After Billy Joe Shaver died, I went down the rabbit hole and found a man who lived life to the fullest.
Billy Joe Shaver left the arena in October of 2020. Although I'm a longtime fan, his death didn't make me sad. For one thing, in spite of a less-than-health-conscious lifestyle, Shaver lived almost five years past the U.S. national average. He also managed to pack two lifetimes worth of experiences into his 81 years on this planet.
Career-wise, Shaver racked up some incredible accomplishments. He earned hall-of-fame songwriter status with covers by Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, the Allman Brothers, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Waylon Jennings, to name a few. Shaver also had a successful career as a singer, raconteur, and actor. A few years back, Shaver had a heart attack onstage while performing, but still finished the show. He'd planned on gigging the next night until the doc nixed it. If it wasn't for COVID-19 sidelining his work for 2020, Shaver would've been booked right up to the end.
Shaver's personal life was just as remarkable as his career. He was jailed in Mexico at 15, dropped acid with the Dead, and was married six times (three of those marriages to the same woman). Shaver struggled with his demons, which led him to do things like drive his car through the plate-glass window of a car dealership while intoxicated. He also lived up to his outlaw cred by actually shooting a guy (“right between the mother and the f**ker") outside a bar near his home in Waco, Texas.
I went down the rabbit hole after he died. I read several of his obituaries, listened to an NPR Fresh Air interview, and then re-watched the Billy Joe Shaver episode of Mike Judge Presents: Tales from the Tour Bus (Season 1, episode 5). What struck me most about his life was the winding road that led Shaver to his career in music.
On his 17th birthday, Shaver joined the Navy. Once discharged, he worked a long line of dead-end jobs, from roofer to rodeo clown. By the time Billy Joe was 28, he'd put aside his love of music and was working in a local lumber mill. One day at work, Shaver's right hand got caught in a machine, cutting off two of his fingers and leaving him less than Django had to work with. About the accident, Shaver told NPR: “I'd been writing all that time. Since I was a little kid, I'd been singing and stuff. And I just never had got serious with the guitar yet. And so when this happened, right at the very moment it happened, it just hit me right in the heart that I wasn't doing what I was supposed to do. I guess if I hadn't had these things cut off, I probably wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now."
Armed with a few self-penned songs, one good hand, and a vague plan of doing something in music, Shaver set out on his new life. Since he had no car nor money for bus fair, Shaver decided to hitchhike to L.A. According to Saving Country Music, “Billy Joe stood on the side of Interstate 10 in Texas, waiting for someone westward bound to pick him up. And he waited, and waited, and nobody stopped. Eventually Shaver got so frustrated, he switched over to the other side of the highway heading east. The first car that passed him stopped, picked him up, and took Shaver all the way to Memphis, Tennessee. He then made his way to Nashville, where he soon had a job writing songs for $50 a week. The rest is history."
Shaver's life story feels like a classic heroic odyssey. The hero knows he has a destiny greater than the life he's living. He doesn't know where to go or how to do it, but he knows in his gut that he is supposed to go someplace and do something. What appears to be obstacles are in fact the Fates, God, the universe, or dumb luck guiding his steps to get him where he's supposed to be. Who would've imagined that losing your fingers would make you think, “time to get serious about guitar?" Who could've guessed that a trip to L.A. from Texas lands you in Nashville? But had he not cut off his fingers he might have been just comfortable enough to stay in the wrong place. If he had money for a bus, he would've gone to the wrong city.
My biggest takeaways from my Shaver binge are:
1. Don't get too attached to your plans.
2. Passion leads to our purpose.
3. The only thing keeping you from your destiny is yourself.
This year has most of us thinking a bit more about life, death, and meaning. I'm not saying Shaver found the meaning to life, or even if there is one, but it's beautiful to see a life fully lived. That dude rode every ride at the carnival, then left when it closed.
I met my guitar teacher, Mike Hoover, when I was in 8th grade. Forty years later, I’m still learning from him.
