Everything You Need To Know From: Billy The Kid

Billy The Kid (aka Billy Pettinger) is the most interesting musician you could ever have the opportunity of questioning.  She has so many stories to tell with such an enthusiasm for life.  Billy sat down with us at Calgary vegetarian restaurant, The Coup, to share some stories with us.  On myspace, she has been categorized as “Folk/Roots Music/Acoustic,” but don’t let that fool you – this girl also knows how to  rock out with her band Billy and The Lost Boys.  She is the epitome of Do It Yourself music and if you’re lucky enough, she just might share some of her secrets with you.

Youth Are Awesome: What is the Lost Youth Music Society?

Billy The Kid: To condense the description, it’s a way of giving back.  It’s a recycling centre, fundraising structure.  It’s very limitless. It’s not just a nonprofit charity – it’s a bunch of people.  Some bands from the record label play benefit shows, but it’s mostly a way of life.  It may have a name now, but we’ve always been doing it this way; we don’t just want to focus on one thing, like getting guitars to schools that can’t necessarily afford it.  We play benefit shows because we go, hey here’s a bunch of money, let’s donate it somewhere.  It’s not a huge deal for us to play for 30 minutes.

YAA: Why did you decide to separate yourself from Billy and The Lost Boys and take on the persona “Billy the Kid?”

Billy: I didn’t separate from The Lost Boys.  I’ve always played this type of music – lost cause acoustic piano stuff – and I’ve always played rock and roll stuff.  It happened at that particular time that Raine Maida from Our Lady Peace heard my demos on myspace and liked what he heard, flew to LA, and started making a record.  But while that was happening, I was making a Lost Boys record in my house.  I just released something online only.  I played everything except the drums.  I produced it.  I engineered it.  The Lost Boys were always a band, but it’s always been different members, because I was the songwriter and I loved touring, and it was constantly like, ‘Can you go on tour?’ ‘No,’ ‘Well, sorry, but I really want to do this.  It’s my life.’  And now we’re on our fourth album.  Now I can just make the album and find the guys to tour with, to be in a band with, and be like, we’re not going to break up when it’s hard.  I’ve done this for 15 years and it’s just easier this way.  I have a band in Toronto, Vancouver and Los Angeles, because, why not?  So that’s why I tour by myself.

YAA: If you were a character in Scooby Doo who would you be?

Billy: Everybody would say Velma because of the glasses, but I feel like Scooby, sadly.  I’m way too clumsy.

YAA: Did you always know you’d start a record label one day?

Billy: The progression started when I was about 10 years old.  A friend and I decided we were in a band… we couldn’t play any instruments, but we were a band.  One thing led to another and our first album was put out on an indie label, Teenage Rampage.  It was still very grass roots and DIY, so even though I worked with labels and distribution companies, I was still manning the bulk of the workload.  In some bands the dynamic is destroyed because one person is like, I’m going to do everything, but I was happy to do everything and everybody was happy to let me.  In a year or two I was like, screw this – we don’t play their game.  We don’t fit in.  It’s like going to a job interview you’re not qualified for. It wasn’t really planned, but it became very evident that I didn’t fit in anywhere else, so I decided I might as well do it on my own.  Haha.  So I created Lost Records.

YAA: What did you think when Raine Maida contacted you for the first time?

Billy: I pushed my rolling chair back from my desk and sat there for a good five minutes.  I was living in Kitchener, [Ontario] and we had this really cute office set up and everything was Lost.  And it took the whole five minutes before somebody noticed, because usually we’re all consumed in sending emails and booking shows.  Somebody finally looked over and was like, ‘Billy, are you ok?’ And I just had my jaw dropped.  Haha.  I remember, he just happened to be playing a show the next week with Chantal Kreviazuk and he said, ‘I’ll put you on the guest list,’ and I got to the show and was like, oh no!  He doesn’t know my last name.  So I went up to the desk and I was like, ‘Hi, are there tickets for uh… Billy Pettinger or Billy The Kid maybe?’ and there was an envelope that said Billy The Kid, no ID required and all I could think was thank God.  Haha.  Every moment getting towards the actual studio, I was just weirded out, not that I got star-struck, but I just saw him on TV all the time when I was kid.  I was maybe 11 years old when they did an acoustic live radio show and I taped it on a ghetto blaster and played it over and over again.  Then I got into punk rock, and so you know being on TV was really uncool.  Haha.

YAA: In a video blog of yours, you talk about a road trip inspired by Raine Maida.  What was on the mixed tape he gave you?

