As I sit in the restaurant at Billy Bob’s Texas, I feel like a befuddled Wile E. Coyote with an anvil dropped on his head. My eyes go wide and slightly crossed, blinking in delayed confusion at what I’ve just heard from the lips of Billy Bob Barnett, co-founder of the world’s largest honky-tonk in the storied Fort Worth Stockyards. I might have even shaken my head, as if trying to reboot my brain.
It was my fault to begin with — asking whether Billy Bob’s was always going to be called Billy Bob’s, which goes together with this place like Willie Nelson, a worn-out guitar, and a left-handed cigarette. Nah, he says to me, while about to take a bite of barbecue. You can tell Barnett, a big man in a cowboy hat, and barbecue are natural friends. The plan was to call it Jerry Max’s Texas, he says. As I looked into the history, this was well-documented. What came next, I’d never heard in all my life.
Jerry Max Lane was a country music performer based in the region. Lane, Barnett, and others all met in the Stockyards to finalize everything, christening the new honky-tonk Jerry Max’s Texas with ink to paper. But Lane brought a stable full of lawyers — more lawyers than the Four Sixes has horses — who came armed with paperwork full of demands, details, and fine print. Thousands of i’s to dot, t’s to cross…