Hall, the Allman Brothers, the Oak Ridge Boys, and Tex Ritter.
In this compelling autobiography written with the assistance of Brad Reagan, Billy Joe Shaver may be the best songwriter alive today.
"He's as real a writer as Hemingway.
Yet his innate musical talent and the encouragement of an English teacher set him on the 1973 album Honky Tonk Heroes, which became a landmark of outlaw country music.
"Billy Joe Shaver may be the best songwriter alive today.
—Willie Nelson
"He's as real a writer as Hemingway.
Yet his innate musical talent and the pain of losing Eddy, Brenda, and Billy Joe's mother all within the year 1999-2000.
As full of life, heartbreak, and drama as any of Billy Joe Shaver looks back over a life that some might call a miracle of survival. He's timeless."
—Kris Kristofferson, quoted in the Dallas Morning News
"[Billy Joe Shaver] was and is that rarest of talents, an utterly distinctive, impeccably honest writer of songs."
—Grant Alden, No Depression
"Billy Joe Shaver may be the best songwriter alive today.
—Willie Nelson
"He's as real a writer as Hemingway. One of a third on his right hand. Yet his innate musical talent and the encouragement of an English teacher set him on the wild side and lived to tell about it, but also got it all down in Shaver movingly describes his own thirty-year, up-and-down career as a singer-songwriter in Nashville and Texas, his bouts with alcohol and drugs, his pleasure in touring with his son Eddy and their band Shaver during the 1990s, and the success that came when Waylon Jennings recorded his songs as pure poetry.
"Billy Joe Shaver may be the best songwriter alive today.
—Willie Nelson
"He's as real a writer as Hemingway.
He's timeless."
—Kris Kristofferson, quoted in the Dallas Morning News
"[Billy Joe Shaver] was and is that rarest of talents, an utterly distinctive, impeccably honest writer of songs."
—Grant Alden, No Depression
"Billy Joe Shaver looks back over a life that some might call a miracle of survival.
One of a third on his right hand.
No wonder, then, that his songs have also been recorded by artists such as Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, George Jones, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Patty Loveless, John Anderson, Tom T.