A Conversation with Billy Joe Shaver – HuffPost 8.28.14
Mike Ragogna: You’ve got a brand new album titled Long In The Tooth. Billy Joe, is that how you think of yourself?
Billy Joe Shaver: [laughs] Well, approaching it, yeah.
MR: How about with regards to your storytelling style of songwriting?
BJS: Oh, no, I don’t get that way. It’s just a thing about horses and people, too, their gums recede as they get older. They get long in the tooth. I use it as a symbol that I’m a little bit wiser now, but as for horses, it don’t help them much. A Smooth Mouse is a horse over eight years old, their teeth indentations smooth out. So any horse you check his mouth out and he’s got smooth teeth he could either be eight or over, or even twenty years old, you never know. Sometimes you can’t tell by looking at a horse.
MR: You seem pretty familiar with horses, do you have a few of your own?
BJS: Oh yeah, yeah, I used to rodeo around. Well, I wasn’t all that good at rodeo-ing, but I was a real cowboy for sure. Still a cowboy, even if I don’t have any cattle or horses or anything.
MR: Billy Joe, you’re respected by a lot of artists. Look at some of the guests you have on this album, you have Willie Nelson, Tony Joe White, and others. When you started out this album, was it kind of like “I’m gonna have some fun with my friends?”
BJS: No, that wasn’t it, Ray Kennedy and Gary Nicholson did this album and as they went along they needed something additional. Leon Russel’s an old, good friend of mine and so’s Tony Joe, so they seemed obvious. Tony Joe really helped a lot on Long In The Tooth because he’s got that swamp thing going. Everybody helped.
MR: Did you take any different approaches on this album from previous ones?
BJS: I’d been waiting on Ray and Gary to come clear because they do a lot of work. Gary was kind of loose but Ray wasn’t. I’ve done albums with him before and I really wanted him because he’s the best, I think, in Nashville. Anyway I waited and waited and waited, and this wasn’t a high-budget album so we’d have to go in there when Ray would have a little time or Gary would have a little time. We did a lot of stuff outside the studio to prep for it so we wouldn’t pick up so much time. At the same time we made sure it was high quality, just real high quality everything. I think we nailed it.
MR: Beyond the recording, I think there’s always a high expectation of Billy Joe Shaver, especially in the songwriting.
BJS: Yeah, there is. I’m that way, too. I’m my worst critic. I always try to make a record better than the last one, and I found myself always trying to make mine better than the first one. Tramp On Your Street was great, I try to beat that. We’ll just keep on hammering it. My writing is up there because it always stays the same. I don’t know if you’ve heard any of my songs but they always stay the same.
MR: How did the original material come together for this one?
BJS: I wrote, and wrote, and wrote. A lot of it was written there in the studio. We needed a certain kind of song, we knew what it was, I already had something written. I wrote just about every word in most of the songs. They had to be finished at a certain time because we had to get in there and record them. I had a little help from Gary and Ray, a whole lot of help to tell you the truth. It all came together quickly because it had to. I had other songs, I had nearly five hundred songs. It was a labor of love and it was for the sake of the song, really.
MR: The song comes first for you, right?
BJS: Of course, that’s where it all begins, really. For me, I’m a songwriter of course. I think I sang real good on this one, though.
MR: You sound great! When you sing songs you write, do things change, like maybe the words, because the performance element enters the mix?
BJS: No, I don’t do that. I just keep hacking at it. There were some on there that I insisted on singing over and over and over. I believe in taking just one take. A lot of people don’t, but Elvis did it that way. Sometimes he’d do twenty-six, twenty-seven passes at one. I don’t do that many, but we did as much as I could stand. I think we got it as good as we could get it.
MR: Which musicians or artists interest you these days?
BJS: Well I’ve always listened to Bob Dylan, and I’ve always listened to Todd Snider, I like him real well. Jackson Taylor, this guy from down here in Texas, he’s really great. He’s a rough guy, he reminds me of me when I was young. You’ve probably never heard of him. My guitar player now, he’s real good, his name’s Jeremy Woodall. He hasn’t done anything but be my guitar player, but he’s great, he’ll probably break loose pretty quick. They usually do. He’s been with me about five years.
