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NEW MESSAGE!

Brothers and Sisters, say AMEN!
Within a matter of days, my new CD AND DVD will be available thru the website, at stores, and at gigs!!!
It has been a long process, but worth every bit of it. I have not even seen the DVD yet, but I love the CD. Trust me, that's unusual, because I usually don't listen to my CD's more than once after I have made them.
This disc is WAAAAAY different from anything that has been out before. For years, fans have been asking for a disc with a lot of piano on it. You got it...
Blind Pig records has seen fit to include a whole bunch of playing to go along with the humor.  I AM REALLY HAPPY WITH IT, AND I think you will dig it as well. Please let me know at gigs how you enjoy it.
So far, I have scheduled radio show in Memphis, Dallas, Houston, Tampa, DC, and more on the way. You guys want to do me a huge favor? Drop The Howard Stern network on Sirius radio an email and ask for them to give me a listen.
Meanwhile, keep an eye on the calendar, I will be all over the country this year.
Catch up to you reel soon, y'all..........
Da Rev


 
But Seriously Though…

After ever having witnessed a Reverend Billy C. Wirtz stage show, a true believer of the House of Polyester Worship and Horizontal Throbbing Teenage Desire (over which Billy presides) would be able to conceive of many adjectives - bizarre, disturbing, exhilarating, outrageous, cathartic, patently offensive - to describe the proceedings, but “serious” probably would never be found among them. Yet, recently, a series of personal setbacks, including the loss of both parents, a romance gone sour (and as a consequence, dire financial circumstances), and even health problems - a bout with kidney stones - has compelled Billy to take stock in both his life and career.  Although most of these issues are well behind him now, it’s nevertheless been a quite a sobering experience, which can not help but be somewhat reflected in his overall presentation. Let’s just say that he’s playing the blues on his trusty Yamaha these days with a lot more conviction.

No, he hasn’t chucked the old crowd-pleasing routines, his signature shtick, wherein he plays the piano via the “one-eyed trouser trout;” or mimics the overblown gestures and power chords of John Tesh; or attempts to find his true blues voice in “How I Learned To Sing The Blues” by stuffing his craw full of Wonder Bread; or is literally smothered by the affection generously doled out by a well endowed and all too big-legged “Roberta.” It’s that now a glimmer of circumspection may manifest itself when Billy tackles yet another audience favorite and sing along - “Grandma’s Behind The Wheel,” with her hands on the steering at ten and two o’clock listening to her beloved Lawrence Welk  8-Track, all the while oblivious to fact of being a road hazard. When the song was written many years ago, Billy could distance himself from that generation but now sees the irony in the situation. “You know that I’ve got to consider myself as in the A.A.R.P. of R&B now. And as I grow older, I find myself listening to the same material, although I always try to keep an open mind,” he said in an interview.

Billy Wirtz is a comic genius and an American original. To this day, he still defies easy classification.  “I like to think of myself as the Victor Borge of the blues,” referring to the Danish born, 50s era pianist and humorist who also blended music with sophisticated comedy and regularly took down refined, high-brow music a peg or two. But Billy goes way beyond Borge both in scope of subject matter from politics to social commentary and, of course, in taste. In fact, as far as the latter topic is concerned he is very much like hometown hero and film director John Waters. No theme is too extreme, taboo, or beneath their dignity to exploit, so long that it garners a good laugh.

Although Billy delights in annihilating one sacred cow after another, especially public figures with clay feet like Martha Stewart and televangelist Jim Bakker, his favorite target for satire is the society’s underclass of the redneck; those who are devotees of NASCAR, pro wrestling, Wal-Mart, no-tell motels, and more than likely live in double wide trailers. He’ll talk about rampant incest in “Inbred” or mythical towns like Chromosome, NC, wherein Crime Scene Investigation can never be filmed because there are no dental records to speak of and all the D.N.A matches. Or he might relate the tragic demise of their popular eatery, in the “Waffle House Fire,” wherein “Eggy the cook screamed and gave a horrible last gasp/ as his polyester pants melted in a double knit mass.” Billy loves to take pot shots at the pop culture of lava lamps, marital aids, velvet Elvis paintings, and diets composed entirely of 7-11 fare, like half-smokes, Doritos, and Little Debby Snack Cakes. But it’s not a mean-spirited tirade he directs at these less enlightened individuals. Indeed it’s with a degree of affection that he incorporates such plebian symbols in his songs. Because it is the same landscape in which he was born and in which he still inhabits as he drives from one gig to the next.

