Billy Joe Shaver - Real Deal
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CD Details
Artist: Billy Joe ShaverEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2005-09-20
Music Label: Compadre Records
Soundtracks:
- Live Forever (with Big and Rich)
- ThereĀ?s No Fool Like an Old Fool
- LivinĀ? and LovinĀ? Lie
- It Just AinĀ?t There For Me No More
- Jesus Christ is Still The King
- Slim Chance and the CanĀ?t Hardly Playboys (with Kevin Fowler)
- I Changed My Mind
- Sweet Melody
- Valentine (with Nanci Griffith)
- You Ought to be with Me When IĀ?m Alone
- Down the Road by the Way
- West Texas Waltz (with Kimmie Rhodes)
- The Real Deal
- If the TrailerĀ?s A RockinĀ? DonĀ?t Come KnockinĀ?
- Try and Try Again
- Aunt JessieĀ?s Chicken Ranch
Music reviews of Real Deal
Music Review: The Real Deal is Straight from a Pure Heart
Rating: 5 Stars
This is an exquisite album. The flavor blossoms with every spin. A couple of the songs are funny, the way Texas songwriters write funny songs. A couple are sad. They just grow the more you listen.
Each new Billy Joe Shaver album is a surprise in many ways. How does he maintain such longevity? Where does he find this seemingly bottomless well of creativity? How can he make all these old things seem new again? The huge suprise to me in this, his first self-produced album, is the frank, unapologetic retro sound. This is the music I grew up hearing on my dad's old 78's. Steel guitar, heartbreak, grownup love, and Jesus.
And this is a mellow album. Even "Slim Chance" and "If the Trailer's Rockin", songs in which Billy is apparantly "channelling Roger Miller" (as Robert Ealr Keen once observed) are distinctly kind songs.
What is not surprising, for anyone who knows his work, is the sincerity and profound beauty of most of the songs. "Profound" is the correct word. When Billy asks "Will you be my Valentine...will you let our hearts entwine?", you know he's talking about marrying the same woman three times in an effort to get it right in the end. You know he's referring to our lives, to making a go of it with that less than perfect man who held your heart while your dad died, to loving that kid who just can't seem to graduate from rehab, to loving a God who seems to keep heaping on the trials along with the blessings.
You gotta stand in awe of Billy Joe Shaver. He is as he sings. Pure and without pretense. And beautiful.
Description of Real Deal
It seems like Billy Joe Shaver's experienced everything a musician can--except that he has never self-produced an album. So Shaver hunkered down in a Pedernales, Texas, studio to record 14 out of 16 new tracks for The Real Deal. He explains, "It was great to be able to sing the way I want to sing. I could set up the arrangements how I wanted rather than having to fit someone else's." He was also joined by old and new friends, including the country superstar duo Big & Rich, who co-produced their duet with Shaver on his inspirational masterpiece "Live Forever." According to Big Kenny from the duo, "Shaver is a classic poet and a songsmith...the kind of person you can listen to for hours, with a spirit and soul that grabs your attention." The duet marks the first time the double platinum duo has recorded an outside song. Others who joined Shaver included Nancy Griffith (who sang on the song "Valentine"), Kimmie Rhodes ("West Texas Waltz"), Flaco Jimenez ("Feliz Navidad"), and Kevin Fowler ("Slim Chance and the Can't Hardly Playboys"). The album also contains Shaver's fervent reminder about the power of persistence, "Try and Try Again."The Real Deal follows the well-received Tribute to Billy Joe Shaver: Live, which featured such friends as Robert Earl Keen, Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Guy Clark, Todd Snider, Cory Morrow, Bruce Robison, and Kelly Willis, among others. Shaver is truly one of the most respected living figures in American music today. Johnny Cash called him "my favorite songwriter." (He has written for Cash as well as Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, the Allman Brothers, and Bobby Bare.) The Washington Post noted that "when the country outlaws were collecting their holy writings, Billy Joe Shaver was carving out Exodus."Rough-hewn Texas treasure Billy Joe Shaver is something like that old chunk of coal he once wrote about--except his "diamond" already shines through. On this self-produced effort, his first new studio release in three years, he strips things down to the basics in mostly acoustic arrangements that sometimes recall Hank Williams Sr. at his starkest and most vulnerable. The material--alternately heartbreaking ("Livin' a Lovin' Lie") and outrageously earthy ("If the Trailer's Rockin' Don't Come Knockin'")--cuts a wide path, including two reworked numbers: a hot-wired version of "Live Forever" with Big & Rich, who, led by Big Kenny, sail into an evangelistic romp near the end; and an invigorated solo rendition of "Jesus Christ Is Still the King." Shaver has been to hell and back on a pack horse in the last six years--his wife died after a long bout with cancer; his blazingly talented guitarist son, Eddy, died of a drug overdose; and his own health was threatened. But what a comeback, steeped in his faith in the Almighty and his own power of resurrection. The evidence is here in abundance. "Slim Chance and the Can't Hardly Playboys," a vocal collaboration with Kevin Fowler, showcases Shaver's renewed sense of humor, while "Valentine," an affecting duet with Nanci Griffith, does as much as his recent wedding to spotlight his belief in romance as redemption. There's not much to quibble with here, unless you're a grinch who wants to gripe about Shaver's meandering sense of pitch, his way of sometimes circling around a note before he finally lands. But if you are, there's a bonus track here for you--a sprightly accordion-laced version of "Feliz Navidad" with Flaco Jimenez. This is "The Real Deal," all right. And then some. --Alanna Nash
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