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Hillbilly Soul," they're rolling their eyes at little cardboard signs directing patrons to CDs by Hagfish, No Class, the Swinging Utters, Propagandhi, the Jesus Lizards, and the Meat Puppets.
    Burleson, his baby face darkened a bit by several days' stubble, makes no apologies for his love of the old honkytonk sound of Hank Williams, Faron Young, and Buck Owens. One of his new songs, a tribute to Owens, is entitled "All Bucked Up," which epitomizes the good natured mischievousness of a onetime rodeo cowboy with a twang in his voice and a twinkle in his eye.
    At age thirty-five Burleson is growing up with only token and wistful resistance. He has a new wife and a new baby. "I don't never drink beer no more," he said. "Don't have time to." But he sips a little from the plastic cups that keep arriving mysteriously on a stool located next to him on the Bill's stage, and he winks slyly at the audience when he belts out an unflattering depiction of marriage, "Bitch and Moan."
    There is no nation more pretentious than the United States, no state more pretentious than Texas, and no city more pretentious than Dallas. Patriotism is evident everywhere in these times, but it has a double edge in Texas, where huge, garish Lone Star flags fly everywhere. What takes a little getting used to is the realization that the Texas state flags often fly alone and without accompaniment from Old Glory.
    The singer songwriter's young son is Bennett Edward Burleson V The original Bennett Edward Burleson fought alongside Sam Houston in Texas's war for independence, or so says the bio at www.edburleson.com. The name skipped a generation because Burleson's grandmother lost a young son in infancy. Her second, Richard Edward Burleson, is Ed's father.
    One of two singers who performs ahead of Burleson at Bill's, Brett Watts, unveils a composition of his own entitled "Between the Red and the Rio," and at the traditional talking point for so many country songs—the beginning of the final verse—Watts delivers a soliloquy that would have made George W. Bush, another patriotic Texan, proud.
    Watts concludes by growling, apparently in reference to all states other than Texas, "Don't take me wrong, you forty-nine others . . . aw, what the hell, Texas has it all."
    Out in the audience Burleson is a bit more thoughtful but no less boastful.
    "There is no more soul than there is in Texas," he says. "Texas doesn't get any credit for what it has. It doesn't matter what kind of music—it's here, more than anywhere. I don't care if you got the Mississippi Delta blues. There's more blues here than there is there. There's more country than anywhere, more rock than anywhere. Texas is the melting pot of all music, if you ask me."
    Burleson may get a little carried away, but his love of Texas is heartfelt and genuine. So is his music. When he moans and yodels, there isn't any of the posturing for effect that marks similar devices in the music of, say, Garth Brooks. Even though Burleson's version of Hank Williams's "Long Gone Lonesome Blues" is as true to the original as anything I've ever heard, it's also natural. He doesn't sing that way because he thinks it will sell records; he sings that way because it's the way he loves to sing. As a practical matter, it's the only way he can sing.
    "That's what I grew up listening to," Burleson says. "I guess part of it's because I had a good daddy."
    Richard Burleson, who is both the singer's father and drummer, is the lone holdover from his son's original band. That band got together at a place called the Three Teardrops Tavern in Dallas, site of Burleson's first regular gig. Ed gravitated toward music partly because he suffered a knee injury in a Fort Worth rodeo. While recovering, he started hanging out at the Industrial Boulevard dive—what else could it be on a street named Industrial Boulevard?—where he literally gravitated, with his guitar, toward the stage. What began as a bashful solo stab at a Sunday afternoon "newcomers'