in-between people and you’ll get it straight like cabbage-to-cabbage. I think a lot of the guys that right now sing are writing their own songs and it kind of knocks me out. But you have to really have a great song before they’ll take your song, because they can write just as good as you do.

MR: It’s interesting to watch American Idol because that’s a whole other kind of…

BJS: …yeah, it’s okay, but it just seems funny in a way that these guys work all their lives and they get to be about thirty-something and they still don’t have a deal and they’re still writing songs like that. Then these kids will be fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, and they’ll say, “I’ve waited around long enough and doggone it, I’m going to have to make it.” Then they go in with one song and hone it down really good and win this thing and get themselves a record deal. But you know what, life goes on and that’s the way it is, that’s the way the cards fell, so you just have to deal with it. I feel sorry for some of the guys out here who are old country dogs and maybe wanting it faster than any of the rest of them, but they just don’t get the chance most of the time because somebody like real young gets to go in there. People are so involved about how old you are. To me, it don’t mean nothing.