“For us to live any other way was nuts." —Ray Liotta as Henry Hill in Goodfellas
Never imagined I'd be here, but currently I'm homeschooling my 4-year-old daughter. Teaching has taught me that beneath my Zen Hippie Cowboy façade lies a rigid nerd, weirdly unforgiving and bad at concealing my frustration at both myself and the student. I'm the kind of uptight teacher I would've dreaded as a kid. My incompetence makes me appreciate the good teachers I've had in my life.
For a person who doesn't seem particularly bright, I've spent a surprisingly long time in school (17 years). In all that time, not a single educator taught me a fraction of what my guitar teacher, Mike Hoover, taught me.
I met Mike in 8th grade. By then I'd been playing violin (poorly and mandatorily) in the school orchestra for four years. My mother had also signed me up for group guitar classes during the summers, where I learned my basic chords. Sitting in a circle strumming “Tom Dooley" felt about as fun as math class. Sensing this was going nowhere, mom signed me up for private lessons at Hansen Music, a local music store where electric guitars and amps lined every wall, and long-haired dudes in bell bottoms hung out and jammed, sometimes past closing time. Mike greeted us at the front desk looking like a member of the Outlaws and smelling like he'd just smoked a left-handed cigarette. I was a little surprised my mother left me in his care. Like that old Buddhist proverb: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." Mike was my guy.
In the first lesson, Mike sat across from me with his tobacco-burst Les Paul Artisan and showed me the first position of the pentatonic scale. Mike explained how you can make your fingers dance around that box and come up with melodies. I played some chords while he ripped some blues. It was the first time I saw lead guitar up close: Truly, at the time, this was coolest thing I'd ever seen. Then he said, “Now I'll play the rhythm and you take a ride." That was when playing notes became playing music—something I'd never experienced in four years of orchestra.
My brain's reward system gave me a serious hit of dopamine and I felt positively high. I've been chasing the dragon ever since. This set me on a lifelong, often ill-fated, wildly frustrating yet immensely satisfying journey. For better or worse, this is where I belong and I'm grateful to be living my life rather than one of the other more obvious, yet ultimately wrong, options. I'm thankful to my mother for being cool and to Mike Hoover for the guidance.
Not only did Mike unlock music, he taught me you can actually make a pretty decent living playing it. To illustrate the point, he hired me to play in his band and paid me way more than I'd ever made in my many crap teen-friendly jobs. Gigging with Mike revealed the working musician's playbook. Mike taught me to appreciate guitar craftsmanship and tonewoods, and to write off gear purchases on my taxes. He taught me to wear something cool onstage so you look like you're in the band, not a member of the audience (and write-off those clothes as well). Mike taught me to tip when somebody pours you a drink, even if it's on the house. Perhaps most importantly, Mike taught me that being a musician means you're selling fun, so have as much fun as possible, and if you're not having fun, pretend you are and usually the fun will kick in. He also cautioned me about having too much fun and taught me how to overcome a hangover. My father calls Mike my music father; that's accurate.
I called Mike tonight to tell him about the 1980 Gibson L-5S I recently purchased. In 9th grade, Hansen Music had this guitar on the wall. At first I thought it was just a Les Paul. Then Mike pointed out the deep-carved, figured maple back with a matching wooden control cover, the ornate binding wrapping the thin body, and the 3-piece L-5 maple neck with abalone inlays running up the ebony fretboard to the flowerpot on the bound headstock. I've wanted one ever since and can't believe I bought the same guitar I saw 40 years ago. As an added bonus, the L-5 had been played for decades by a local guitar hero, Ron Schuster (whom I mentioned in my last column). Mike pointed out that Ron's mojo is on this guitar. Civilians think the concept is nonsense but we know that the mystical is real. When I offered to send the guitar to Mike, he laughed and said, “No man. If I don't play my two Les Pauls, they get mad at me and start acting up. They always get resentful if I leave them alone too long." Four decades later, this guy is still teaching me. Mike is the Zen Hippie Cowboy: I remain the student.
Behind the scenes at the CMT Music Awards in the time of COVID.
After my first gig-less summer in 35 years, I just filmed the 2020 CMT Music Awards. Although I've had the musical director/guitarist slot on this show for 10 consecutive years, Season 11, like everything else in 2020, was unlike anything I'd ever experienced.
Pre-pandemic, the Awards show was scheduled for June 6. In April and May, we speculated. Then the show date was pushed back several times. Then just a few weeks ago, about the time I had quit thinking about it, I got the call to save dates sometime between late September to early October. I called my band of TV-gig go-to-players, who all, not surprisingly, had wide open calendars. We were thrilled to be going back to work.
The network's chief concern was safety. They set up a COVID testing facility in Nashville's Bridgestone Arena and had every person associated with the show get tested multiple times before they reported to work. The entire band was tested once, then paid to self-quarantine, then tested again, quarantined, and then finally allowed to get together at the largest rehearsal room at Soundcheck Nashville for a closed rehearsal. We were greeted by four “COVID Compliance Officers," who took our temperature, asked about our health, and explained the safety policies. Everybody had a mask on at all times unless they were singing on a mic.
Normally, we would be joined by the six artists we were performing with. However, as a safety precaution, the artists were not allowed at the rehearsal. Instead, I put together a mock-up arrangement out of their singles, and then sent the roughs to the artists. If the singers had questions or changes, we communicated by phone or email. The band then recorded a live run of each song during rehearsal, and these recordings were sent to the artists so they could familiarize themselves with the arrangements. Because the artists weren't at rehearsal, somebody from the band had to sing a guide vocal to cover the missing star's vocal on each recording. There's a performance of me butchering a recent No. 1 song that I hope doesn't see the light of day.
After rehearsal, the band was told to get COVID testing a third time and then quarantine ourselves until we filmed four days later. The network took testing seriously. Two days before the shoot, when our fiddle player had not completed her third test, a producer called me and told me to get her in line ASAP or she wouldn't perform.
Normally, the CMT Awards are filmed live at the Bridgestone in front of country music's finest and an audience of 5,000 fans, plus millions of home viewers. This time, we had to shoot each performance separately to maintain social distancing. We filmed in a field in Arrington, Tennessee, about 30 minutes from the Bridgestone. No crowd, just a few lucky fans sitting in the beds of trucks parked behind our stage. Artists sang from a separate stage that was about 15 feet in front of us. There was a minimal camera crew and a drone filming safely from above (which was surprisingly loud and distracting). All crew, producers, and hair/makeup artists that approached the stage wore face shields and masks.
Instead of a large tent full of craft services, they had COVID-compliant, hermetically sealed individual snack bags prepared for everyone (fruit, candy, gum, protein bars, basically sugar). Five band members were sequestered in a large dressing room, with one member having her own room. A producer came to our dressing room and had each musician list our instruments in the event that any band members for other acts tested positive. If needed, a quick sub player who was certified COVID-free could fill in last minute.
I've not yet seen our performances, but they all sounded good going down and, in spite of the fact we were performing in an empty field instead of a packed arena, the energy felt good. The network is still painstakingly filming the show one separate performance at a time. It's got to be wildly expensive and a logistical nightmare. I'm grateful to the network for making it happen. It felt great to be making music with my friends. It was odd in the respect that I've been working with the same production crew for roughly 15 years, but this time, there was no hugging, high-fives, or hanging out. But we looked at each other through our masks and felt connected.
On the upside, it was the easiest band photo ever. Since everyone wore a mask, nobody was making an odd face. For me, the sweetest part of the show was playing my buddy Ron Schuster's 1980 Gibson L-5 the entire show. Ron left the arena earlier this year, but I remember sneaking into bars to watch him when I was 15 like it was yesterday. Our time here is shockingly brief, enjoy the ride.