Tall Tales, Tiny Towns, and Texans

Waylon Jennings and Billy Joe Shaver go to Luckenbach, with Nashville in the rear view mirror

by Grant Alden

Billy Joe Shaver is trying to keep to the shade, but there isn't much, just a patch of trees, some trucks, and a big red sun. He's shoulder to ankle in worn blue denim, and his face is sun-scarlet under a well-bent white hat. Every once in a while he runs out of words to pass the time and reaches into the cab of his dusty van for another slug of Gatorade. And he's tired, though he's too proud to show it and too polite to say anything. He's been working since 8 a.m., starting the day shooting a video and taking the stage again in mid-afternoon for a fast four-song set.

And, yes, we are in Luckenbach, Texas, with Willie and Waylon and the boys.

On this windless, 100-degree day, Willie Nelson is a gracious host to 11,000 fans (and several hundred more backstage) for his annual Fourth of July picnic. He sits in with his guests off and on all day long, as always, then closes the show in the not-quite-cool evening air with a largely impromptu set including his old friend, Waylon Jennings.

The party is also an annual reunion of sorts for veterans of the storied '70s outlaw country movement, a lingering reminder that the life of that party came from Austin, which rests about an hour and a half east of here. And Luckenbach – with a population of 25, the smallest of several Central Texas towns that has hosted Willie's Picnic over the years – isn't the only place the outlaws have been reunited lately. Houston-based Justice Records recently released Shaver's new album, Highway of Life, as well as Waylon's latest, Right For the Time (not to mention a new Kris Kristofferson disc). And Willie himself only just left the Justice stable to release the beautifully pacific Spirit on Island.

The party is also an annual reunion of sorts for veterans of the storied '70s outlaw country movement, a lingering reminder that the life of that party came from Austin, which rests about an hour and a half east of here. And Luckenbach – with a population of 25, the smallest of several Central Texas towns that has hosted Willie's Picnic over the years – isn't the only place the outlaws have been reunited lately. Houston-based Justice Records recently released Shaver's new album, Highway of Life, as well as Waylon's latest, Right For the Time (not to mention a new Kris Kristofferson disc). And Willie himself only just left the Justice stable to release the beautifully pacific Spirit on Island.

That, at 55, Shaver is working to promote only his ninth long player says much for the unfairness of things. So does the fact that his first six LPs are out of print, recently anthologized in a one-disc set by Razor & Tie, and in a two-disc set by German label Bear Family.

Maybe Billy Joe wouldn't be here without Waylon; maybe he'd be just another idiosyncratic songwriter who got a few cuts in Nashville and whatever happened to him? Just another idiosyncratic songwriter? No, that's not quite right. He was and is that rarest of talents, an utterly distinctive, impeccably honest writer of songs. It was Bobby Bare who first gave Shaver a songwriting contract, and Kristofferson and Tom T. Hall both had hits with his songs (hell, even Elvis recorded one). But it was Waylon's almost-all-Shaver-penned Honky Tonk Heroes that solidified his reputation.

Now that last is a bad sentence, because the grammar leaves open the question as to whose reputation was solidified. But we'll leave it like that, because there are those who argue Honky Tonk Heroes was the first outlaw country record, and it's hard to imagine Willie and Waylon and the boys wouldn't need last names without it.

Not that Waylon was an unknown in the early '70s. He'd come out of Lubbock as one of Buddy Holly's Crickets (the second incarnation), and gave up his seat on that ill-fated plane to the Big Bopper. Though he strung together a series of Top-10 hits in Nashville in the '60s, Waylon and the Nashville establishment ultimately didn't get along, and the rest is a pile of gold records.

When Waylon's tour bus materializes, it is blissfully air-conditioned. Shaver takes a welcome seat and, despite their years together, is bashful. By any useful artistic measure, the two men are equals, but you can't eat those measuring cups, so his deference is, perhaps, understandable. Besides, despite all the stories, Shaver is a shy fellow. And so for 25 minutes, with Waylon's grandson watching from the floor, two old friends got to play catch-up.

Waylon Jennings: What are you interested in, then? We don't really like each other.

Billy Joe Shaver: That's true.

No Depression: Well, you almost came to blows...

Billy Joe: We've done that a lot (laughs). I've heard things cocked behind my head.

ND: But you never pulled it.