Billy prepares himself thoroughly for each performance so that his unique sense of humor is not lost on a new audience. And I saw it first-hand a dozen years ago. At that time, he was performing mostly in the Mid-Atlantic region and his redneck barbs were aimed at Glen Burnie, still universally recognized in these parts as the last refuge of the cracker mentality. But I happened to be on Christmas vacation in Key West and spotted his name in the local paper as headliner at Miami’s premier blues club, Tobacco Road. Needless to say, I cut short my sojourn at Sloppy Joe’s and high tailed it north to catch his show, all the while curious as to how his act would play in this new arena. As it turned out, I had nothing to fear about his acceptance. Billy had cleverly substituted the name of Ft. Pierce, a local white trash stronghold, for references to Glen Burnie and, as usual, had the crowd eating out of the palm of his hand. He constantly refines, upgrades, or tweaks his material to suit his venue and is not afraid of taking on the comedy club circuit, another source of income. “I have to admit, though, that as time goes on, the distinction between my normal stage act and comedy club presentation gets blurred. I just do more stand-up [in the latter],” he said. 

Goateed, amply tattooed, and with a wild red mane, he is the antithesis of anyone’s ordinary concept of a preacher. In fact, his outward appearance, coupled with his often maniacal expression, suggests that he is indeed the devil incarnate. Yet, as his name implies, Billy often employs this stage persona to set the scene in a song. Like an itinerant revivalist in a carnival tent, he’ll begin slowly, building a montage of images, which gradually become a barrage, delivered rapid fire as in a torrent, as if he were whipping the congregation into a frenzy. Accentuating the lyrics with wild hand gesticulations and exaggerated facial contortions, he becomes almost rabid, a veritable Elmer Gantry on speed. Just when the crowd senses that he’s about to explode in some massive spasm, it is then that he suddenly composes himself, artfully segueing into a slow blues number and profusely begs the assembled multitude to forgive him for being “overcome by the spirit.” Naturally, his fans, the “faithful,” are accustomed to this denouement and even shout “amen.” But not before egging him on to even more histrionics before that ultimate crescendo is reached. “Testify, Billy, testify,” they cry. And the Reverend Billy, gathering strength from their exhortations like a hurricane from warm waters, is always all to willing to accommodate them.

As can be expected of a man of his intellectual curiosity, Billy has been influenced by a whole spectrum of musical genres, including classic country (he despises its modern, homogenous, watered down, and emotionally bereft transformation), gospel, and, of course, blues. Regarding the latter, Billy, demonstrating a strong left hand technique on the keyboard, will set aside a part of his program for some real gut bucket blues, like Pee Wee Crayton’s classic, “Blues After Hours.” But he’s more than likely to include his brand of blues with a comic spin, like the aforementioned “Roberta,” “Strange Butt Blues,” and “S.I.S.S.Y.,” the last a hilarious gay parody of the macho blues anthem, “I’m A Man.”

In the late 90s, Billy wrote a regular column, Backside, for Musician magazine and one of his articles in particular, Beyond the B Sides, speaks volumes of what he holds near and dear as far as his musical roots. On the C&W side, aside from the Louvin Brothers and Carl Butler, one of his idols always has been Red Sovine, who, at the end of his career specialized in tear jerking, “talk over ballads” that were so melodramatic as to induce laughter and Billy pays him tribute with his own “Room 309” (after Sovine’s homage to long haul truckers, “Phantom 309”), the story of a girl scout troop marooned at a cheap motel that was rescued from a certain death from an overheated “magic fingers” bed.  Another figure in the same essay comes as no surprise - Screamin’ Jay Hawkins - but it was Hawkins’s rather obscure “Constipation Blues” that was singled out by Billy as a source of his off-beat creativity. Many of Billy’s other selections in this piece had spiritual origins like the Mighty Clouds of Joy, Sam Cooke & the Soul Stirrers with “Jesus Gave Me Water,” and the blind soul singer , O.V. Wright, with “The Nickel and the Nail.” Finally Billy acknowledges rock music with a tip of the hat to the Ramones and their “Teenage Lobotomy,” whose title no doubt piqued his twisted sensibility. It’s certainly quite a diverse assortment of styles from which Billy has borrowed, but as far as his musical heritage was concerned, he’d always taken the road less traveled.

