Billy Joe Shaver – Try And Try Again

Thirty years ago, Billy Joe Shaver burst upon the scene with the brutal honesty of his mostly autobiographical songs and changed the face of country music for many of us. His songs were covered by everyone from Waylon to Elvis to the Allmans; much later, his 1993 comeback album Tramp On Your Street united the cowboy poet with the fiery guitar pyrotechnics of his son Eddy. When Shaver lost his mother, his wife, and his son in recent years and also suffered a couple of heart attacks, it looked like it could be the end of the greatest songwriter in country music.

But his 2002 release Freedom’s Child proved otherwise, and now Try Try And Try Again offers further evidence that Shaver’s still alive and kicking. Recorded live before a small studio audience at Austin radio station KUT-FM, it features Shaver and his excellent road band rolling through many of his best-known songs.

There’s not a lot of instrumental pyrotechnic flash like on previous Shaver albums, but the band is tight and solid nonetheless, as evidenced by the slide guitar work of multi instrumentalist Bob Brown on “You Can’t Beat Jesus Christ”, and the call-and-response singing of bassist Cornbread on “Tramp On Your Street”.

There’s really nothing new here — all of these songs have been done before on previous releases — but the workingman arrangements have a sweetness to them, just as there is in the rough and tumble nature of Shaver himself.