Outlaw Finally Gets His Timing Right : Country music: Billy Joe Shaver is pulling in glowing reviews for his first album in seven years.

Great moments in career development, courtesy of Billy Joe Shaver:

“I was out at a CBS (Records) party, at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville,” recalls the colorful country music veteran. “I got up on a rail there and threatened to jump down into the lobby if (they) didn’t give me a recording contract. . . . There was a bunch of people trying to save me, but I almost fell off anyway.

“I got it, and it still didn’t do no good, darn it. I did the best I could.”

At least, CBS stayed in business after that early-’80s episode. Shaver’s previous recording experiences had been with companies on the critical list.

“My timin’ ain’t been all that good,” allows the 53-year-old singer. “When I first come up, my first album on Monument . . . it didn’t get a chance to get out good, the company went and folded. Then Capricorn, . . . I went over and did two albums and closed them down.”

Given that bad timing--not to mention a rough upbringing, serious accidents and unruly behavior--it’s a miracle that he’s around at all. But Shaver is not only still active, he’s pulling in glowing reviews for his first album in seven years, “Tramp on Your Street.” He’ll be playing his first L.A. date in a decade on Friday at Jacks Sugar Shack.

It’s a fairly triumphant return of the lost outlaw--a singer-songwriter who barreled into Nashville from his Waco home and eventually hooked up with Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings--the “outlaws” who were giving country music a face lift in the early ‘70s with their back-to-basics sound and ambitious lyrical range.

Shaver, with his rough-and-tumble personality and simple, evocative imagery, was a perfect fit. Jennings’ landmark 1973 album “Honky Tonk Heroes” featured 11 of his tunes, and Kristofferson produced his debut album, “Old Five and Dimers Like Me.” But while his colleagues went on to prosperous careers, Shaver stumbled. He made three albums in the ‘80s, and a few of his songs were turned into country hits, but respect for his work was always countered by his reputation.

“I guess maybe sometimes I had a little too much fun,” says Shaver, who grew up dirt-poor in Corsicana, Tex., then lost two fingers in a sawmill accident before turning to music. “People think I’m unmanageable, which is not true. I don’t look at myself as being that crazy. . . . It was mostly just fistfights. Everybody just blows my deal up, and I tried to get away from it, but it just would keep on comin’.”

After his last album, 1987’s “Salt of the Earth,” Shaver (with his guitarist son Eddy leading his band) kept playing clubs and making demos, and he was finally signed by the offbeat Nashville label Praxis. The album marks something of an outlaw reunion--Jennings sings with him on two of the songs, and Nelson has roped him in as opening act on a series of Willie and Waylon concerts.

How difficult was it for Shaver during the ‘70s and ‘80s to watch his pals thrive while he struggled?

“That’s just the breaks,” he says. “There’s lots and lots of songs that I’m really fond of that more than likely I wouldn’t have written if I hadn’t gone down this hard road. And I wouldn’t take anything for those songs. If I’d have went on and made a bunch of money and everything like that and seen somebody else writing songs like I’m writing, it would have broke my heart.”