Billy Joe Shaver has never tasted the success of outlaw country contemporaries Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard. But if we’re talking true outlaw cred, the Texas singer-songwriter has the rest of the pack beat by a country mile: In 2007, Shaver shot another man in the face outside a place called Papa Joe’s Texas Saloon, in Lorena, Texas. In court, Shaver claimed self-defense. When the prosecution asked him why he didn’t just leave the bar if he felt intimidated, Shaver responded that doing so would have been “chicken shit.” (Before firing away, he reportedly asked the victim, who’s now walking the streets with a bullet permanently lodged in his neck, “Where do you want it?”) Because it’s Texas, and that’s just how things are done down there, Shaver was acquitted. At 72, he’s back on the road, Crazy Heart-style.
— David Hudnall
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