Billy Joe Shaver spent his life writing songs about hard men and bad nights. On March 31, 2007, outside a small beer joint near Waco, he lived one of them. He shot a man in the face with a .22 pistol, faced up to 20 years in prison, and three years later walked out of a Texas courtroom a free man, with Willie Nelson and Robert Duvall in his corner.
Asked on the witness stand why he hadn’t simply left that night, the 70-year-old songwriter gave an answer only he could have given: “Ma’am, I’m from Texas.”
What happened on that back patio in the seconds before the shot depends on who you ask. The people standing there remembered it very differently.
A Photo Shoot, Then a Beer in Lorena
That Saturday, Shaver had spent the day at a photo shoot for the cover of his next album. Afterward, he and his ex-wife, Wanda, stopped at Papa Joe’s Texas Saloon in Lorena, a small town just south of Waco.
Also at the bar was Billy Bryant Coker, a local man who worked for TXU Energy. There was history in the room before anyone said a word: Coker’s late cousin had once been married to Wanda.
What Happened Inside the Bar
Shaver later testified that the trouble started when Coker learned about the connection to Wanda and told him to shut up. He also said Coker had been stirring drinks with a knife and wiped the blade on Shaver’s coat.
Even the question of who suggested going outside was disputed. The bar’s owner said Shaver tapped Coker on the shoulder and asked him to step out. Shaver said it was Coker’s idea. Wanda testified that Coker had a knife in his hand when he asked them outside.
Shaver admitted he was rattled. “Being the John Wayne type of person that I am,” he told the jury, he went to the door too.
Two Versions of the Same Few Seconds
This is where the two sides split completely.
A witness on the patio testified that Shaver said nobody tells him to shut up, then asked Coker, “Where do you want it?” Coker testified that he answered, “Where do I want what?” Two people drinking on the patio said Coker had no weapon.
Shaver told it another way. He said he asked Coker, “Where do you want to do this? Why do you want to do this?” When Coker raised his arm, Shaver said, he saw something he thought was a gun. “I feared he was going to kill me,” he testified. A defense witness backed him up, saying Coker had gone after Shaver with a knife and Shaver had backed away.
Either way, Shaver fired once, from about four feet away.
The Bullet That Never Came Out
The .22-caliber round went in through Coker’s upper lip, knocked out a tooth and a crown, and came to rest in the back of his neck. It sat so close to his carotid artery that doctors decided to leave it where it was.
Shaver was indicted for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a charge that carried up to 20 years in prison.
Willie and Duvall in the Front Rows
The trial opened in April 2010 at the McLennan County Courthouse in Waco. Famed defense attorney Dick DeGuerin took the case for free.
Willie Nelson and Robert Duvall came to Waco and sat through hours of testimony in the first two rows, in plain view of the jury. Duvall had been Shaver’s friend since the 1970s and had put him in his film The Apostle. Outside the courtroom, Willie told reporters, “I don’t think Billy Joe would do anything wrong.”
The prosecution painted a very different picture. When Shaver was challenged about cultivating an outlaw image, he shot back: “More like an outcast.” In closing, prosecutor Beth Toben told jurors he “may be a honky-tonk hero,” but that on that day he was “a honky-tonk bully.”
The jury deliberated for about two hours. On April 9, 2010, they found Billy Joe Shaver not guilty.
Getting His Bullet Back
Outside the courthouse, Shaver said he was very sorry about the incident and hoped things would work out so the two men could become friends.
That same night, he played the Firehouse Saloon in Houston. Onstage, he told the crowd that when people asked what he planned to do about the man he shot, his answer was simple: he was getting his bullet back. Then he swore he was sorry it had happened and thanked everyone for their prayers.
Turning It Into a Song
Texas honky-tonker Dale Watson wrote a song about the shooting called “Where Do You Want It?”, built on the very line Shaver always denied saying. Watson called to ask first. Shaver told him he’d rather he didn’t.
So Shaver told his own version. In February 2011, he released “Wacko From Waco,” written with Willie Nelson and recorded as a duet with him, the same friend who had sat in the front row at his trial. Shaver said the song pretty much told the whole story of what happened in Lorena.
Billy Joe Shaver died on October 28, 2020, at 81. He left behind some of the finest songs country music ever produced, and one story he always insisted on telling his own way.
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