Doug Supernaw

His rap sheet since 1998 includes arrests for nonpayment of child support, driving while intoxicated, public intoxication, assault of a police officer and several incidences of possession of marijuana. He has been acquitted of some of those charges and juries have hung on some of the others, but he has compounded more than a few of those remaining by allegedly jumping bail and skipping hearings.

According to a report in The (Bryan-College Station) Eagle, Supernaw was on the docket before Judge Jim Locke for allegedly evading arrest after a wee-hours incident in Bryan in 2004 that also resulted in a public intoxication charge of which Supernaw was acquitted.

Supernaw's version of that night's events is as follows: He was walking down the street singing the Gourds' country-fried cover version of the Snoop Dogg hit “Gin and Juice,” a song that contains several profanities, whereupon he was apprehended by a man in pajamas who claimed to be a policeman but could have been anyone. That was why he ran from the man, you see.

Arresting officer Brent Boswell, who was in fact off-duty at the time of the incident, had a different take. According to The Eagle, he says he showed his badge to Supernaw, who was “obviously intoxicated” and loudly screaming curse words and gesticulating obscenely. Supernaw then ran from him and wheeled around in what Boswell characterized as a fighting posture. Boswell had no choice then but to level his pistol at the singer.

Of course Boswell would say that, Supernaw contends. He is one of them. According to The Eagle's report, Supernaw believes that Boswell is a cog in an immense international plot to silence him, “a political economic conspiracy” the existence of which Supernaw claims to have proved “time and time and time again.” According to Supernaw, the details of this scheme were many and various, and, after telling the court that he had ridden to this hearing from The Woodlands on a bicycle, he went on to detail these shadowy dealings.

In The Eagle's telling, Supernaw hinted that it began with his birth as the secret love child of John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, and that things started to intensify in 2002, when he was, as he put it, “held hostage in Paris” for two weeks in a top secret “mentally retarded home for terrorists.” Since then, he served as a “test monkey” in an experiment studying the effects of marijuana on baseball players, and was later attacked by two police officers from the town of Montgomery, who wanted to break his arm and thus bring about an end to the 46-year-old's professional pitching career.

Judge Locke heard all this testimony and sent the jury pool home. Supernaw, he ruled, was not fit to be tried. He ordered that Supernaw undergo psychiatric evaluations. This was dropped after Supernaw pled no contest to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct.

A few days later, a similar hearing was slated for Supernaw in Houston. For weeks, Supernaw has more or less politely dodged meeting with the Houston Press for this article, but he has been sending us the occasional e-mail, some of which are lucid, others less so. The one tipping us off about the hearing was in the latter camp. It was his response to Steve Jackson, his attorney in the Harris County case, which Supernaw copied to us. Jackson sent along a reminder that Supernaw would have to be at court at nine in the morning on April 13 — Friday the 13th — to discuss his competency. As his e-mail made clear, Supernaw had other ideas.

“I need more advanced notice as that my only transportation at present is a bicycle,” he wrote. “I was planning on leaving Magnolia on Sunday to make it there for my trial on Tuesday morning. As I do not like to pedal in long britches, hopefully it will be OK if I were shorts in court. Also, at present I have a flat on my bicycle and about 14 cents in my pocket, and of course I am not competent to stand trial, as I have read in the papers that I am an alchaholik, bi polar, not fit to be a father, MF.”

And true to his word, he didn't show up in court the next day, long britches or no. As a matter of fact, that very day found him up in Montgomery County getting arrested for public intoxication. Again.

“As I travel down that blue bonnet highway /I'm thankful I was born a lucky man /And I know that I will live and die my own way / Somewhere between the Red and Rio Grande”

I'm sitting in the Harris County downtown jail, shouting at Supernaw through a hole in plexiglass. After my aforementioned weeks of e-mails and traipsing around Central Texas trying to find him, I wrote my story. Two days later, I got a tip that Supernaw had just been arrested — in Houston of all places — and was only a few blocks from my office.

Having nothing else to do, Supernaw agreed to see me. The last time I saw anything other than a photograph of him, he was filling my TV screen, singing “Long Tall Texan” with the Beach Boys. It was an apt choice, for he is well over six feet, and back then, in his cowboy duds, he looked as Texas as smoked brisket on grease paper. He was clean shaven and had the features of a guy Hollywood would cast as the white-hatted sheriff who finally ran the bad guys out of Llano.

Today, he looks more like a beardless, blonder version of Rasputin, or maybe a hippie acid casualty in a bad '70s B-movie. As befits a guy who rides his bike all over Texas, there's very little excess baggage on his lanky frame. His movements are a bit jerky and nervous, and the look in his eyes is somehow simultaneously mischievous and frightened. He's got a three-day stubble, and his hair is much longer, blonder, and stringier than seems possible. Under the grim fluorescent lights of central lock-up's visiting area, his skin looks slightly jaundiced. He sees me as a friend, he tells me, a member of the “first family of Texas music” who will help him get the true story out.

