Robert Gallagher’s story with Billy Bob’s starts at the very beginning of the World’s Largest Honky Tonk. He began by booking acts on Billy Bob’s Honky Tonk stage in 1981 and joined Billy Bob’s in 1988 full time as the entertainment director.
Throughout the years, Robert has made friends with many of the artists who have been through Billy Bob’s and has been witness to all of the shenanigans that comes with that. Gallagher has made sure that Billy Bob’s offered topnotch acts and that entertainers were happy, comfortable, and on time. That could mean anything from picking them up at the airport to buying them Popsicles (Gary Stewart) to taking them shopping for tennis shoes (David Allan Coe) to giving them late-night tours of the town.
Gallagher has even proved to be a critical spot in the career of Mike Ryan – without Mike even being there. Chris DuBois, who co-founded Sea Gayle Music Publishing in Nashville, said it was at the “World’s Largest Honky Tonk” that he first became aware of Mike and his music in 2013.
“We had two of our artists playing there on back-to-back nights,” says DuBois. “I was hanging out back in the green room, and I ran into Robert Gallagher, who had been the backstage manager at Billy Bob’s for years. We sat and talked a little bit, then the next night, he came back and said ‘I’ve got a CD I want to give you. I see a lot of artists pass through here, but this guy has something special. I stuck it in my pocket, and brought it back with me to Nashville. I get a lot of CD’s, and with all due respect to Robert, my expectations were not super-high. But, when I put the CD in my jeep, I thought ‘This guy is really good.’ So, we set up a meeting the next time he was in Nashville.” DuBois offered Mike a publishing deal with Sea Gayle right there on the spot.