A rough-hewn discovery of Kris Kristofferson in the early 1970s, Billy Joe Shaver was simultaneously the most down-to-earth and the most poetically ambitious of country music's "outlaws." He wrote most of the songs on Waylon Jennings's "Honky Tonk Heroes," which Rolling Stone magazine once called the greatest country album ever recorded, and ever since then he's been creating powerful, honest music in a gritty but poetic style that's all his own. Who else would have referred in song to Jesus Christ as "a compound country kind of guy"? In recent years, Shaver has suffered the death of his mother, wife, and son. The music this original honky-tonk hero makes today carries a wisdom born of tragedy and faith, and by now he is truly one of the most respected living figures in American music.