Let's back up a bit. Back in February I wrote a column about Supernaw. I couldn't track him down, and the piece was built from other reports. A few days after the column ran, I got my first e-mail from Supernaw. He opened by taking me to task for spreading falsehoods about him, and closed with the following: “Thanx to your column, I just found out that I had bi polar bear or somethin. Guess I'd better go have that checked. Have a wonderful day, regardless of whom you chose to put down today.”

“I am sorry that you have interpreted that article as a put-down, as it is not intended as such,” I wrote back. “The articles I read in the other papers can create the impression that all is not well, though, you have to admit. I have a sincere appreciation of your music and also your huge influence on the younger crowd of Texas country artists.” I closed by inviting him to contact me at any time.

A much mellower Supernaw replied the next day. He said he would love to set the record straight and hinted that we might be the paper that would get the true story. “By the way,” he closed, “you forgot to report that I had sickle cell amnesia.”

About a month later, he sent a very strange e-mail to me and several lawyers and other people. The gist of this tangled diatribe, which he originally penned in October of 2006, was that Supernaw believes that he is a pawn in what he calls “the largest conspiracy in horse racing history.”

According to his e-mail, Victorious, one of his horses, was swindled away from his ex-wife Debbie for $75,000 while Supernaw was in the Potter County Jail. Victorious was then renamed Afleet Alex, whereupon it won the Preakness and the Belmont and finished third in the Kentucky Derby. In addition: “On Sept 10, attempting to see my children for the first time since my release [from Potter County Jail], Debbie [his second wife] called the police and fabricated a story in the fear that I would see that MY horse was not in the barn,” he wrote, before adding that a lot of people had helped his ex “with this scheme” and that he was busy compiling names.

Other messages followed. There was the 4 a.m. St. Patrick's Day missive — also sent to the Texas Rangers — in which he told President Bush to “kEEP YOUR fucking GOONS OFF MY ASS.” Seven hours later, another Supernaw e-mail stated that: “I just had one of Montgomery County's finest (undercover I guess) jump me and break my left arm while walking back to the place that I am temporarily staying. In my profession, my left arm is extremely important..."

Still later, Supernaw forwarded me correspondence from the office of Earl Gray, his lawyer in the Brazos County case. In it, Gray's secretary gently reminded Supernaw that he had to be in court on April 3. Supernaw called the charges “COMPLETE B.S.” and threatened to sue for unlawful detention and loss of income. Supernaw added that he had always supported “police persons,” but that he was subject to investigation from a “very CORRUPT domestic SPYING program” that had devastated his life.

“I have called Governor Rick Perry to discuss a few lies that he told to the TEXAS RACING COMMISSION (on record) and to ask the Gentleman to STEP DOWN and return all of my HORSES that he signed away because I was an alledged CRIMINAL,” he continued. “I am going now to put on some shorts and a t shirt, get a water gun and walkie talkie, and walk the streets terrorizing innocent people. Thank you for your time. Dios Botik. Douglas Anderson Supernaw.”

I sent him another interview request on April 3 and received a thank-you for writing about him. Supernaw added that he was “currently in Brenham bicycling through the bluebonnets,” in search of a ranch “big enough for all of my returning horses and children.”

On April 9, we seemed to be getting pretty close to getting the interview done. Supernaw said he would be getting in touch with me soon, but then the next day, he said he had almost come to my office to see me but got sidetracked by an old friend.

Not long after that, he must have started the Friday the 13th bender that got him locked up in Montgomery County. I didn't know that, though, and I had come across reports on his message board that he had lately been frequenting a bar called the Blue Moon Saloon in Bellville, Austin County's seat, about 60 miles northwest of Houston. “If you want some real entertainment go to the Blue Moon Saloon in Bellville this Friday night and watch Doug sing karaoke,” wrote one poster. “It's a real Barnum and Bailey circus act. Especially after he's spent most of the day getting wasted with Bubba.”

I headed on up to Bellville and checked into the Motel Wayne on the town square, telling the clerk I was looking for Supernaw after I got my key. “Check the Austin County Jail,” he said. “I'm serious. He got in some trouble here a couple of weeks ago.”

Apparently, Supernaw had spent the day partying and was lit up. The desk clerk said he stepped out of a house party and wandered off into the night, then got lost and started knocking on people's windows and doors in the wee hours. “That was when they called the law on him,” the clerk said. “He's lucky he didn't get shot.”

