Bar where Billy Joe Shaver shot Billy Bryant Coker

On March 31, 2007, outlaw country legend Billy Joe Shaver shot a man named Billy Bryant Coker in the face outside Papa Joe's Texas Saloon on North Frontage Road in Lorena, Texas — a small town just south of Waco on Interstate 35. According to Shaver's account, Coker had produced a knife during an altercation and was stirring his drink with it in a threatening manner. Shaver drew his .22-caliber pistol and fired, hitting Coker in the upper lip. The bullet knocked out a tooth, travelled through his mouth, and lodged in the back of his neck, where surgeons decided to leave it rather than risk operating near the carotid artery. Coker's account of events differed significantly from Shaver's.

Billy Joe Shaver was already a legend in Texas country music before the shooting — a songwriter of the first rank who had written songs for Waylon Jennings, Bobby Bare, and countless others, and whose life story read like a country song itself: a rough childhood in Corsicana, a sawmill accident that cost him two fingers, the deaths of his son Eddy and his wife Brenda within two years of each other. He had survived everything the world threw at him through sheer stubbornness and the writing of songs. Waylon Jennings once recorded an entire album of Shaver's songs (Honky Tonk Heroes, 1973), cementing his reputation. The shooting in Lorena became another chapter in a life already full of them.

In 2009, a McLennan County jury found Shaver not guilty, accepting his self-defense argument. He continued performing until shortly before his death in October 2020, aged 81 — singing his songs in his old man's voice, still the same outlaw he'd always been. Papa Joe's Texas Saloon remains open on North Frontage Road in Lorena. Shaver wrote a song about the shooting called 'Wacko from Waco'.