Author: Brad Beheler

Men don’t come more complicated than Billy Joe Shaver.  On the surface he was often the classic teddy bear.  Bubbling underneath that surface was a penchant for raising hell that often collided with one of the fiercest temper’s God ever placed on this earth.  Billy Joe was born in Corsicana, TX and split his time between there and the Waco area for the bulk of his life. Raised mostly by his grandmother while his mother worked a series of menial jobs, Shaver quit school in the 8th grade and set out into a wide world as apprehensive of him as

Lives don’t get lived harder than the one that Ronald Clyde Crosby lived for the past 78 years. The last 54 of those years were spent under the name, spell, spirit and lifestyle of Jerry Jeff Walker. Born in Oneonta, New York on March 16, 1942, Jerry Jeff had wandering bone and a gypsy heart that could not be contained. He bounced around with various garage bands in his teenage years before a stint in the National Guard. Walker wasn’t fit for military life and soon found himself AWOL and busking in New Orleans. The burgeoning folk music scene and

The house band faded out from a mostly accurate cover of a Gary Allan song just in time for Luke Combs “Beer Never Broke My Heart” to swell from the house PA. The lights were bright.  The smoke was nonexistent.  A noticeable number of chairs had been removed. And a sea of trendy, masked bandit look-alikes strolled around the grounds of the world’s largest honky tonk as if the past six months hadn’t happened.  Aside from the smaller crowd and masks on every face, it really did feel quite…normal.   As the concert experience in Texas continues to strive for a