There’s something about an old country song that burrows so deep into your bones, you start to wonder if it wasn’t written just for you. Maybe it’s the way a pedal steel can bend sunlight, or how a dusty voice can sound so familiar that it’s like picking up the phone late at night and hearing the voice of a friend who knows all your secrets. Not too long ago, I was rooting through my old vinyls in Helmond, wiping the seasons’ dust from worn jackets, when I unearthed a sleeper from the early 80’s—a song that never stole the charts, but stole a place in my soul.
The year was 1981, and the song was “Old Five and Dimers Like Me” by Billy Joe Shaver. Some of you might know Billy Joe better as a songwriter than a singer, but for me, his own recordings always struck a purer note. “Old Five and Dimers Like Me” was the title track of an album that never made him rich, but made him immortal in the hearts of those of us who cared to listen.
The first time I heard it, I was seventeen and living above a cafe in Eindhoven, living cheap, playing even cheaper. It was the year my father left town. Someone put that Shaver record on after the breakfast rush, and in lunged that voice—ragged, honest, a little worn—singing:
*”I’ve spent a lifetime making up my mind to be
More than the measure of what I thought others could see
Good luck