Ode to Billy Joe
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Ode to Billy Joe In an early scene from a new documentary about his life, Billy Joe Shaver is dressed head-to-toe in denim and standing on the linoleum of his kitchen floor. He looks, as he always does, like he just came in off the ranch, and he takes a slug from a plastic gallon jug of water that he pulled from the refrigerator. "I usually just drink from this," he says to the camera. "Ain't nobody else here." Shaver, the original country music outlaw, is alluding to the fact that his mother, wife and only son have recently died, leaving him, at age 64, almost entirely alone. The film, "The Portrait of Billy Joe," debuted in March at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, where Shaver's reputation as a songwriter preceded him -- as did his Job-like biography of trials and tribulations. That the film, currently making the festival rounds across the country and overseas, was produced by Robert Duvall and directed by Duvall's girlfriend, Luciana Pedraza, added to the buzz around the sold-out screening.
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Billy Joe Shaver lost his wife and his mom the same year his beloved
son died of an overdose. He never made any money, and he lives in obscurity in Waco, Texas. But the man Willie Nelson says "may be the best songwriter alive today" is still keeping on.