Doug 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”

— Doug Supernaw, “Carousel”

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.