In the wake of Merle Haggard’s death last month, you might have read presumptive platitudes like “the last of the country outlaws is gone” or “country music has lost the final king from the old group of kings.”
This, of course, is hogwash. As long as Billy Joe Shaver walks the Earth, outlaw country is alive and well.
Shaver, who plays Apr. 27 at Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley, is the guy who wrote Honky Tonk Heroes for Waylon Jennings. Not just the title track, but practically the whole album — the one that defined “outlaw country.”
Here’s a guy who sawed off two fingers of his right hand when he was 21 and kept playing guitar. Who got divorced twice and married three times, all to the same woman. Who once had a heart attack on stage. Who lost his son to a heroin overdose and swiftly threatened to find his drug dealer and kill him. Who, even in his late 60s, outside a bar in Texas, got in an argument and shot another man in the face.
