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.