Doug Supernaw

White says that Supernaw's drinking continued, and he believes that it magnified Supernaw's mental state, so much so that there were times when the singer seemed like a different person. Meanwhile, the rumors were growing ever more extravagant. People began to whisper, then more or less openly declare, that Supernaw was a druggie. White is absolutely adamant that Supernaw was not, at least not then. “I hear all the time that Doug was a cokehead, Doug was on heroin, he was using this or that. Doug was nothin' like that,” he says. “He liked to drink his whiskey. He loved to drink his whiskey. But then people would call me and say, ‘I heard Doug is the biggest cokehead that there is.' And I would ask them where they heard that, and they would always say something like ‘My half-brother has a cousin who knows a guy who has a sister who dated so-and-so.'”

The next two singles from You Still Got Me totally bombed. Giant Records imploded and Supernaw was a free agent again. And that's when he started to get in some trouble with the law.

Photos Courtesy DougSupernaw.com

Doug Supernaw: Former country superstar. Now starring in a courtroom near you.

Photos courtesy of DougSupernaw.com

Long tall Texan: Doug Supernaw in his high-rolling BNA days.

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“And I'm a stranger in this time / My buckskin days are all behind / This fadin' renegade's made his last stand / This fadin' renegade's done all he can.”— “Fadin' Renegade”

“The old saying that ‘Any publicity is good publicity' is not necessarily true, especially in the country music business,” White says. “Especially on the national level, the people you deal with are often Christian types.”

Still, country music fans will tolerate some bad behavior, as long as it can be written off as good ol' boy shenanigans, such as one fairly recent mini-scandal that ensnared two of the genre's biggest current superstars. At a fair in upstate New York, Kenny Chesney drunkenly absconded with a police horse named Chico and a scuffle ensued, with Tim McGraw jumping in.

“When Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw got arrested for hopping on that horse, that was one thing,” White says. “That was a playful incident; they apologized for it, they paid a fine, everybody got over it. But you don't want it to keep on building up until you are David Allen Coe or Johnny Paycheck and in the penitentiary for five years.”

Right off the bat, Supernaw's arrests were beyond the country music pale. In Lubbock in September of 1997, he was arrested for owing $135,000 in back child support to his first wife, Trudy. While Supernaw is hardly the only good ol' boy to fall behind on his child support payments, for a star to do so is one of Nashville's mortal sins.

In February of the following year, the Chronicle reported that Supernaw was arrested after a drunken fracas near the KILT booth in the parking lot of the Astrodome during the Rodeo. He was charged with public intoxication, served a day in jail and the charges were eventually dropped, but the stain remained. A scant six weeks later, Supernaw was arrested again, also for public intoxication. According to a short Chronicle piece, a deputy discovered Supernaw slumbering in his sports car at 3 a.m. on the side of Highway 290 near the Mueschke Road exit. The deputy stated that the car smelled strongly of alcohol and that Supernaw flunked a field sobriety test.

“Country music fans have strong beliefs and most of them are pro-law enforcement,” White says. “When the headlines started popping up for things like child support and public intoxication, it all adds up and you see where it's going, especially when the individual is showing no remorse or even an inkling of trying to rectify it.”

But despite his woes, Supernaw still had a career then, and the Possum Eatin' Cowboys were still standing by their leader. The breaking point finally came in the summer of 1998 at some festival gigs in Colorado. “He was showing up late and there were a couple of TV interviews scheduled one night and he didn't bother to show up at all,” White says. “So here I am trying to sound-check and I've got two reporters, one from Denver and one from Boulder, screaming me down about him not being there. And the next night he showed up late again.”

Supernaw was en route back to Houston on a friend's private plane. Thousands of feet below, his band was in a motor home making a hard decision. “We all decided that we had a good, strong eight-year run, and it looked like it had come to an end, and it was time for us to do something different and take care of our families,” White says. “We all decided that once it became a job and wasn't fun that we would end it, and we all agreed that that time had come.”

“And the mirrors in the middle reflect / Years of going nowhere / Of trying to catch the horse out in front / When you know there's not a prayer”— “Carousel”