A couple of years ago I went through an outlaw country music phase and although it makes for some good whiskey drinking music on occasion, like any other genre the themes start to wear thin after a while.
One old codger that I still spin fairly often is Billy Joe Shaver, who Johnny Cash has been quoted as saying is his favorite songwriter. This guy is an old shit-kicker from Texas who was quite a hell raiser in his day. While guys like Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash were singing about hard times and hitchhiking, riding the rails, getting into bar fights, Billy Joe truly lived that lifestyle, and paid his dues as a musician over the decades while just recently getting noticed by the country music establishment. Eventually, like Cash, Billy Joe found Jesus and calmed down, but the intensity in his music remains.
Billy Joe plays everything from honky tonk, western swing, classic country, booze-fueled tavern blues rock and eerie, haunting southern-gothic tinged tunes. I highly recommend his records to people on this forum who aren’t completely entrenched in the myopic world of “hardcore” distorted guitar driven music. I recommend “Tramp on Your Street” as a good place to start if you dig good country and “Billy and the Kid” for some good raunchy overdriven blues roadhouse stuff.
And if anyone wants to tell me to fuck off and not bring country music on this forum, I say to you that Billy Joe is most likely 10x more hardcore then the poseur-ass, cookie monster growling, pierced and tattooed B.C. Rich guitar playing moron that you think is sooooo extreme!!! [sly]