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Chronicling Billy's musical evolution over the last 15 years is like plotting the trajectory of a barn swallow. If there is any one thread carried throughout his musical career, it's his inventive melodic sense & irreverent, and unorthodox use of acoustic & electric guitars. Now that I got that out of the way... As a musically precocious lad growing up in Toronto, Billy began singing in St. Simon's choir at age 6. At 10, he received a choral scholarship from Sir David Wilcox to attend St. Michael's College in Worcester, England, where he also studied cello and piano. In his early teens, Billy rebelled against his classical beginnings and taught himself to play guitar by emulating his more radical music idols, such as Bruce Cockburn, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Miles Davis, Lennon & McCartney, Nick Drake, and Egberto Gismonti, to name a few. From '82 to '84, Billy studied music and Eastern philosophy at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, with Bill Douglas, Steve Tibbetts, Robben Ford, Gary Peacock, and Ralph Towner, etc. Billy stayed in Boulder for a few more years playing guitar and bass in New Wave, New Age, Bebop, Funk, Avant Garde and Country bands for fun & rent money. During this time he developed a unique identity on acoustic guitar. In early '87 he recorded ten original solo acoustic & electric tunes at home on a borrowed Revox 2 track and released his first album, Atlantis Ripples, which can be stylistically described as a guitar synthesis of Miles, Leo Kottke, Bootsey Collins and Michael Hedges. He also won first place in the Elevox Open Jazz Competition for Solo Performance. Around this time, Billy met ragacoustic slide pilgrim, Richard Peikoff, who would in turn influence Billy to start ripping it up with bottleneck slide. Billy eventually rolled down to L.A. where, in '89, he won the "Southern California Guitarist of the Year" contest sponsored by Bam magazine, KLSX Radio, and West L.A. Music. Billy soon hooked up with bassist Holly Montgomery and drummer Suzanne Morissette to form the "psycho-acoustic/heavy wood" band Big Planet and released the group's only self-titled recording. After scoring a Chevy Camaro commercial in '92 Billy used the dough to set himself up with a spare bedroom recording studio and settled into producing other artists as well as getting his feet wet with film & commercial composing. Shifting several gears in his own songwriting, he recorded the diverse Raw Things album, which ranges from the brutal solo guitar piece, "Artichoke Bannister", to the tear-jerking grunge-thrasher, "Sandcastles", and the ambient "Solar Blue". The album also includes "13th Generation", which won Billy the 5th Annual Billboard Song Contest in the rock category, as judged by the late great Frank Zappa and Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart. Following Raw Things, Guitar Player magazine featured Billy in the June '94 cover story entitled "Youth Quake! 10 Trailblazers Who Can Change the Way You Play", describing Billy as "...distinguished as much by his top-notch songwriting and singing as his outrageous six-string technique." For something completely different, Billy then recorded an album of irreverent and noise-laden songs with Dan Bern under the collective guise, "SPEW!" In '96 Billy released the stylistic follow-through to Raw Things, titled Billy's Not Bitter, ("Best Independent Release" Los Angeles Music Awards.) with bassist, Justin Meldel-Johnson (IMA Robot, Beck, Tory Amos) and drummer, Tom Diekmeier, (Crushing Velvet). As usual, a difficult to simplify recording, best summarized by Billy at the time: "I like 'precious' things as much as I like to watch them burn, like building a beautiful melody and then calling in the bulldozers. I guess it's a self-protection mechanism. I'm not really a bitter person, but I like to walk into a trap and then try to write my way out of it. It's usually about digging myself out of my own shit while trying to appreciate the gem-like flaws along the way. I guess you could call these bittersweet noisy pop songs." After recording the trippy ambient "Olympic Swimmer" album Pale Blue Wings with cohorts James Rotondi (Air, Grassy Knoll) and Bob Diekmeier (The Dose), Billy recorded two "anything goes" CDs, Polywog and Love & Destruction. Each recording includes soul searching acoustic-based songs as well as thunderous band pieces with collaborators Bob Diekmeier, Mike Harrison, Pier Tiano and DJ T-Bird. For their raw production values & brutal honesty these are two of my favorite albums of all time - Matt Guthrie --------------------------------------- Matt Guthrie is a writer, musician, marketing consultant, and wetlands restoration ecologist. He can be reached at mdelange@bogdoc.com Check out the artist's website: http://www.BigPlanetMusic.com Track List: 1. How Does It Feel 2. Bad Experience 3. Talkin' 2 U 4. The Apple 5. Misery 6. Bobbie's House 7. 1/2 Way Home 8. PooPooHed 9. Hollow 10. Automatic Forest Suggested CDs:Other Genres:
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