If only Billy could make the same assertion about getting from gig to gig. This lone wolf of the highways can count upwards of 120 engagements per year and may log as many as 60,000 miles on his Chevy Astrovan during that same span. Now based in Hammock, FL, just south of St. Augustine, Billy’s bread and butter terrain still remains the Eastern Seaboard, which he traverses with great regularity. Some of his favorite haunts along this route include the aforementioned Tobacco Road in Miami, the Gravity Lounge in Charlotte, NC, the Jewish Mother in Virginia Beach, the Mojo Room in Baltimore, and the Bottom Line in New York. But he can also justifiably claim, like in the words of Johnny Cash’s song, “I’ve Been Everywhere,” including Lake Tahoe and the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, CA. “I pretty much fly to all my venues west of Texas,” he said. And, of course, those in Europe, a continent to which he’s made at least four separate junkets. But just because he takes the plane on occasion, it doesn’t mean that it’s that much easier. His itinerary in late July has him fulfilling obligations on successive nights at Fitzgerald’s in Berwyn (Chicago), IL, Famous Dave’s in Minneapolis, MN, and Blues on Grand in Des Moines, IA. “The only blessing about this tour is that I won’t have to lug my piano through the airport,” he added. Now booked through Charlotte-headquartered Blue Mountain Artists, he’ll later this year set up shop at Edmonton’s Labatt Blues Festival in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (July), the Montreux Jazz Atlanta (August), and the Riverwalk Blues Music Festival in Ft. Lauderdale (November).

Billy C. Wirtz was born in Aiken, SC, on September 28, 1954. As far as music was concerned, one of his most treasured childhood memories was watching the gospel programs broadcasted from the Bell Auditorium in nearby Augusta, GA. In 1963, his family moved to Washington, D.C and Billy was all too glad to land a job at the end of the decade at Glen’s Music at 12th and G St. NW, a record store which catered particularly to black music, including R&B, jazz, and spirituals. “I spent all day long listening to Julius Cheeks, Clarence Fountain, and the Dixie Hummingbirds. I was in heaven,” said Billy. In 1971, he returned home for a visit and was able to attend a gospel concert at the Bell Auditorium featuring the Mighty Clouds of Joy, the Violinaires, Slim (Howard Hunt) & the Supreme Angels, and the 615 pound Gloria Spencer, billed as The World’s Largest Gospel Singer. “It was like an epiphany for me, a revelation to experience something like that live. It left an indelible impression on me,” added Billy.  Perhaps also inspired by pianists Big Maceo and Otis Spann, blues giants whose recordings he heard while working at Glen’s, he took up the keyboard while in high school but confessed that his skills were rather rudimentary, limited to chord changes.

But it wasn’t until the tail end of his college career at James Madison University in the Shenandoah Valley (from which he graduated with a degree in special education) did he commence playing the instrument in earnest. At 23 in 1977, he was invited to join a C&W outfit stationed in and around Winchester, VA, but this affair was short-lived, as he concluded that his musical interests lay elsewhere. His first official blues band was Sidewinder, a group from his college town of Harrisonburg, VA, and later, through its connections, was able to hook up in the same capacity with the Charlottesville All Stars, a larger ensemble with similar blues tastes. In the late 70s, the All Stars toured heavily throughout the Mid-Atlantic territory and often appeared at the now sadly defunct Marble Bar in the basement of the Congress Hotel in Baltimore.

