“Honky Tonk Heroes,” written by Billy Joe Shaver

RECORDING BY WAYLON JENNINGS and his WAYLORS

Billy Joe Shaver wrote a bunch of songs, and put in a lot of hours bugging Waylon Jennings to record them. The record label didn’t really want Waylon to make an album of Shaver material, but they didn’t want to lose Jennings, who’d been growing restless from the label not really understanding what his music was all about. He was starting to build a non-traditional audience for his personal new approach to country music, and the label kept trying to fit him into some round hole that didn’t fit him or his fans.

Waylon wanted to record with his road band, rather than the Nashville session players who made the records the label wanted to sell.

I’m not here to slam all those wonderful Nashville musicians, who I admire greatly. But Waylon had some new sounds in his head, and the regular pickers wouldn’t be able to do what he wanted.

You may not have heard any country music like this. Before this album came out, nobody had. And today’s formulaic trash doesn’t have much of anything in it that remains from this era.

You may be tempted to say, hey, man, this isn’t even country music at all! And if you mean it isn’t the phoned-in all-hat-no-cattle drivel the industry foists on us today, you’re right. It sure ain’t, sister.

I love the mostly acoustic, more or less traditional intro. This is one of those fakeouts where a song starts in one style, and then lurches into another one. I never get tired of hearing how that raunchy electric guitar comes in with the new biting groove.

I also dig how the harmonica break section sounds like they’re settling into something a little safer, but then you get some ugly lead guitar, and then that great drum fill, and we’re back in business.

This gives you a good example of how two different grooves can make a song shift before your eyes.

A good exercise for the songwriter— take a song you’ve written and imagine it happening with a completely different groove. Try playing with a new feel, new tempo, anything you can think of. If you’re lucky, this will pump new blood into it, and bring it to life in a whole new way.

Buy this album; it’s great. Then you can invite your friends over, and show ‘em something they never dreamed of— country music didn’t always suck.