Country singer ‘shared a big heart’
Country singer Doug Supernaw was born in Bryan and grew up in Houston’s Inwood Forest. The breadth of his recording career fell between 1993 and 1999, a short spell speaking to great promise of a country music traditionalist unrealized.
Supernaw arrived in the early ’90s with a rich and weary tenor that broke perfectly in songs full of struggle. He had a No. 1 single in “I Don’t Call Him Daddy” and sales of more than a half million for his debut album, “Red and Rio Grande.” But struggles with mental illness, addiction and the law consumed his career, leaving him down but poised for a possible comeback.
That comeback never came. Supernaw died Friday, nine months after being diagnosed with lung and bladder cancer. He was 60.
Supernaw’s songs on streaming services such as Spotify offer limited evidence that he was a bright light of a 1990s movement of neo-traditional country music. “Red and Rio Grande” can be streamed, and the record still sounds as comfortable today as well-worn boots: His voice unshowy but expressive, telling stories of characters doing their best with fiddle and pedal steel during an era where mainstream country music remained connected to the genre’s storied past. His third album, “You Still Got Me,” can be streamed. But “Deep Thoughts From a Shallow Mind” isn’t available. Those three albums represented the promising beginning of Supernaw’s career.
He released “Fadin’ Renegade” in 1999, an album title that sounds prescient and tragic two decades later.
Supernaw came of age in the 1970s, where he clearly absorbed the sound of country hitmakers like Gene Watson. At Eisenhower
High School, his interests ran from golf to music, and he rode the former to a college scholarship, though school wasn’t a fit and he dropped out of the University of St. Thomas.
He worked in the oil fields to make money while writing songs in his spare time and playing shows on weekends. Supernaw bet on himself in 1987 and left Houston for Nashville, taking a job as a staff writer. Music City didn’t offer much traction, so he returned to Texas and started a honky tonk band, which drew enough attention to get him signed to an RCA subsidiary that put out “Red and Rio Grande.”
The album was an earthy, rootsy set of songs that mix a rough-hewn Texas sensibility with top-tier Nashville instrumentalists. Supernaw wrote or co-wrote four of the 10 songs. His take on Aaron Barker’s “Honky Tonkin’ Fool” scratched the bottom of the country singles chart in 1993. Later that year, one of his co-writes, “Reno,” rose to No. 4 and stardom was secured.
Kenny Rogers had cut “I Don’t Call Him Daddy” in the late-’80s, but Supernaw found an aching resonance in the song about a divorced father talking to his son, who doesn’t care for his mother’s new boyfriend. And he rode the song to the top of the country singles charts.
Supernaw’s next two albums would yield several more hits, though only “Not Enough Hours in the Night” in 1995 got close to the top of the charts, peaking at No. 3. His 1995 album, “You Still Got Me,” included “She Never Looks Back,” penned by Nashville songwriting legend Jim Lauderdale with Frank Dycus.
“Doug was a strong presence on and off stage,” Lauderdale said Friday. “I loved his voice. (We) were thrilled when he cut ‘She Never Looks Back,’ and he really nailed it.”
By 1999, Supernaw was on his own, recording “Fadin’ Renegade” for an independent label.
At that point, Supernaw’s personal life had started to unravel, a long and tormented process documented in detail by writer John Nova Lomax, who tracked the singer down for a story that ran in the Houston Press.
Supernaw’s erratic behavior landed him in jail and in court far more frequently than a recording studio. Public intoxication, marijuana possession, nonpayment of child support and assault of a police officer were just a few of the charges filed against him.
But some in the industry remembered Supernaw more gently.
After Supernaw recorded Lauderdale’s song, “he tracked us down and sent us both gifts, which is very rare for an artist to do,” Lauderdale said. “I was touched by his kindness and thoughtfulness. He had a warmth and openness that was real.”
In the 13 years since the Houston Press story ran, Supernaw played some shows, suggesting he was getting his career back in order. An anthology of his music was released in 2017, offering hope for new music. But then earlier this year he announced he had cancer. A month ago his wife shared on Facebook that he’d entered hospice care.
Supernaw’s passing comes one day after the Country Music Awards, often tagged as “Country Music’s Biggest Night.” But the traditionalism that coursed through his music would have made Supernaw an outsider in modern country music, which finds itself at a crossroads as it does every few years. Accusations that country music has grown pop are nearly as old as country music itself. But Supernaw’s brief, brilliant career serves as a reminder of the value found in embracing aspects of a decades-old tradition.
“The road of a country singer has a lot of twists and turns,” Lauderdale said, “but Doug made it home with an inner strength and the good love of his family, friends and fans. He shared that big heart ’til the end.”