I'll Be Here in the Morning: The Songwriting Legacy of Townes Van Zandt

Billy Joe Shaver

Billy Joe Shaver Now, the Lord resides inside a house of golden And faith is the door and love is the key —TVZ, “Two Hands,” from High, Low and In Between B illy Joe Shaver’s earthy yarns link sacred and secular with a devil’s grin. “Faith gets in there almost every doggone time [I write a song],” he says. “I don’t want to say anything bad about it, man, but it kind of gets me looking like some kind of preacher. Waylon [Jennings] called me a Bible-thumper. I said, ‘I’ll thump you, buddy.’”1 Shaver and Van Zandt wreaked havoc together as rising songwriters in the 1960s; in fact, Crazy Heart screenwriter Scott Cooper partly Billy Joe Shaver, South by Southwest, Hotel San Jose, Austin, TX, March 16, 2007 44 I’ll Be Here In THe MornInG shapedthefilm’sunrulyprotagonistBadBlake(JeffBridges)aroundthe duo’s early days. Shaver says their interests were more saintly later on: “Townes was a Christian. We talked about that a lot.”2 Shaver, born August 16, 1939, in Corsicana, Texas, has anchored his songs in spirituality, organized and otherwise, from the beginning. For example,whilehisdebutalbumOldFiveandDimersLikeMe(1973)featured worldly classics such as “I Been to Georgia on a Fast Train” and the title track,italsoincludedthecountryhymns“JesusChrist,WhataMan”and “Jesus Was Our Savior and Cotton Was Our King.” Shaver has continued to balance sin and salvation throughout his career. For every “You’re as Young as the Woman You Feel,” “That’s What She Said Last Night,” and “Hold on to Yours and I’ll Hold on to Mine,” he has answered with “If You Don’t Love Jesus,” “Jesus Christ Is Still the King,” and “You Can’t Beat Jesus Christ.”3 Billy Joe Shaver entered into public consciousness through Waylon Jennings’s landmark collection Honky Tonk Heroes (1973). Shaver wrote orcowroteelevenofitssongs,including“OldFiveandDimersLikeMe,” “Willy the Wandering Gypsy and Me,” “Ride Me Down Easy,” and the title track, which one writer called the “national anthem of the Outlaw Country movement.”4 Honky Tonk Heroes reached Billboard’s Top Twenty country album chart and earned a Top Thirty single with the Jennings and Shaver cowrite “You Asked Me To.”5 Shaver songs frequently redefine threadbare cliché as universal truth (“Try and Try Again,” “Live Forever”). His most wistful (for instance, “Magnolia Mother’s Love,” “Corsicana Daily Sun”) and weary (“I Don’t Seem to Fit Anywhere,” “Blood Is Thicker than Water”) also blur lines between life and art. In fact, Shaver, who lost parts of four fingers in an early sawmill accident, has lived through several tragedies that could serveasblueprintsfortearycountrysongs.Mostnotably,heenduredthe “cosmic misfortune” of his mother, first wife, and only son (the guitarist Eddy Shaver), dying within a year of each other. Additionally, Shaver suffered a heart attack onstage at Gruene Hall in New Braunfels, Texas, in 2001.6 One writer supposes that his life “might read like the Book of Job as filtered through Hank Williams.”7 BIlly Joe SHAVer 45 Shaver, who recorded Van Zandt’s “White Freightliner Blues” on the album Poet: A Tribute to Townes Van Zandt (2001), claims his first songs poured forth by age eight. He considers nearly all circumstances as creative inspiration.8 “I really believe I was born to write songs,” Shaver says. “I have a lot of songs that people discover later on. If I’d heard one of these songs that I wrote now, I guess I’d just shoot myself if I didn’t write it. I just love my songs.”9 Shaver’s no stranger to firearms. In 2007, he shot acquaintance Billy Coker in the face with a .22-caliber pistol after an argument at Papa Joe’s Texas Saloon in Waco, Texas. He was acquitted on aggravated assault charges and pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor gun charge. Shaver performed in Houston the night that he was acquitted. He says he will not write a song about the incident.10 • • • Billy Joe Shaver I met Townes in the early Sixties in Houston, Texas. He and I used to play this place called the Old Quarter. I had been writing all my life, but I was just getting started playing in front of people a little bit. Townes coaxed me to get in front of them, but he was just dangerously good. Then Townes and me got to running around together and raising hell, and he’s crazy...