Compadre Records
2004
Billy And The Kid
About This Album
The very nature of this project -- Billy Joe Shaver and producer Tony Colton collecting and "finishing" some songs by Shaver's late son, guitar wrangler and songwriter Eddy -- is fraught with wrenching emotion and struggle; evaluating it is perhaps pointless. But Billy Joe Shaver has done not only an admirable thing, but a worthy one aesthetically. He lays his own broken heart out for the listener on the opening track, "Fame." Raw, accompanied only by his faltering guitar, Shaver digs deep in to offer his gratitude for what he still has -- his unchanging nature, his friends, his life -- in spite of everything -- losing his mother-in-law, mother, wife, and son inside of a year -- and reflects the confounding nature of fame and desire. Billy Joe sings on three more tracks, all of them demoed by Eddy, and a rhythm section; his vocals finish them. On "Lighting a Torch," with its squalling hard rock guitar edge and plodding lyric line, Billy Joe sings Eddy's words with a razored wisdom he wished he didn't have, and indeed, sings them into the ether expecting a response: "I never seen a darker sunrise/I've never felt a deeper pain/The very moment you were dust on the rise/ I was lighting a torch with a brand new flame/You can see me on the dark night/A shadow down in the neon light/ I take my whiskey and I wait for the pain/Lightin' a torch with a brand new flame.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and 8)

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