Billy: He has the best taste in music.  The best production technique he ever had was making me mixed tapes.  It had everything from Bright Eyes, Neil Young, Brand New, Gordon Lightfoot, and a ton of like old school 70’s singer songwriter stuff, and every once in a while something new.  I landed in his studio and we had spent some time working on a song and he turns to his laptop and I’m like, what’s he doing, checking his emails? And he turns around and is like, ‘Billy, you’re going to take this CD and put it in your car stereo and drive to Malibu.  This is your mission, do you choose to accept it?’ So you know we hopped in the car, I had a friend with me, and we drove all the way passed Malibu to Ventura till it ended, then turned around and listened to it all the way back.

YAA: What is your favourite type of cheese?

Billy: Daiya soy cheese.  There’s about five different brands of the soy cheese.  One’s good at melting, one’s not good at melting and this one is good at melting.  I’ve been vegetarian for 16 years and vegan for 14, so there’s been a lot of trying to melt vegan cheeses that will not melt.  You can cook the vegan pizza for four hours and the pizza will burn, but the cheese will not melt.

YAA: What is your favourite way to eat tofu?

Billy: There’s so many. There’s this place in LA called Madeline’s, where they make a vegan eggs Benedict,  and eggs Benedict is kinda gross when you think about it, but when it’s vegan it just tastes like candy.  How about every way?

YAA: Is it difficult for you to get your merchandise out to people?  You seem to get very creative with it.

Billy: Even though in the last couple months I got a lot of help, I still do a lot of things on my own.  I did handmade CD covers and I put a couple copies of the new Lost Boys CD up on my website.  I just burn them and I write on the CD, ‘Hi!  Billy here.  You just paid five bucks for a burned CD-R, so thanks!’ Haha.  It adds character too.  CD’s aren’t very popular now.  I didn’t have a CD out when I went on tour with Raine Maida, so I was like, I have all these demos.  I’ll burn them on a CD-R and draw the cover and that will be the selling feature, and we would sell out [of CD’s] every night.  All day on tour, we would all just sit around burning copies, and if we could make a hundred we would sell a hundred.  It was crazy.  I was like this isn’t even my album. It got to the point where I couldn’t think of anything to draw anymore, it was like a duck on roller skates and the drawings would get so bad that I’d draw an arrow and be like, ‘This is a duck on roller skates.’

YAA: How does one find venues in cities all across Canada and plan a tour almost single handedly?

Billy: It would be so much cooler right now if I said I totally do [plan the tour by myself].  My whole life I totally did.  The last tour I did, I booked the shows.  I have a database of places I’ve played and I have a lot of tricks.  I call and check out where other bands are playing, basically stealing their venues till I find a place to play, and if [that venue is] busy I go to another band’s myspace and look at where they are playing.  If you have the time, you can do anything, just like a publicity campaign.  I remember being 20 years old and being like, oh no, I need to write a press release, but just looking it up on Google and finding out how.  This tour, I have a booking agent!  It’s so awesome, because I have a hard time asking people for stuff, and that’s why my booking agent is so awesome, because he can negotiate with the venues and last night I even got to stay in a hotel, with a water slide!  Things are looking up!  This year I got an acting agent, booking agent, publicity agent and a manager!

YAA: Why did you decide to take up acting?

Billy: Why not?  I really had a lot of fun in our music video shoots.  It’s just really fun.  I’ve had some people in my life say, ‘you should go into acting,’ because I go into accents and things like that all the time. I went on Facebook and was like, ‘I want to get into acting, how do I do this?’ and somebody responded and was like, ‘Here’s my agent.  Contact her.’  So I went to some auditions and in my second one I landed the commercial. I love it so much, and I hope to do more, but I think I’m going to be on the road until April.

YAA: You always seem to be on the move, almost like a traveling Lost cause.  Is that a lifestyle you feel you have chosen or has it chosen you?

Billy: I love to be on the move, but it is a sincere part of my upbringing.  I was a foster kid, and I left home when I was 12.  I lived in group homes, halfway houses, with foster parents, and I literally can’t stay anywhere for too long.  I love to travel.  This world is so big, I want to see all of it and I don’t want to miss anything.  I don’t know if it chose me or I chose it, probably both nature and nurture.

YAA: What snack food can you not resist?

Billy: Right now I eat a lot of nuts and almonds.  I’m vegan so I have to watch out for my Omegas and proteins.  That’s the good thing about vegan, you can eat large quantities of food and it’s all good for you!

You can add Billy The Kid on Facebook, Myspace and check out her website to get a free download of her song, “These City Lights.”