I went back to my room. A few minutes later, the phone rang and a tipster told me I might find Supernaw at a nearby sports bar/pool hall called Memory Lane. Supernaw's hit from the glory days “Not Enough Hours in the Night” was billowing from the juke when I walked in. The clientele was of all races, and young, very young. I ordered a beer and waited for my moment, which came not five minutes later. A kid in a camo baseball cap was talking to another young guy, this one wearing a cowboy hat on his head and a pretty blond in his lap. The camo hat kid was talking about some drunken shenanigans he had gotten into the night before. “Yeah, everybody down there was pretty shithoused,” he said. “Was Supernaw there?” the Cowboy asked. “Naw, I hadn't seen him in a few weeks,” Camo replied. “Me neither,” Cowboy replied.

And so I introduced myself. The Cowboy and his lady clammed up. Camo kid, whose real name was Jimmy Martin, was more forthcoming. He had been involved in the caper that had most recently gotten Supernaw locked up. “Yeah, we'd been partying with him that day, but he was getting pretty out of control, so we were trying to lose him,” he said.

Somehow, it seems unlikely that guys like Alan Jackson and Garth Brooks would get ditched by kids like that, but Martin didn't see it as a big deal. “He sang a karaoke duet with my dad one night,” Martin said. “He said he'd like to record with him some day. That would be pretty cool, I guess.”

After striking out at Memory Lane, I headed over to the Blue Moon on the other side of Bellville. At about ten o'clock, the place was almost empty. The proprietor, a jolly blond fiftysomething with an accent of her native Ohio, laughed bitterly when I mentioned that I was doing a story on Supernaw.

“Well, you won't find him here,” she said. “We barred him from this place last year.” Apparently, management at the Blue Moon didn't find his performances as entertaining as some of the people on his message boards. “He's up there cussing, stripping off all his clothes, screaming,” she said. “We don't tolerate that stuff here.”

The Blue Moon once was Supernaw's home. Literally. The singer lived for a time in a trailer out back. “He didn't even have any electricity,” said one of the patrons. “Naw, I think he did have a generator back there,” said the club's DJ.

Later in the evening, the bar got slam-packed. Nearby Sealy has a midnight closing time, while the bars in Bellville rage until two. I walked over to the owner and told her what a nice place she had.

“Well, it's only been nice since we kicked Doug out,” she says. “This place was pretty terrible when him and his friends were coming in here.”

“Like a kid on a carousel / I go around in circles / Not knowing whether to be scared / Of all the ups and downs”

One of the only signs that Doug Supernaw ever had a country music career is his Web site. The postings on his message boards run toward the odd, to say the least. Some people seem genuinely concerned for him, others are disgusted, while a third contingent appears delighted to kick the man while he's down.

Though he has not spoken to Supernaw in about five years, Justin White had more than a front-row seat for the singer's glory days. White was still a student at Robert E. Lee High School when he met the honky-tonker at a golf tournament in 1988. By that time, the 27-year-old Supernaw already had served as a staff writer with a Nashville music publishing house. At the time, White was impressed, with good reason. “That was the way you became a star back then,” says White, citing the examples of staff writers-turned-hitmakers such as Garth Brooks, Clint Black and John Michael Montgomery.

Supernaw was being groomed for that same level of success when he met White, who had whiled away his high school years writing songs and dreaming of a country music career. At the golf tourney, White told Supernaw he was a musician, and Supernaw asked him to send him a tape of his stuff. “He called me back and said, ‘I think your stuff is great, and I wanna write with you,'” White recalls. “I thought, ‘Well, hell, this is great.'”

By 1990, Supernaw was spending more time in Texas, and he and White cowrote together whenever possible. Supernaw also started assembling Texas Steel, an early version of the road band that would back him through his glory days. Meanwhile, White enrolled at the University of Texas, and in early 1991, Supernaw would again intervene in fairy-tale fashion. Texas Steel had a spate of road gigs coming up, and Supernaw asked White to become his sound man and songwriting partner between gigs. “I said, ‘Man, you're gonna pay me money to do this?'” White remembers. “So I called my dad and told him I wasn't gonna waste my time or his money anymore, so I dropped out of school, moved back to Houston and went to work for Doug.”

Soon enough, Supernaw was opening for Willie Nelson, playing the parking lot stages at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo Chili Cook-Off, and headlining the Party on the Plaza concert series. He was drawing interest from several major Nashville labels, but Supernaw resisted when they insisted that he needed to move back to Music City. “He decided that the way for him to do it was to come back here, put together the best band he could, hit the road and play three-four-five nights a week at every roadhouse, outhouse and dance hall we could find, which is what we did,” White remembers. “We did it in my Blazer, two vans and a trailer.”

And it really paid off. Coors Light signed on as a sponsor, and Supernaw was able to retire the little caravan of trucks in favor of a proper tour bus purchased with the brewery's money. The band hit the road and hit it hard, and eventually became one of the top draws in places like Tyler's Oil Palace, and if they know good country music anywhere, they know it in Tyler.