Waylon: Nah. Tell you about that. You know what? I was strung out, and I was finishing one album, but I done told him, "Don't let nobody else get them songs." Well, hell, you know, when you first come to town and somebody tells you something like that, anybody that does, they should explain everything to you. After you've been there a while, you understand how those things work. Hell, here I am in the studio, singing songs but they ain't his. So he decided to tell me, he says, "If you're going t' do an album," he says, "You told me you was gonna do m' goddamn songs, now are you goin' do 'em or am I gonna have to whip your ass." (laughs) Then later...

Billy Joe: I didn't know no better.

Waylon: Well, that's the way you do it, you know. You got my attention. (laughs) And so it still was a while, but when you did get in the studio, I'm recording there and I've got laryngitis right in the middle of it. Well, I've got coke-itis. You know. So Billy Joe comes in there, and I have this deal that I figured out on this one song.

Billy Joe: This is the trick.

Waylon: What I had done was, he had a song that was the same tempo all the way through, and I had it where I did it halfway through, I put it into gear, and did it real fast. And that was "Honky Tonk Heroes."

Billy Joe: That was true, yeah.

Waylon: Well, he didn't write it that way.

Billy Joe: Uh-uh.

Waylon: And I didn't have enough sense to ask him, before I did the track. So Billy come in, he said, "Whatcha doin' to my goddamn song?" (laughs) Now, here's a guy, you know, I was pretty hot then.

Billy Joe: You know what? I can't believe I did that, 'cause if I'd'a known, it scares me to death. Everybody in town was givin' me such an honor, to be in the position I was in, and I just got out there and I was raisin' hell about it. (laughs)

Waylon: I was wrong, 'cause I had not asked him, first. Because you know what? They're like your little babies, when you write songs. And to this day ... the other day somebody sent me a new demo with a song of mine, it took me a couple of times listening to it before I didn't want to go over and whup his butt. So I understand. I couldn't show him what I was going to do 'cause of the laryngitis. I said, "When I get through with it, if you listen to it and you don't like it, I'll do it the other way." That's where all that came down.

Billy Joe: I liked it, though. I liked it. I acted like I didn't, but I liked it better that way. But I couldn't do it that way. I didn't know how to do that, back then.

Waylon: Actually, the way that happened is, we'd been doing it so long the other way and it wasn't coming together, and I tell you who give me the idea. What was the guitar player on there? Randy Scruggs.

Billy Joe: Randy Scruggs, yeah.

Waylon: Randy got to doing it t'other way, and he stopped and started just doodling.

Billy Joe: Yeah.

Waylon: And I thought, hmm. Maybe that's what I need to do. Because I was losing it on the second half.

Billy Joe: Oh it made it, it made the song, yeah.

Waylon: For me, yeah.

Billy Joe: I've gotta admit one thing, too. On "Ain't No God in Mexico", there was some stuff – you were real high, man – and you wrote some of that and I didn't give it to you.

Waylon: I don't remember that. (chuckles) OK, we're even.

Billy Joe: Well, that's all right, ain't never been a hit, so what the hell was the difference? (laughs)

Waylon: (sings) "Me and Louise Higenbothem." That was great.

Billy Joe: You know where I came up with that?

Waylon: No, that's what knocked me out. 'Cause I knew a girl named Higenbothem, they were neighbors of mine. They had the Higenbothem Lumber Company.

Billy Joe: Oh, yeah? Her father was a policeman of some sort.

Waylon: (disappointed) Uhhh. Oh, was he?

ND: Which would have been why her name stuck in your mind?

Billy Joe: Yeah, yeah. Well.

Waylon: Mighta been.

Billy Joe: Might have been.

Waylon: We get along good.

Billy Joe: Yeah, we wrote one song Elvis recorded.

Waylon: In the dark.

Billy Joe: Yeah, it was in the dark. In about five minutes. "Just Because You Asked Me To".

Waylon: Me and him, you know, the reason I treat him so polite is because we're the same kind. And if I do something he don't like, he'll come get me, get mad as hell at me, and I'm the same way with him. Ah, but that's the way it's supposed to be, anyway.

Billy Joe: That's the way it oughta be. (Stands up to shake hands.) Love ya.

Waylon: Love ya, too.

ND: Have you two toured together?

Waylon: Oh, yeah. Australia, you know...

Billy Joe: (laughs) And you know how Waylon is about airplanes? There was that little prop job come up 'side the building, and Waylon said, "Oh, no, we're not going on that," and they shuttled us over to the big plane. Of course, he was upset already. We're going up the stairs, and I'm right behind him, and I started singing (sings) "Chantilly Lace..." (laughs) And he starts, "I'm going to kill you, I'm going to kill you."

