Doug Supernaw

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”

Supernaw has gotten into trouble so often in the Bellville-Brenham-Bryan area, you could call that part of Texas the “Supernaw Triangle.” Rumor has it that at least one police captain in the Houston suburbs has taken to briefing his underlings to make sure they “turned on their Supernaw Detectors” when the singer is said to be around.

After the rash of arrests that closed the '90s, all was quiet on the Supernaw front until 2001. (Tisdale says that a Supernaw family member told her that they were slipping prescribed meds in his food at that time.) That came to an end when he lashed out at the Harris County judge who presided over his child support trial. According to White, Supernaw coldly informed her that he felt the proceedings were dragging on a little too long, and he would like for her to speed things up a bit so he could make it to the Astros game for the first pitch. He was convicted of contempt of court and sentenced to ten days in jail, which were tacked onto the six months he was given for the original charge. (According to The Eagle, he would later inform a different judge that the court in Bryan “would just have to work around” his gig schedule.)

Supernaw's troubles were considerable then, yet still manageable. That would change on his 42nd birthday. According to an account in The Eagle, that fateful night found him tying one on in the Texas Tavern in Brenham. That evening would end with a parking lot fracas that culminated in Supernaw facing misdemeanor counts of resisting arrest and public intoxication as well as a felony charge of assault on a peace officer. The last charge had the potential of sending him to prison for 99 years to life, but eventually the case was dismissed after three juries failed to convict.