Billy Joe Shaver spent three years defending a shooting that would eventually become part of his songwriting. In 2007, he stopped at Papa Joe’s Texas Saloon in Lorena, near Waco, with his former wife, Wanda. An argument with another patron, Billy Coker, moved outside. Shaver fired a .22 pistol, striking Coker in the face. What led to that shot became the central question at his 2010 trial. Witnesses testified that Shaver had asked Coker where he wanted to be shot. Shaver gave a different account: he believed Coker was reaching for a weapon and feared he would be killed. He maintained that he had acted in self-defense. The proceedings drew attention well beyond Texas. Willie Nelson and Robert Duvall were among the friends who attended in support. After hearing the evidence, the jury acquitted Shaver of aggravated assault. Outside court, he expressed regret that the confrontation had happened. Then came a characteristically unsettling joke: perhaps he and Coker could become friends, and Coker might return his bullet. Shaver later revisited the incident in “Wacko From Waco,” bringing a real shooting into a catalog already filled with trouble, survival, and difficult reckonings. His life had supplied plenty of those before Lorena. He had lost fingers in a sawmill accident, survived a major heart attack, and mourned both his wife and his son. His writing had also helped give Waylon Jennings’ outlaw era its voice. The trial added another complicated episode to that history. For listeners accustomed to hearing Shaver’s experiences transformed into songs, this one came with testimony, conflicting accounts, and a verdict before it ever reached a record.

BILLY JOE SHAVER SHOT A MAN OUTSIDE A TEXAS BAR—THEN TURNED THE TRIAL INTO A SONG

In 2007, Billy Joe Shaver walked outside a Texas bar after an argument and shot another man in the face with a .22 pistol.

He never denied firing the gun.

For the next three years, he insisted that he had done it because he believed his own life was in danger.

The Argument Started at Papa Joe’s

Shaver had stopped at Papa Joe’s Texas Saloon in Lorena, near Waco, with his former wife Wanda when a confrontation developed with another patron, Billy Coker.

Eventually, the two men went outside.

What happened next became the central dispute of the case.

Witnesses later testified that Shaver asked Coker where he wanted to be shot before pulling the trigger.

Shaver told the jury something different.

He said he believed Coker was reaching for a weapon and that he fired because he feared he was about to be attacked.

The Case Followed Him for Three Years

Prosecutors charged Shaver with aggravated assault.

By the time the case finally reached trial in 2010, the courtroom had become an unlikely gathering place for some of his famous friends.

Willie Nelson appeared in support.

So did actor Robert Duvall.

But the case ultimately came down to whether jurors believed Shaver’s claim of self-defense.

They did.

The jury found him not guilty.

Billy Joe Could Not Leave Without a Joke

Outside the courthouse, Shaver said he regretted that the shooting had happened.

Then he added a line that sounded almost impossible coming from anyone else.

He joked that perhaps someday he and Coker might become friendly enough for Coker to give him the bullet back.

It was vintage Billy Joe: part apology, part gallows humor, part refusal to behave the way respectable people expected.

Then He Wrote “Wacko From Waco”

For most people, an acquittal would have been the end of the story.

For Billy Joe Shaver, it became material.

He turned the episode into “Wacko From Waco,” folding the shooting into the same outlaw world he had been writing about for decades.

That made the incident difficult to separate from the legend surrounding him.

The man who had written hard-living songs for Waylon Jennings had now lived through a story that sounded like one of them.

The Myth Had Already Been Expensive

By then, Shaver’s life had already contained more punishment than most outlaw biographies could hold.

He had lost fingers in a sawmill accident.

He had survived a massive heart attack.

He had buried his mother, his wife Brenda and his only son Eddy.

And decades earlier, his songs had helped give Waylon Jennings’ Honky Tonk Heroes much of its identity.

The Lorena shooting was not the beginning of the Billy Joe Shaver myth.

It was another chapter in a life where myth and consequence had become nearly impossible to separate.

What “Wacko From Waco” Really Leaves Behind

The easiest version of the story is the wild one.

Billy Joe Shaver walks outside a bar, fires a .22, beats the charge and writes a song about it.

But the courtroom mattered because there were two very different versions of what happened.

The jury accepted Shaver’s claim of self-defense.

The song came later.

And by then, Billy Joe had once again done something he had spent his entire career doing:

He took an event that could have ended badly, carried it back onto a stage, and turned it into another piece of the legend bearing his name.

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