I went up on the mountain and looked down upon my life
I had squandered all my money, and lost my son and wife

-- From "Try and Try Again," 1998

It was 1997, and Shaver was in Louisiana, acting like a movie star. Duvall, who first met him in the late '80s while shooting "Lonesome Dove" around Austin, gave him a speaking part in "The Apostle." It's easy to see why Duvall is drawn to Shaver. Take Duvall's character in "The Apostle" and merge it with the self-destructive country singer he played in "Tender Mercies" and you've got a decent rendering of Shaver.

Duvall set him up in a suite, so Shaver invited Brenda to come stay with him. They were divorced for the second time, but he'd heard she was not doing well. When she showed up overweight and grumpy, he forced her to go to the doctor: She had advanced rectal cancer, which required multiple surgeries. Shortly thereafter, when her diagnosis became terminal, they married for the third time. Shaver put his career on hold and stayed with her, cleaning out the wound in her side and holding her hand as she slowly died.

"It was rough, man, but I was glad to do it," he says. "I loved her, you know? We both realized we loved each other, after all that time of bouncing back and forth." (Other times, Shaver says he wonders if Brenda truly loved him, a doubt exacerbated by a cache of letters he found after she died. He says he asked her before she died, and she merely smiled at him.)

At the same time, Shaver's mother, who lived across town in Waco, was also suffering from cancer. Within a month, Brenda died at the age of 54 and Shaver's mother, Victory, died at 80. As hard as the loss was for Shaver, it was harder for Eddy, who was already outpacing his father's hard-living footsteps. After his mother died, Eddy started shooting heroin. One stint in rehab didn't take. Shaver says he wanted to enroll Eddy in a new treatment center, but Eddy's new wife wouldn't allow it.

In late December of 1999, Eddy signed a contract with an Austin-based label to record a solo album. On New Year's Eve, while celebrating his new deal, Eddy overdosed and died in a Waco motel room. He was 38.

That night, Shaver was scheduled to play with Eddy at Poodie's Hilltop, a bar outside of Austin owned by Willie Nelson's road manager. Nelson, who'd lost a son to suicide on Christmas Eve several years before, filled in on guitar. When I ask Nelson about it, he chooses his words slowly, careful to protect a private moment between friends. "It was as sad as you can imagine," he says.

When our time has ended
And our race is over, run
We will melt into the likeness of our own beloved ones

-- From "Son of Calvary," 1998

Roseanne Cash, who knows of such things, once wrote that "at the heart of real country music lies family." It's certainly the heart of Shaver's music today. His recent songs are consumed with his performance as a father, husband and son. His last album, "Freedom's Child," features a song, "Day by Day," that might be his most personal to date. It tells the story of his family in nine verses, and it's so personal that Shaver has yet to perform it live. When I reach him by phone at his home in Hawaii, Kristofferson says it is the best exposition of family grief he's ever heard. And then he recites the lyrics from memory: There's many a moonbeam got lost in the forest/ And many a forest got burned to the ground/ The son went with Jesus to be with his mother/ The father just fell to his knees on the ground.

"The simple eloquence of that thing is just heartbreaking," Kristofferson says.

Shaver's continued brilliance as a songwriter, when most of his peers are retired or simply singing the same old hits night after night, is drawing notice. In 2002, in Nashville, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americana Music Association, and stunned the assembled audience by announcing that it was the first award he'd ever received for his music.

Though he considered retiring after Eddy died, he eventually turned the other way and now works more than ever. He's on the road more than 200 days this year, despite suffering a heart attack onstage several years ago that culminated in a quadruple bypass. "I'm happiest when I'm playing," he explains. "It's a departure from the ordinary, I guess."

He is working on the songs for his next album with Houston-based Compadre Records, and plans to go into the studio with Kid Rock later this year.

Pedraza, an Argentina native, met Shaver eight years ago on the set of "The Apostle." She says she was captivated by the songs he played for the cast and crew, even though she does not consider herself a country music fan. "His music really moved something inside me," she says. "I just had to know: Who was this man who writes these amazing songs?"

The message of the film, she says, is the lesson of Shaver's life: perseverance and survival.

"You have to keep trying in life. The challenge is what you do with what you have. I find him a very humble guy, without bitterness, when he has every right to be bitter. His life could be so much more tragic. He takes it for granted but you have to have a lot of strength to come through all that."

Shaver is becoming something of a Hollywood favorite. Luke Wilson cast him in his upcoming film "The Wendell Baker Story" and has become a regular at Shaver's shows, frequently with other celebs in tow. Wilson didn't show for the after-party for the documentary at an Austin restaurant, but Duvall and Pedraza welcomed Dennis Hopper, Janine Turner and a crowd of about 100 other friends.

Despite a voice sore from four days of traveling around the state promoting the film, Shaver played an energetic 90-minute set with his band, dancing and waving his chocolate-brown cowboy hat in the air. Those who know him well agreed that he was in better spirits than he'd been in some time. "I want to thank Robert and Luciana for everything they've done for me," he said during his final encore. "I feel like a new man. I don't know if it's a better one, but at least it's a new one."

Recent Stories