| These days it’s tough to talk about punk rock. After decades of hegemony, the underground has mutated, becoming the mainstream.
Is it sticking it to the man (whoever that may be)? Is it bucking authority? Is it asserting your individuality? In the case of Billy the Kid from Billy and the Lost Boys, it’s all three, though she would probably be the first to tell you that with her love of melody, pop punk would be a more apt description. Maybe so, but you can’t argue with her history.
"When I was a kid, my parents put me in piano lessons. I hated it," she says. "I asked for a guitar when I was about 12 and they said no, so I ran away from home."
How punk rock is that?
Not the easiest choice she could have made, but she admits it shaped who she is today and gets reflected back in her music. Still, it took a few years away from home before she worked up the confidence to really express herself. By age 15 she was strumming in coffee shops, content to play in someone else’s band when one of her foster parents gave her a bit of life-changing advice.
"You’ve got all these songs. Why don’t you find some dudes that will show up and start playing your own songs?" she says, repeating the sage words. "And I was like, ‘I can’t do that. That’s what other people do.’"
But the next day she recruited her first bandmate. He didn’t know how to play, but within two years Billy and the Lost Boys were opening for DOA and SNFU in Vancouver. So much for music lessons.
Billy is 24 years old now, but she’s got more experience under her belt than some guitar slingers twice her age. She’s released three albums with the Lost Boys, her solo album (which features an awful lot of keyboards for someone who left home because she hated piano lessons) is recorded and soon to be released on her own label, Lost Records.
"If you are a brat and you want everything done your way, you have to realize that you do most things yourself," she says. "I’ve not been very good at compromising and it’s been a good excuse to help out my friends who are just kids in bands like me."
To date, Lost Records has released albums by Accident Scene and Silent Auction and are expected to drop an album from Vancouver’s The Smears, but starting the label also stemmed from a very practical need.
"The biggest reason is that nobody would put out my damn record," she explains. "So, I could either not ever put out a record again or I could get off my butt and do something about it. I literally bought all the Business 101 and Accounting for Idiots and I just read ’em all front to back. Just kind of figured out what it took, opened up a business account and did all the really boring stuff and just started booking tours."
Admittedly how-to books and bank accounts don’t exactly scream punk rock, but when you consider that Billy makes her living almost solely from making music, it’s hard to knock her DIY attitude. Plus, as she’s quick to admit, she’s not raking it in. That’s gotta count for some cred.
"To be in Billy and the Lost Boys it takes a lot," she says. "You gotta be able to just pick up and go on tour all the time. Be OK with not eating for a long time. I ask a lot."
GETTING LOST IN THE MUSIC
All that work doesn’t mean anything if the music doesn’t deliver. As it turns out, Billy and her ever-changing roster of Lost Boys have nothing to worry about. Their 2003 release Breaking Down the Barriers that Break Down Your Music, distributed by Billy’s pals at Boompa records, earned raves nationwide. When they headed into the studio with producer Blair Calibaba to record their latest, Yet Why Not Say What Happened, they surpassed all expectation.
With massive guitars, enough hooks for a long-weekend fishing trip and increasingly heartfelt lyrics, Yet Why Not Say What Happened is a pop-punk triumph. Mixing aggressive riffs with intimate subject matter wasn’t easy for Billy, but the end result satisfies her as much as it does the fans.
"A bunch of stuff kind of happened in the last year that – shit would happen and I would write a song about it," she says. "Then I would step back and I would think it was too literal.
"I have been hiding behind metaphors for my whole life and… I got a couple songs into the new album and I was like, ‘you know what? It’s here and now. I gotta decide, am I gonna go for it and just make the whole album no punches held, and just go for it and say exactly what happened?’
"Even after I made that decision there were a lot of lines where I thought, this is going to hurt people. People aren’t going to be happy to hear this. Not that I don’t care, but it just had to be done."
The based-on-a-true-story approach offers a great payoff for listeners, but it made for an emotional ride for the songwriter.
"I would call my cell phone so that I could say these lines while I was in tears and driving around just trying to feel better about something crappy that happened," she says. "This one is a bit different because of that, because instead of trying to run from it, I tried to embrace it."
Now that Yet Why Not Say What Happened is out in the world, Billy has shifted back into label head mode. She and the Lost Boys are on the road, racking up the mileage on their new 15-passenger Chevy Beauville. Billy may have recently moved from Vancouver to Calgary, but you’d never know it. Between frequent trips to the West Coast and the three-week Eastern swing this summer, she’s rarely home.
"When you are on tour all the time, it doesn’t really matter where you live…. We just kind of go where the music is," she says. "I don’t really like being in the same place. I’m a runaway. I’m good at living out of a backpack."
However, taking such an intensely personal album on the road comes with its own set of challenges. When you pour your heart out like that, there’s a chance there are people out there who won’t get it. When I ask Billy if she’s prepared for that kind of response, her answer is suitably punk rock.
"I like to prove people wrong," she says. "So any time someone isn’t stoked or doesn’t get it, I’m just like, ‘fine, fuck you, I’m going on tour for six weeks this time, jerk.’" |
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