ACL FEST

Faith, fans keep Shaver onstage after shooting

Artist charged in April incident pushes on with album, festival

By Michael Corcoran
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, September 13, 2007

NEW YORK CITY — It took Billy Joe Shaver about an hour to get from the media tent at Farm Aid to his tour bus 300 yards away. After a 20-minute interview session, where no one brought up "the incident" but everyone wanted to know how he met Willie Nelson, Shaver picked his way through layers of well-wishers. There was "your second biggest fan, next to my husband," who wanted to take a picture with Shaver. Shaver doesn't just scratch his name for the autograph-seekers, he talks and laughs with whomever approaches him.

After about half an hour of that, Shaver made his way backstage, moving slowly through the sea of fellow artists and the various roadies and production assistants who seem to know Shaver well.

The man in the blue work shirt is a maestro of the stop 'n' chat, the "Everybody's Brother" of the title of his new faith-driven album, which hits stores Sept. 25.

"Be careful and have fun," he said in parting with a fellow Farm Aid performer. "My wife Brenda used to tell me that and it like to drive me crazy," said Shaver, 68, who's lived in Waco almost all his life. "Be careful and have fun? Make up your mind, woman!"

Finally, he was alone in his brown tour bus that used to be one of Willie's. He took off his cowboy hat and hand-combed the sweat from his gray hair. "Man, they think this is hot?," Shaver said, referring to all the folks he'd heard complain about the 88 degree midday heat at Randalls Island, a big park in the East River between Harlem and the South Bronx that was the site of this year's Farm Aid. "Back home, it's just startin' to really heat up."

He could be referring to the notoriously steamy Austin City Limits Music Festival, where he'll perform Sunday at 6:30 p.m. But Shaver, who's been called the poet laureate of Texas music for such lines as "the devil made me do it the first time/ the second time I done it on my own," could also be describing his current legal situation.

In April, he was involved in a shooting outside a bar in Lorena, 12 miles south of Waco. His attorney, Joe Turner of Austin, said the case has yet to be presented to a grand jury. "It's still under investigation," Turner said.

Shaver says he's prepared for the worst. "It would be great if I was no-billed, but every morning I wake up and wonder if this is the day I'm gonna get that call."

Turner declined to discuss further details of the case that sent a fellow bar patron to the hospital with a wound to his cheek. The McLennan County district's attorney's office did not return phone calls.

Shaver's April 3 arrest on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon was the latest problem for a man who lost his mother, his wife and his son within a few months of each other in 2000.

"I've faced a lot tougher things than this," he said, when asked about the charges against him, "but I really don't want to go to jail." Shaver also was charged with possession of a firearm in an establishment where alcohol is served.

According to a police affidavit, Shaver shot Billy Coker, 50, of Waco, in the cheek with a pistol after both men had stepped outside of Papa Joe's Texas Saloon in Lorena. Shaver claimed self-defense, but several witnesses described a different scenario. Coker told police the shooting was unprovoked. A witness said Shaver followed Coker outside the bar and asked, "Where do you want it?" before firing, according to the report.

"The other guy was the aggressor," Turner said in early April. "He was intoxicated and followed Billy Joe outside the bar with a knife."

Although reluctant to talk about the incident while the case is pending, Shaver did offer, "I just beat him to the draw." Shaver said he believed Coker had a gun because, "you don't point a knife at somebody." The police report does not say whether Coker had a weapon.

"I just felt that if I didn't shoot him, he woulda killed me. I'm just so lucky I didn't kill him. That would have been terrible," said Shaver.

Acting Lorena Police Chief John Moran said in the affidavit that Coker told him that he and Shaver were having a conversation for about an hour when they realized that Shaver's wife, Wanda, was Coker's cousin's widow. At that point they went outside.

Shaver declined to describe what led to the incident. "I just wished none of it had happened," he said.

He said he's stepped up his touring schedule since the shooting because "if I just stayed home thinking about all this, I'd make myself crazy. The (fans) keep me strong. I'm hooked on the love."

In stores Tuesday on Compadre is "Everybody's Brother," an unflinching gospel record that could be Shaver's strongest since 1993's career-reviving "Tramp On Your Street." Seeing such song titles as "Jesus Is the Only One That Loves Us" and "Get Thee Behind Me Satan," skeptics may smell a conversion for the sake of the judge.

But Shaver's been a Bible-thumping, born-again Christian since the '70s, anchoring his live shows with spiritual numbers that often drive Shaver to his knees, arms stretched up.

Recorded a month before the shooting, "Everybody's Brother" is a gospel record that doesn't leave the honky tonks behind. "If you don't love Jesus," Shaver sings on one rocker, "go to hell." This is beer-drinking, spiritual music for which Shaver, whose songs have been covered by Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley, makes no apologies.

"My faith is everything," he said. "But I was raised in the roadhouses. They're both a part of who I am."

mcorcoran@statesman.com; 445-3652