A Raucous, Grinning Account of Outlaw Legend’s Closest Brush with the Law
There are artists whose lives are as vivid and unpolished as their songs, and then there is Billy Joe Shaver. A quintessential “outlaw” country figure, Shaver didn’t just write about hard living and close calls; he lived it, seemingly determined to squeeze every last drop of experience from a life that felt destined to become folklore. His 2011 single, “Wacko From Waco”, is perhaps the most audacious example of this, a tongue-in-cheek, unapologetic autobiographical tune that recounts one of the most sensational—and potentially devastating—episodes of his later years.
Released as a single on October 18, 2011, “Wacko From Waco” was a late-career entry that didn’t follow the typical path of climbing the Billboard charts. Billy Joe Shaver was never an artist defined by his chart position; his impact was measured in the quality of his pen and the reverence of his peers. His most significant later charting was his 2014 album, Long in the Tooth, which became his first album to crack the Top Country Albums chart at No. 19. “Wacko From Waco,” however, was born of pure necessity—the need to tell his side of a story that had already become a legendary piece of Texas lore.
The song’s story is rooted in a March 2007 incident at Papa Joe’s Texas Saloon near Waco. The facts, as presented at trial, are that Shaver, then 67, shot a man named Billy Bryant Coker in the face outside the bar following an altercation. Coker survived, and Shaver turned himself in shortly after. The subsequent trial in 2010 for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon became a media spectacle, featuring character witnesses like his old friend Willie Nelson and actor Robert Duvall, who spoke to Shaver’s honest, if volatile, character. Shaver was ultimately acquitted on the grounds of self-defense, maintaining that Coker had threatened him with a knife and a gun (though the latter was never found).
“Wacko From Waco” is Shaver’s musical declaration of innocence and self-defense. The meaning of the song is simply the Outlaw telling the world, with a grin and a shrug, this is what really happened. It’s a proud embrace of the sensational moniker the press and public affixed to him after the incident. “I’m a wacko from Waco, ain’t no doubt about it,” he sings, owning the label with the same defiant spirit that saw him write the definitive anthems of the Outlaw Country movement decades earlier. The song is defiant and humorous, capturing the heart of a man who never backed down from a fight—or a good story. It serves as a reminder that the old fire still burned hot in a man who had already survived so much—a horrific industrial accident that cost him parts of his fingers, the loss of his wife and son, and numerous other scrapes with mortality.
For those of us who grew up on the music of the ’70s and ’80s, the song’s reflective and rebellious nature taps into a deep well of nostalgia. It reminds us of an era when country music was raw, personal, and unafraid to sound like the dusty, smoke-filled honky-tonks from which it was born. Shaver was a poet of the working man, and here, he was simply narrating the final verse of a very public chapter of his own extraordinary, unbelievable life. It’s a testament to the enduring, hard-bitten spirit of a true American original.