As the 80s dawned, Billy Wirtz had already earned the reputation of being more than just a competent sideman and became much sought after as a “fifth man” in many a Washington, D.C.-vicinity blues band (a designation and distinction he still enjoys to this day), including that of ex-Muddy Waters’s guitarist, Bob Margolin, the irrepressible vocalist Root Boy Slim & the Sex Change Band with the Rootettes, guitarist Evan Johns and the H-Bombs, drummer Big Joe Maher with bassist Jeff Sarli, and the original contingent of the Nighthawks, then with Mark Wenner on harp, Jan Zukowski on bass, Pete Ragusa on drums, and Jimmy Thackery on guitar.

But by 1982, Billy had grown weary of the incertitude of freelancing and decided to embark on a solo career. And he has managed since then, as few musicians have been able, to remain self sufficient. It’s a remarkable achievement in this day and age when, due to the strict enforcement of drinking laws, the amount of live venues continues to dwindle and, even if they are lucky enough to land one, musicians are paid a mere pittance of what they deserve for their services.

About the same time Billy declared his independence came his first LP recorded live in a bar in Hickory, N.C., Salvation Through Polyester, on the No Big Deal label of Atlanta. By 1984, he released his first single on the same logo, “Stairway to Freebird,” a semi-autobiographical sketch of a “sensitive artist” trapped in a redneck bar who refuses to cave in to the local louts demanding to hear Lynyrd Skynyrd. To the strains of the Led Zeppelin classic (another number high on their request list), the protagonist narrowly escapes these barbarians, flipping them a “free bird.” Although “Freebird” was never part of an album, Billy had enough leftover material from an ensuing session to issue a four track cassette demo in 1986, which included “Lawsuit Boogie,” “Mama Was a Deadhead,” “Stress Relaxation Tape: Expressing the Inner You,” and “Walkin’ the Dog.” For a while it sufficed as his calling card, until 1988, when he released Deep Fried and Sanctified on Kingsnake, based in Sanford, Florida. This latter project was a turning point for him in many ways. “I think we originally pressed about 2000 vinyl copies of this before leasing it to Hightone in 1989 and it marked my long and productive association with this great blues label,” said Billy.

He would remain with Hightone for the next dozen years, releasing six more undertakings, whose titles may give the reader a little insight into the weird and wonderful mind of the dear Reverend. In 1990 came Backslider’s Tractor Pull; in 1992, Turn for the Wirtz: Confessions of a Hillbilly Love-God; Pianist Envy followed 1994; then Songs of Faith and Inflammation in 1998, and close on its heels, Unchained Maladies also in the same year.

In 2000 Billy was back with Kingsnake for one more endeavor, Rib Ticklin’: Songs Inspired by the Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest. The next year, Hightone saw fit to issue a compilation, The Best of the Wirtz:15 Years on the Road with a 77” Pianist, culled from his half-dozen 90s efforts. Finally, his most recent CD is taken from a June 27, 2002 live gig at the aforementioned Fitzgerald’s in suburban Chicago, Rev. Elation, on Rest Stop Records.

Needless to say, by any accounts, this is a formidable body of work. And any musician would have been proud just to have accomplished so much in the recording field. But being the Renaissance man that he is, he’s never satisfied limiting himself to just one discipline. In Billy Wirtz’s case, the world of show business would also allow him to exhibit his dramatic bent: albeit some of the situations made for strange bedfellows.

Pete Backof of Baltimore’s City Paper recently pointed out that professional wrestling is one of America’s indigenous art forms and even goes on to quote French literary critic, Roland Barthe’s commentary on the phenomenon - “the great spectacle of suffering, defeat, and justice.” In keeping with his assumed stage identity, Reverend Billy could not help but be attracted to this sport, a modern morality play of good versus evil. “I have to admit I was fascinated to the point of talking my way into the industry. In 1989 I even became a manager for about six months [Diamond Dallas Page]. I loved inciting the crowds,” he said. After a brief hiatus, he returned to the ring, this time as the house band for TBS’s (Turner Broadcasting) Monday Night Wrestling, a three-month stint which accorded him some publicity, especially after a clip of a performance was shown on the Jay Leno Show. Undoubtedly, female midget grapplers served as the models for his “Teenie Weenie Meanie” (from Deep Fried) and somewhere there exists a video version of the song, complete with cameos of legends from wrestling’s distaff side - the Fabulous Moolah and Diamond Lil. “Granted, for a spell, it was a gas. But then it got to be a grind. And besides that, the pay was shitty,” said Billy.

