Album Review: Billy Joe Shaver Long in the Tooth

Jonny Whiteside

Texas’ ultimate honky tonk hero, Billy Joe Shaver, returns with all his high, rumpled style intact on Long in the Tooth, his first studio album in six years.  It’s a typically impressive Billy Joe release: a ten song set of all new, superbly crafted material that links up excruciating self-examination with hilarious, precisely-executed observations on the human condition (in the astonishing “Checkers and Chess”) and country music itself (in “Hard to Be an Outlaw”).

An audacious, confrontational lyricist whose mastery of barebones simplicity and exquisite subtlety is yet unrivaled, Shaver’s dented, throaty croak puts each number across with illimitable authority and authenticity. Enhanced further by the celestial collusion of such cohorts as Willie Nelson, Tony Joe White, and Leon Russell, Long in the Tooth is the living proof that, even at age 75, Billy Joe Shaver’s long since perfected modus operandi of graphic realism, an exquisite employ of metaphor, and raw emotional involvement remains as appealing and genuine­ as ever.