Waylon: (laughing) You did that. The tour before – actually, the tour ran through New Zealand – and we was goin' to fly on down to Christchurch, there in New Zealand.

Billy Joe: I didn't go on that deal, no.
Waylon: Well, we're out on the runway, fixin' to take off in this big plane, 747. Take off down the runway, and Montovani's playing. And they pull down there and then stopped. Just shut that sumbitch down. And they backed up, turned it around this way and come back up there, and then they turned it around like they was goin' go up again, and Buddy Holly started singing "Peggy Sue". And so Kris Kristofferson, and John Cash, and all of 'em looked at me. And I says, "We ain't goin' on this sumbitch." So we made 'em take us back to the gate and got us another airplane.

Billy Joe: That's smart.

Waylon: It's crazy, go from Montovani to Buddy Holly. Not a chance. I still don't like airplanes.

Billy Joe: Yeah, it does put you plumb out of control.

Waylon: And I'm a control freak, really, about my family, and the people around me.

Billy Joe: You know what you get to do? You get to say "Tha-tha-tha that's all, folks." (laughter) That's on your new album.

Waylon: Oh that's that new one, yeah.

Billy Joe: I love that. Of course I still love that song about the guy who said, "If I'd'a killed her I'd be out by now."

Waylon: "I coulda killed her and I'd'a been out of jail by now." You know what? That was about a guy, he was playing golf, really. But Tony Joe White, Tony come home and told me about it.

Billy Joe: You mean that's for real, then?

Waylon: Yeah. And then I got thinkin' about it, and he's right, man. (laughter) Kill somebody and in eight years your butt's free.

Billy Joe: Yeah, yeah.

ND: You've both made, to my ear, comparatively peaceful records.

Billy Joe: (reluctantly) Yeah.

Waylon: (puzzled) What...

Billy Joe: This last record I made, I made one just recently, it's pretty peaceful, yeah. His is, too. Yours is laid back, pretty much. A lot of acoustic stuff. Mine is, too.

ND: Well, I meant more that you sounded more peaceful as people.

Waylon: If you really believe that, it's your first mistake. (laughs) I think we are, hell.

Billy Joe: Yeah, I do, too.

Waylon: 'Cause, you know ... we had little reasons to not be very peaceful. Record companies...

Billy Joe: Yeah, that's true.

Waylon: It's crazy, go from Montovani to Buddy Holly. Not a chance. I still don't like airplanes.

Billy Joe: Yeah, it does put you plumb out of control.

Waylon: And I'm a control freak, really, about my family, and the people around me.

Billy Joe: You know what you get to do? You get to say "Tha-tha-tha that's all, folks." (laughter) That's on your new album.

Waylon: Oh that's that new one, yeah.

Billy Joe: I love that. Of course I still love that song about the guy who said, "If I'd'a killed her I'd be out by now."

Waylon: "I coulda killed her and I'd'a been out of jail by now." You know what? That was about a guy, he was playing golf, really. But Tony Joe White, Tony come home and told me about it.

Billy Joe: You mean that's for real, then?

Waylon: Yeah. And then I got thinkin' about it, and he's right, man. (laughter) Kill somebody and in eight years your butt's free.

Billy Joe: Yeah, yeah.

ND: You've both made, to my ear, comparatively peaceful records.

Billy Joe: (reluctantly) Yeah.

Waylon: (puzzled) What...

Billy Joe: This last record I made, I made one just recently, it's pretty peaceful, yeah. His is, too. Yours is laid back, pretty much. A lot of acoustic stuff. Mine is, too.

ND: Well, I meant more that you sounded more peaceful as people.

Waylon: If you really believe that, it's your first mistake. (laughs) I think we are, hell.

Billy Joe: Yeah, I do, too.

Waylon: 'Cause, you know ... we had little reasons to not be very peaceful. Record companies...

Billy Joe: Yeah, that's true.

ND: Has that changed that much over the years? The mythology to my generation is that you two changed not just country music, but the whole business in some ways, by taking things under your control.

Billy Joe: I didn't do anything. I just met this man and he did the songs I wrote, and then that did it for me. I wrote some songs, that's it. Waylon's the man. I remember when RCA and them guys would come down there, just giving you hell. Saying "This ain't goin' sell, this ain't goin' sell," and going through all that crap. I remember that. Jeez, I stayed out of the way but it was a tough time.

Waylon: It was, you know. But you know what happened to 'em, is they actually beat themselves. They tried to destroy what we were doing, and that music was the big part. There wasn't no way they could destroy it, and they didn't know that. When we came to town, you had to use their studios, you had to use their songs, you had to record four songs in three hours, and, if you had a great song and it wasn't happening, you didn't say, "Well, let's just do three." No, whatever you got in that little length of time was what you had to live with. And that was no good. That was like cuttin' cookies. Me singing with the Nashville sound was like putting honey on chocolate cake. It was just syrupy, it just didn't work. And I didn't want to cause no trouble, because when you get there you think they ain't goin' let you sing.

Billy Joe: That's true. That is true.

Waylon: They did. The thing about it, it was people who had gone to college and got a four-year degree in marketing, and they wanted to come and tell you they knew more about your music than you did. Now the bad part is, we didn't know what the hell we were doing! (laughs) And they thought they knew more about it. They really did.

Billy Joe: They honestly did.

Waylon: And you know what? And I never realized what they was up to. Even when I started selling millions of records, they would still stop my album somewhere and say, "We don't like it." And of course I would say "Blow it out your ... somethin' and I don't care, I don't have to please you." But what they did is, it became a matter of record that they had something to do with that album by stopping it. That's job security. "What albums was he involved in?" you know? We had a big meeting one time in New York, and I said, "You know what your problem is? I know your problems. You know what you can't do, but you ain't got a clue about what you can do." And that's the way it was. I got the best story on Billy Joe.

Billy Joe: What's that?

Waylon: Well, Billy Joe had written one of the greatest songs I've ever heard in my life, called "Oklahoma Wind". Well, there's a line in there, about this Indian guy, and it says, "He lay dying in a woman's wing." And I thought, man, a woman holding this man while he's dying. What a great deal. And so, I told Billy Joe, I said, "My favorite lines in the world is 'The Oklahoma Kid lay dying/In the woman's wing.' " And he says, "Yeah, it is good." But he says, "But you know, we went over to see him, and that place was so damn filled up and had so many people in it, they had to put him over in this woman's wing in the hospital." (Slaps his forehead to general laughter.) I said, "I hate you!"
Billy Joe: Waylon did "Old Five and Dimers", and he said, "Yeah, Billy, I feel bad about owning this Cadillac." I said, "Well Waylon, give it to me!" (laughter) That cleared it up real good. (laughs)

Waylon: That old thang. That old lead-lookin' thang.

Billy Joe: Remember that old Cadillac you had?

Waylon: The orange one?

Billy Joe: Yeah, that orange lookin' thing.

Waylon: Yeah, I painted all of it black. Including the license plates. I've still got that.

Billy Joe: Do you really?

Waylon: Yeah, in the warehouse. I need to get it out. That's the best car I ever had. I used to jump curbs...

Billy Joe: I know, I've seen you. Whiskey bumps all over it.

Waylon: (snorts) Ha! Whiskey bumps?

Billy Joe: All over the damn thing.

Waylon: Now, you may hear that again, but you won't get no credit.

Billy Joe: That'd be all right. You can get me back for...

Waylon: Whiskey bumps, I love that.

Billy Joe: Oh, go right ahead. Naw, I done stole a buncha shit from him he don't know about.

ND: Do you think you changed Nashville in the end, or has it gone back to exactly the way it was before?

Waylon: It's almost back to the same. It is for people who let it be. One thing about it now, you can get all the freedom that you demand. But these new guys, I feel sorry for 'em, because they're even told what hat to wear. One of them guys, a pretty tough kid – looked like he might be a little scrapper – I said, "Where'd you get that goddamn hat?" He said, "Well, my manager and the record company made me get this one." I said, "They made you do that?" I said, "I don't think I'd let 'em do that."

Billy Joe: I tell you, whoever's selling them hats is making a killing.

Waylon: Yeah, ain't that the truth.

ND: Is country music now just going to be another form of pop music, or is this just a phase?

Waylon: You can't kill something that's right, that's good. You know what I mean? But I have said it, and I'll say it again, I don't want to be remembered from this era. The way they choose things now, is they go up there and say, "Can you dance to it?" And then they say, "Can you make a video about it?" And down here about third place they say, "Is it a good song?" The song always made what we did. And we knew. I wrote things that people didn't understand 'til I did it. But now, they'll record anything. And they're told what to do. And some things, they get a good hook line. Every song he ever wrote, and I tried to have it in every one I wrote, had the title and the melody and equally important was that hook line.

Billy Joe: Throw-away line. We called it the throw-away line.

Waylon: Yup, yeah.

