City Newspaper Archives - 9/2007
Billy Joe Shaver "Storyteller"
Sugar Hill
Published by Frank De Blase on Sep 05, 2007
I saw Billy Joe Shaver at The Dingo Bar in Albuquerque back in the mid-'90s; it was a life-changing experience. Shaver's guitar wizard son Eddy was still alive and the band freight-trained on some vicious honky tonk. But the weekday crowd was light, and Shaver took to stripping it down to just him and his guitar, at one point even forsaking the old battered thing to croon lonely and a cappella.
And that's damn near what you got here. "Storyteller" gets to the source of the fire in the music and the fire in his belly: the stories of his life and the lyrics he uses to tell them. "There's one in every crowd/for cryin' out loud/why was it always turning out to be me?" he sings on "Hony Tonk Heroes." Shaver's songs are of the classic cowboy variety full of color, simple honesty, and no bullshit. This album was recorded live in 1992 at the Bluebird Theatre in Denver with his late son Eddy on acoustic guitar. It's just Shaver telling 14 little stories that'll crack you up and break your heart.
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