BELLOWS FALLS- Billy Joe Shaver is the real deal. He’s the man who sparked the “Outlaw Country” movement. He’s the man who has written some of the most towering songs in the last half-century of country music. A man who sings deeply felt songs about salvation and repentence one moment and slings off a line about “The devil made me do it the first time, but the second time I done it on my own” the next.

And he’s coming to the Bellows Falls Opera House on Sunday, December 2.

Abandoned by his parents in infancy, raised by his grandmother, as a boy he fell in love with music after seeing a Hank Williams show in Corsicana, TX. He left school after the eighth grade to pick cotton, joined the Navy at 17, worked as a rodeo cowboy, then as a roofer, and, at age 28 got a job in a sawmill. One day, his hand slipped and he lost parts of three fingers.

“Well, that’s that,” he recalls thinking on the way to the hospital, “I never did learn to play guitar.”

But it was after that that he did learn to play, then to start writing songs. The Allman Brothers, David Alan Coe, Elvis Presley, George Jones, Jerry Lee Lewis, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, and Johnny Cash are just a few of those who have made those songs, such as “Old Five and Dimers,” “I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal (But I’m Going to Be a Diamond Some Day),” and “Willie the Wandering Gypsy and Me” their own.

Doors to the Bellows Falls Opera House open at 4 pm, with showtime at 5, on Sunday, December 2. Premium seating (first three rows center) is $35, general admission is $25 in advance. A very limited number of VIP packages are also available. These include premium seating, VIP “green room” with complimentary food and beverages, band meet and greet, merchandise, backstage and after-party passes. Details are at brattleborotix.com. Tickets are also available at PK’s Pub in Bellows Falls.