MR: Do you ever mentor these guys when they come and play with you? Teach them a little thing here or there?
BJS: I stay out of the way of the musicians, though. I don’t play that much. Right now I need a new shoulder and I just got a new knee April 22nd and it ain’t quite well yet. I’ve got stints, I had a heart attack, I’ve got screws in my shoulders. You could junk me and get more than what I’m worth. I don’t play much, it’s more like a three-piece band with me singing. I can concentrate on my singing real hard and make sure that I’ve got all my words correct and that way people can hear me. They come to hear the words anyway, and the music’s really great. I’ve got a great band.
MR: Billy Joe, what advice do you have for new artists?
BJS: The main thing is to make up your mind. If you’re going to do it, do it, and if you’re just going to halfway do it don’t even try. This is a very demanding thing. I stay simple, I didn’t get a whole lot of education, so most of it’s just coming from what I gathered up. If you stay honest we’ve all got in common that we’re all different. If you stay real deadly honest and write about some very interesting things then you’ll be a good one. A lot of people just don’t like to get honest but it’s the cheapest psychiatrist there is. I think that’s the way to look at it.
MR: That’s a great line, Billy Joe.
BJS: I still need one, too.
MR: [laughs] We all do. Sometimes a country hit sounds like pop, sometimes it sounds like mountain music, sometimes it’s Americana. Doesn’t it seem like the genre of country keeps getting bigger and differently defined?
BJS: Yeah, I’m glad.
MR: So considering that, what would you classify your music as?
BJS: Heinz 57, I guess.
MR: [laughs] Since you listen to Bob Dylan and Todd Snider, do you consider yourself somewhat near them creatively?
BJS: No, I’m more simple. I fit in between those two, but I’m the piece in a puzzle that you can’t find. I’ve always been different, but the only reason I’m different is because I’m deadly honest. Everybody else is that way, Dylan and Todd and all that bunch. That’s the way it comes out. It’ll be different. We really worked hard on getting the right songs in that album. Each one of them, hopefully, is a little bit different than all the others. Some of them remarkably so. That’s what I like, that’s entertainment, I think.
MR: What was the first one you wrote for the album?
BJS: “I’ll Love You As Much As I Can.”
MR: Does that first song you write usually set the energy or feel for the rest of the recording process?
BJS: I try to get as far away from it as I can. I’ve told many, I guess I was born to be a songwriter, I’m real lucky God blessed me with his talent, and I’ve done the best I can with it.
MR: When you’re writing a song that kicks off a project, is that what motivates you to write the other songs?
BJS: The best time to write a great song is right after you write a great song. Your energy is up, your confidence is up, your pencil is sharp. That’s the time to keep writing ’til you fall out.
MR: You mentioned that you have some challenges physically right now, how is that affecting your touring?
BJS: I’ve been laid up for a while. I went and played this gig the other night, I was supposed to do ninety minutes but I didn’t do more than an hour before I fell out. I about passed out. It was so hot, I was wringing wet with sweat, but the people were real nice, they let me up on it. It was a packed house and nobody was mad or anything. They saw that I was trying to do it a little too early, this knee’s really hurting me a lot. I’m approaching seventy-five, I’ll be seventy five on August sixteenth. I believe that’s a lot of the reason why it’s taken me a while to heal.
MR: What’s next for Billy Joe Shaver?
BJS: I look to bop till I drop. That’s what I want to do. I want to go out on the road. A guy like Merle Haggard said, “I’d rather rot away on the road like an old high-line pole than be sitting around the house.” I love to travel and I couldn’t afford to do it if it wasn’t for this.
MR: I hope you heal well enough to get back out there the way you want to.
BJS: Oh, I’ll make it. This last time was hard, I’m actually sending their money back. They felt right about giving it but I don’t feel right about taking it, so I decided I’ll just send them back the money. I paid my boys of course.
Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne