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“THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT THE FIRST TIME, SECOND TIME I DID IT ON MY OWN…”

A line from Bob Dylan’s Together Through Life album has been garnering some comment recently. “I’m listening to Billy Joe Shaver, and I’m reading James Joyce” he sings on I Feel a Change Coming On. “Some people they tell me I’ve got the blood of the land in my voice.”

Now 69, Billy Joe Shaver is one of the last surviving country outlaws. I met him in the summer of 2006, when he was a “spiritual advisor” to Kinky Friedman’s campaign for Governor of Texas. (As the man who wrote If You Don’t Love Jesus Go To Hell, Shaver was an odd pick for pastor to the Jewish Friedman. But the pair went way back.)

The following April, Shaver was back in more familiar territory, arrested for shooting a man outside a bar in Lorena, Texas. But he was certainly in rare form that night in Whelans. Most of the lines he regailed me with had probably been in his repetoire since before I was born. But he was hugely entertaining nonetheless. Truthfully, I had no intention of using the interview – no Dublin publication was going to be interested. It was really just an excuse for me to meet the old shitkicker.

Three years later, no doubt I’ve lost the tape.

Shavers songs have been covered by everyone from Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson to Dylan himself. There are interesting profiles of him here and here.