Raised in the piedmont region of western North Carolina, Billy grew up surrounded by the sounds coming down off the Blue Ridge Mountains that cut a winding trail between Charlotte and Nashville. That music dominated the soundtrack of his childhood and etched a permanent impression on his creative sensibilities. Although his love of that music remained constant, the whining pedal steel guitars and plucking banjos would begin to play second fiddle to the screaming guitars and funky synthesizers of hard rock as he entered his teenage years.
During those years he found himself living a double-life: on the one hand, it was made up of late night jam sessions in numerous garage bands with the group of long-haired metalheads he'd befriended; on the other hand, it was marked by many a Saturday afternoon mixing it up on the gridiron with his other group of buddies - the helmet heads. After a sidelining injury in high school, Billy began to ponder what the next handful of years held in store. After deciding that his football days had run their course, the options of future pursuit included college, more music and preparing for a more involved role in a small family business enterprise.
A whole new adventure began for Billy when he moved to Chicago to study music and business. It is there where he connected with a group of like-minded musicians who, together, have been formulating distinct country-rock sounds through a blending of the genres and styles of their early musical influences. For the last several years they have roamed the Chicagoland area refining both their sound and their electrifying stage show in countless dive bars, hole-in-the-wall honky-tonks, suburban park districts, prominent dance halls, small and large county festivals and fairs - including the Chicago Country Music Festival which kicks off the annual Taste of Chicago, where Billy has been a featured artist for the last two years running. Upon completion of his studies in the spring of '06, and after a busy summer tour schedule that year, it was off to Nashville to focus on his latest work entitled "A Man's Gotta Do…What a Man's Gotta Do".
