For three more years, Shaver scraped to get by, living out of his truck and gobbling amphetamines so he could stay up all night writing. When he ran out of money, he'd drive back to Texas to work construction for a while and then head right back to Nashville when his pockets were full. He got several songs recorded -- Kristofferson put Shaver's "Good Christian Soldier" on his first album -- but after more than five years he was still looking for the proverbial big break.

It came in 1972, when Waylon Jennings overheard Shaver playing some songs in a trailer before a concert in Dripping Springs, Texas. (The show featured a mix of country, rock and folk performers in a field outside of Austin -- two years later, Willie Nelson adopted the concept as his annual Fourth of July picnic.) Impressed by what he heard, Jennings agreed on the spot to record a collection of Shaver's songs about restless cowboys and no-account boozers. But Jennings got wrapped up in other projects and, after six months of waiting, Shaver was desperate. He tracked Jennings to a Nashville studio, where he was partying with an assortment of groupies and bikers and ostensibly recording an album.

When Jennings heard Shaver was waiting, he sent a messenger out with a $100 bill. The message was clear: Take the money, small-timer, and quit bugging me. Shaver sent a message back: Shove your $100 up your ass.

When Jennings emerged from the booth accompanied by two bikers, Shaver pounced. "Waylon," he yelled, "I don't care if you do an album of my songs or not but you're going to listen to them now or I'm going to whip your ass in front of everybody."

The bikers started toward Shaver, relishing the idea of tearing this hayseed to shreds, before Jennings talked them down. He hustled Shaver into a nearby room, and said, "Hoss, don't ever do something like that again. You could've gotten killed."

Shaver pulled out his guitar and played three songs. Jennings was hooked. Over the objections of the RCA brass, he made those songs the centerpiece of his next album. The record was called "Honky Tonk Heroes," after the title of one of Shaver's songs. Of the 10 tracks on the album, Shaver wrote nine. Eventually selling more than 5 million copies, it became the touchstone of the Outlaw movement, which infused country music with a rock 'n' roll attitude and provided the blueprint for a series of performers to follow, including Jerry Jeff Walker, David Allan Coe and Hank Williams Jr. (The movement's next great record, Willie Nelson's "Red Headed Stranger," came out two years later.)

It also made Shaver a commodity. He reconciled with Brenda, who came to Nashville with their son, Eddy. Shaver recorded three solo albums in the 1970s, all of them critically acclaimed but commercially disappointing. It didn't help that he was with a different record company for each record, and each went out of business within a year of the record's release. Still, he was a sought-after performer and fans would stuff $100 bills in his shirt just for showing up at a club. Now that he could afford to, he spent most of his time drinking, snorting and brawling his way around Nashville, reinforcing his reputation as the wildest of the Texas outlaws.

"It was like the Old West," Shaver says. "It seemed like there was always somebody coming to town looking to prove they were tougher than me."

Other songwriters revered him, and worried about him. Tom T. Hall voiced his concern with a song, "Joe, Don't Let Your Music Kill You," and Kristofferson weighed in with "The Fighter," saying: We measured the space between Waylon and Willie/ And Willie and Waylon and me/ But there wasn't nothin' like Billy Joe Shaver/ Where Billy Joe Shaver should be.

By 1979, Willie, Waylon and Kris were well on their way to becoming legends, while Shaver was strung out and barely hanging on. He burned out for good when an angel appeared at his bedside after a long night of partying. It didn't say anything, he recalls, just sat there shaking its head. He wasn't sure if it was a hallucination or a vision, but he took the hint and drove off in his pickup. That night, while wandering the cliffs above the Narrows of the Harpeth River, he came up with the phrase, "I'm just an old chunk of coal, but I'm gonna be a diamond someday." That became the title of one of his most enduring songs. (John Anderson took it to No. 1 in 1981 and Johnny Cash later told Shaver that he sang it to himself each morning during a stint in rehab. It is also featured in the powerful closing scene of Pedraza's documentary.)

Shaver moved back to Texas the next day, quit drinking and confused the hell out of the music establishment. "It hurt me professionally, but I most likely would have died if I'd stayed. I had to walk away from it," he says now.

Shaver spent the next decade cleaning up and reordering his life. With little fanfare, he released three more solo albums and played around Texas with his son, Eddy, who had learned his guitar chops from Allman Brother Dickey Betts. Father and son formed an indelible bond. They called themselves Shaver, and Eddy's wailing solos gave the band's tunes a jolt of energy.

In 1993, the duo produced a rollicking roadhouse album, "Tramp on Your Street," that earned critical raves. They released two more albums in quick succession -- one of which, "Unshaven: Shaver Live at Smith's Olde Bar," was produced by Brendan O'Brien, who had worked with Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots -- and a whole new generation of fans was turned on to Shaver's tunes. He was sober and playing music with his son.

That seems a lifetime ago now, the days before Brenda got sick and everything fell apart.

Recent Stories