Billy Joe: "Too much ain't enough" or something like that. We used to actually call it a throw-away line.

Waylon: (laughing) I used that twice in my new album.

Billy Joe: Did you?

Waylon: I said, "Billy goin' kill me."

Billy Joe: You know, I thought I heard something familiar there.

Waylon: Oh, yeah. Both times. And, hey, I didn't realize I put 'em both in that damn thing.

Billy Joe: I went to sleep on it a couple times, but I'm not real sure...(laughs) I'm just kidding you.

Waylon: Life ain't easy around him.

Billy Joe: I know it ain't. It sure ain't.

ND: Do you regret the wild days at all?

Waylon: Shit no. I wouldn't want to try to live through 'em again.

Billy Joe: Oh, I tell you what.

Waylon: But I wouldn't take for a minute of it. You know what? They were dead wrong in Nashville, in the music business. They were robbing us, and they still do. They're thieves.

Billy Joe: Well, the art is really suffering now. I feel that. Over in Europe they seem to hang in there with the artists.

Waylon: They know all about it. They know who wrote it.

Billy Joe: The machine they got goin' now's got different kind of cogs in it. And if we come back around, with this simple stuff – it's not really simple – simplicities don't need to be greased, I think. And it just don't fit in what they're doing, and that's why it's a little bit hard for 'em to accept. I understand all of it, but it don't change the way I write songs. And I probably won't get very many recorded today (laughs), especially after you saying all those bad things you did about me. (laughs)

Waylon: I don't care, because, you know I don't want to do that kind of songs, I won't do that kind of record, and I feel sorry for the artists. But there's two or three of 'em can't sing, and they have to use these little note-benders to bring their voice up. They do a thing called "comping," where you do five different versions, and they'll take one word outta here, and a half-word out here and all this stuff. It's pitiful.

Billy Joe: But the live performance, you get to really see how that is. (laughs)

Waylon: You've got to face the music, yeah.

Billy Joe: They don't let 'em lip-sync much anymore. I was out here doing that this morning. Out here doing a video, lip-syncing.

Waylon: Was you? That never ceases to embarass me.

Billy Joe: I did lip-sync, and I done it good, too.

ND: Was that your first time?

Billy Joe: Yeah. I was singing, I was trying to get over that monitor. I was singing louder than the thing.

Waylon: Well you've gotta sing it. Or it ain't goin' work.

Billy Joe: Yeah, it's different for me. It's new for me.

Waylon: I've never liked that. I keep thinking of Lawrence Welk.

Billy Joe: (laughing) And the little bubbles?

ND: Does it aggravate you both of you that, after all the songs you've written and sung, all the records you've sold, that it's now a lot harder to get played on country radio?

Billy Joe: You know, I never had it. So I don't miss it. But Waylon...

Waylon: I don't see what age has to do with it.

Billy Joe: ...it just kind of upsets me. It seems like it's against the law to do stuff like that.

Waylon: If they said to me, said, "Waylon, you could be big, selling millions of records, or you could be the biggest star in country music," I'd say no. I'd say no, really. I wouldn't want to mess with it anymore. You know what I like? I like 2,000 people. When they listen, they listen to my songs. I'm really not crazy about this [Willie's picnic]. I just did Lollapalooza, and I'll tell you what: that's one of the best audiences I've ever played to. Even all the wild stuff that goes on with it. Because you know what? You can look in their faces. And see. And I never saw a mean-lookin' face there. (Someone enters the bus to remind Waylon he has a show to do.) I'm going to have to figure out what I'm going to do here.

Billy Joe: Man, I really want to thank you for letting me come in here and talk with you.

Waylon: What are you talking about? Sit down. Just give me your money, don't be giving me your goddamn thanks.

Billy Joe: I got no damn money. I ain't got no money.

Waylon: (mimics) "Ain't got no money." (leans into the mike, quiet) Some of us has got a hit. [Patti Loveless is running Shaver's "When the Fallen Angels Fly" up the charts.]

Billy Joe: No, I hasn't either. IRS got it.

Waylon: Oh, IRS. Yeah, that's what Willie said, too. He kept whining about that, till here come all these people, bought all that shit and give it back to him. (laughs) I tell you what happened. I tell you how he got out of it. He told on all of us.

Billy Joe: (serious) He did?

Waylon: Yes. You wanta kill him first, or you want me to? I'll kill him and you can break his legs.

Billy Joe: I can't kill him, didn't bring any silver bullets. And I even't real sure I might even have to have some stakes. (laughs)