Tramp on Your Street

Billy Joe Shaver | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 10, 1993)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Volcano
• ASIN: B00000099F
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #190,877 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The REAL outlaw, August 11, 2001

By 

Dino (Scotland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tramp on Your Street (Audio CD)

It's well documented that Billy Joe Shaver wrote nine songs (including the title track) from Waylon Jennings' 1973 album Honky Tonk Heroes. Shaver's songwriting is in the very top bracket - he's written some of the most memorable, hardest-hitting country songs in the history of the music. As a solo artist or as frontman for his group, he has failed to reach great heights of commercial success; partly because he doesn't fit the image required to make it big in the Billboard country chart, and also because great though his songs are, they can't all be termed radio-friendly. Let's forget the pursuit of fame (which was never a priority for Shaver anyway) and concentrate on his music: uncomromising rock-edged country blues, vocals spat out with equal parts venom and humour and the startling guitar work of Billy Joe's son Eddy, who tragically passed away in December 2000, the victim of the temptations that the life of a no-frills travelling band will provide. Tramp On Your Street was Billy Joe's return to recording in the early 90s and he wisely mixed some of his own classics including I'm Just An Old Chunk Of Coal and Georgia On A Fast Train, hits for John Anderson and Johnny Cash respectively, with equally resonant new songs, standout tracks being rocking The Hottest Thing In Town and the beautiful ballad Live Forever. Shaver continued to record throughout the 90s and into the 2000s until Eddy Shaver's death; Billy Joe is touring with Kinky Friedman at the time of this review. Let's hope that his son's death doesn't prematurely end the recording career of the greatest of the original 70s outlaws.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Outlaw's Outlaw, February 17, 2000

By 

B K Fisher (Nashville, TN.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tramp on Your Street (Audio CD)

Billy Joe has been penning country gold since the 60's. He has quietly become the finest honky-tonk songwriter of our time. His latest creation, the band "Shaver" features his son Eddy on guitar. Eddy Shaver is one of the best young country pickers in the business. Listen to him "throw down" as Billy Joe urges on "Georgia On a Fast Train.' His twelve-string work on the ballad "Live Forever", backed by vocals from the Kentucky Headhunters' Doug and Ricky Lee Phelps will charm you. Billy Joe welcomes the vocals of his good friend Waylon Jennings throughout this record. "Tramp On Your Street" is always perched at the top of my CD stack. The title cut is a haunting tribute to his life as a honky-tonk hero. The lack of airplay, not to mention a Grammy nod illustrates just what is wrong with country radio, and the music industry in general. Best country record I've ever heard.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It don't get no better than this, April 7, 2003

By 

Andy Agree "jackrabbit79" (Omaha, NE) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tramp on Your Street (Audio CD)

I'm working my way backward in time in discovering the rich musical legacy of father and son Billy Joe and Eddie Shaver. I started with 2000's The Earth Rolls On, another 5-star recording, but this one, from 1993, is even a little better. This kind of music carries on the authentic legacy of rock 'n roll and western swing in a way that contemporary pop and country music absolutely do not. The musical licks are sharp, the vocals full-throated (with some help from Waylon Jennings) and the words always heartfelt and often funny. Very rarely does an artist deliver six tunes in a row as powerful as Tracks 1-6 here. One of my favorites is #3, Georgia on a Fast Train ("Got a good Christian raisin' and a 8th grade education, ain't no need y'all a treatin' me this way"). Eddie's guitar licks come so fast that Billy Joe has to caution him, "Aw, slow down, Eddie" (or is it "throw down"?). I also especially like #5, If I Give My Soul, an autobiographical account in which Billy Joe wonders if he can save his marriage by giving his soul to Jesus. (In reality, he did both.) Track 7, KAND Corsicana, Texas, is a novelty item, a seemingly authentic 1944 radio announcement of the beginning of the D-Day invasion followed by a quick prayer for our troops, and right into Track 8, Good Ol' USA. I first listened to this CD as anti-US demonstrations were sweeping the world, and our troops were preparing for another invasion, and the cumulative weight of this music made me want it to be heard and understood by all our enemies who haven't got a clue what this country is about. Naive, maybe, but this CD is a piece of bedrock American culture that can make us all proud. Billy Joe, you are a national treasure.