After years of playing honkytonks, festivals and country bars in his native Tucson, Arizona, Billy Shaw Jr. headed to Music City last year to record his eponymous debut album, with the help of Nashville producer Rodney Goode and his platinum-selling country singing wife Jamie O’Neal.

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Goode and O’Neal produced the album, which plays like a soundtrack of Shaw’s life. The opening track laments sitting behind a desk instead of living the cowboy life (“I’m a cowboy, cowboy at heart”) while the honky-tonker “Wild” plays off the chemistry of total opposites drawn together by a country love song.

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Shaw shows off a mix of country styles, from the fiddle-rich heartbreaker “Bar Down the Way” — “My fairytale ending wasn’t fair to me at all” — to the Western swing feel of “When I Close My Eyes,” the neo-trad twang of “Twist it Off” and the country rocking “Getaway Driver,” the ultimate buddy song that opens with childhood pranks gone awry and ends with old men plotting an escape from a dire health diagnosis.

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Growing up in Southern Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, Shaw spent his childhood watching “Hee Haw” and listening to Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers alongside a healthy dose of the Beatles and Barbra Streisand. He started playing violin when he was 9, using a hand-me-down instrument from his grandmother he took to school in a brown paper bag, then joined the school orchestra only to be noticed by a member of the Tucson Symphony who tutored him to first chair. He also ran track, which earned him a spot on the local community college team. He later transferred to the University of Arizona, where he earned a mathematics degree and put his violin and musical aspirations on the back burner.

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He was a decade or more out of college when he dusted off his violin, learned to play fiddle-style and started dabbling in music once again as a member of a couple well-known Tucson country bands. He sang backup vocals mostly and but it wasn’t until he landed on the stage for the 2016 Nashville Next contest that Shaw formed his namesake band and started considering making music a priority. The father of two won the statewide contest, earning a shot at competing in the national finals in Nashville. That trip proved a turning point in his aspirations, but it took him years of honing his live act before he felt ready to make his debut album.

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Shaw, who is easily recognizable to his fans by his signature black-framed Buddy Holly-esque glasses, wrote the nine songs on his debut album including the uptempo ballad “I Will (If You Say I Do).” Shaw debuted the song on Tucson’s KIIM 99.5 FM country station when he proposed to his wife, country music social media pioneer Jessica Northey-Shaw.

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The Billy Shaw Jr Band has quickly become one of the most highly sought-after acts and have opened for Oak Ridge Boys, Lauren Alaina, Thompson Square, Ronnie Milsap, Ray Scott, Matt Castillo, Randall King, Josh Abbott Band, Trey Lewis, Tyler Braden & Triston Marez.

 

Billy Shaw Jr can be found singing around Arizona sawing on his fiddle, picking guitar, humming on harmonica along side his bandmates Amy Munoz (Bass/Vocals), Bobby Soto Jr (Drums/Vocals), and Johnny Pesqueira (Lead Guitar/Vocals).

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