91.5 Chapel Hill 88.9 Manteo 90.9 Rocky Mount 91.1 Welcome 91.9 Fayetteville 90.5 Buxton 94.1 Lumberton 99.9 Southern Pines 89.9 Chadbourn

At 74, Outlaw Billy Joe Shaver Is Still An Outlier

Your browser doesn’t support HTML5 audio

In 1973, Waylon Jennings released an album called Honky Tonk Heroes that consisted almost entirely, with one exception, of songs written by Billie Joe Shaver, a then-unknown Texas songwriter. Since that time, his songs have been recorded by everyone from Elvis Presley to Willie Nelson, and he's considered one of the founders of the outlaw-country movement. Now 74 years old, Shaver has just released his first new studio album in six years, called Long in the Tooth. Fresh Air critic Ken Tucker has a review.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email
Ken Tucker reviews rock, country, hip-hop and pop music for Fresh Air. He is a cultural critic who has been the editor-at-large at Entertainment Weekly, and a film critic for New York Magazine. His work has won two National Magazine Awards and two ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards. He has written book reviews for The New York Times Book Review and other publications.
Stories From This Author
  1. Taylor Swift's confessional 'Tortured Poets' would have benefitted from an edit
  2. Beyoncé bucks the country industry establishment with sprawling 'Cowboy Carter'
  3. Tierra Whack springs to the forefront of hip-hop creativity on a new album