Tales from the Tour Bus - The Vickery Family

Billy Joe Shaver

Narrator: The Vickerys met Billy Joe Shaver in 1975 while Lonnie, his wife and his two children Kathy and Mac were with him before they graduated from high school in Waco. Melba and her two twin adopted children Aaron (after Hank Aaron) and Zola (after Zola Taylor of the Platters) were playing with Billy Joe's own son Eddy.

"Rougie" Ray Lamontagne: Well, I first met Billy Joe on the stage. He was playing a song, so I just picked up my Hobbs, started playing with him, you know? He said, "Oh, man." He said, "You can you can play that French harp." Then he said, "Why don't you come out on the road with me?" The next day, I get up, pack my stuff, and I head to Billy Joe's. Brenda, his wife at the time, she answered the door and she said, "They're downstairs rehearsing." So I said, "Okay," so I go downstairs. And Billy looks at me, then he looks over at Fred, and he goes, "You know, I got a little buzz on last night." And he said, "I hired this crazy Yankee harmonica player." He said, "I can't understand a word he said." - He said, "We're just gonna humor him.

Narrator: These guys know more about Billy Joe Shaver than they'd ever speak about openly.

"Rougie" Ray LaMontagne played harmonica with him. Freddy Fletcher played drums, and Don Mealer, well...

Don Mealer: I didn't do much of nothing except carry drums and roadie a little. My nickname is Poobah. Where is that from, Freddy?

Freddy Fletcher: I'd I'd go to jail.

Don: I'm not sure where that comes from. I thought it came from The Flintstones.

Ray: Billy goes, "That damn Poobah, he gets all the girls." "What's with that guy?"

Freddy: Billy Joe had this van he called Old Blue that we traveled in, and he had it all kind of fixed up. There was a bed in the back, had a couch in there. We were in a lot of bad situations in that van.

Ray: We was in Old Blue, coming up to Canada, going through the border, pulling a stolen U-Haul that we had rented months and months before.

Freddy: This was in, uh Late '70s.

Ray: Yeah, late '70s, early '80s. "We're going to Canada. No drugs." Billy Joe made a big, big thing about that. "No drugs! You know they've got a big checkpoint up here. We got no drugs, right?"

Don: That's what he's said.

Freddy: "We're gonna have to pull over."

Ray: Everybody got out, was going through their bags.

Freddy: All the sudden, all this dope's coming out, you know, and during those times, cocaine was real popular. There's guns coming out, and there's knives and things of that nature. And I had a belt that had a the buckle was actually a knife in a sheath. Rougie probably had some brass knuckles or something, you know, and Billy Joe always carried this little derringer. He called it his popgun. He'd carry it in his boot.

Ray: Billy Joe says, "We gotta hide it somewhere," so there was a mile marker there.

Freddy: You have these mile markers that show you where you are and how close you're getting to whatever destination. So we picked a mile marker and dug a hole and stashed all our shit.

Ray: But then coming back, it was like, "Oh man!" We couldn't remember which mile marker. I remember going down the road real slow, looking (laughs) and, you know.

Freddy: Things were hazy back then, but, uh, if we didn't find our stash, we headed home pretty quick to get some more.

Narrator: They drove Old Blue all over North America, but they always came back to Texas, Billy Joe's home state.

Freddy: He, uh, grew up with his grandmother around Corsicana in the middle of nowhere in Central Texas pretty humble beginnings and loved poetry. Some of the memories are probably a little painful. One of the early stories Billy Joe told me was that he snuck in to see Homer and Jethro.