But Billy soon would have yet another iron in the fire - writing. “I guess it all began about 1993 when I was living in Nashville and documented the passing of Thomas A. Dorsey,” he said. A blues scholar of the first order, Billy pointed out that Dorsey in his youth had written some racy blues songs like “It’s Tight Like That,” but after he embraced religion, was also able to pen some of the greatest gospel hymns ever, including the oft-recorded “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” and “Peace in the Valley.”

At the time, Billy never thought that the isolated obituary was going to lead anywhere professionally, but a chance encounter that same year with Bob Doerschuk, then editor of Keyboard magazine, would soon cause him to reconsider any such aspirations. Since Billy was constantly blazing new trails, crisscrossing the United States, Bob suggested that he contribute a regular column entitled “Road Stories,” which, from Billy’s description, seemed to be along the same lines as the late Charles Kuralt’s television series devoted to local human interest tales.  When Doerschuck left Keyboard in 1995 to become senior editor of the aforementioned Musician magazine, he invited Billy to reprise his former role with regular installments to the “Backside” section, which, by the way is augmented by some fantastic avant-garde art work.

Billy’s website offers a few samples of his Backside oeuvre and there you can find him ruminating on a wide array of topics relating to his experience in the entertainment business.  One such essay, A Field Guide to Watering Hole Wildlife, concerns itself with stereotypes found in most oases (think of the bar episode in Star Wars); another, Heard It Through the Grapenuts, directs its attention to changes in the music scene over the years (seemingly none for the good); while the treatise, In the Sweet Buy and Buy, depicts a Home Shopping Network of necessities for road warriors: and finally It’s A Wrap: The Fine Art of Coiling Cable is a tongue in cheek treatment of the bugbear, maybe even the bete noire of roadies.

After Musician magazine’s demise in 1999, Billy continued in this pursuit, freelancing and making contributions to Allmusic.com. Most recently, he has written about one of America’s last, authentic juke joints, the venerable Bradfordville Blues Club just outside of Tallahassee, FL; the aforementioned O.V. Wright, a biography which he submitted to Blueswax (an online magazine), and the history of Carolina beach music which will appear in the July 17th edition of the Charlotte Observer. If this flurry of activity isn’t enough to keep him occupied, he has also proffered a book-length manuscript, Don’t Eat At Joe’s, to a publisher.

Despite his obvious talents, Billy Wirtz remains an enigma. And I wondered why he hadn’t really hit the big time by now, whereas lesser lights, I should say, comic light weights (think redneck humorist, Jeff Foxworthy) have gone on to fame and fortune. His albums had been reviewed by prestigious publications like People and Playboy and he had received some television exposure, especially when he flirted with the wrestling game. Having traveled extensively and even played some of the more renowned comedy houses in the circuit, he hadn’t exactly been laboring in obscurity for nearly a quarter century. But it is puzzling. So, I asked him.

“It’s not that I’m scuffling. And I’m not yet that big ticket. I’m somewhere in between. But honestly at age 50 I feel like I’m just hitting my stride. I’m getting the act where I want it to go. It’s under control and flows better,” he said.

But I still pressed him for some reasons. And obviously he had given the subject much thought.

“I guess there are a few that readily come to mind. One, I didn’t make Los Angeles my home. Two, I didn’t seek out or sign with a major label because the Hightone people had always been good to me. And three, no one does exactly what I do,” he said.

He seemed truly content and had no intention of making any such wholesale changes in his lifestyle. And it was then I realized that I wouldn’t want him any other way. It just wouldn’t be the same.

“Just keep doing what you’re doing,” I said to Billy

And then it was the good Reverend’s turn to say “amen” and second my emotion.

Larry Benicewicz, BluesArt-Journal

P.S. Billy Wirtz’s newest project, a live recording of a performance at Godfrey Daniels in Bethlehem, PA, will be available shortly in two formats - CD and DVD.


 
 
Article from the Washington Post - June 2003
Heart and Soles: Beach Music
The Peanut Man Goes Home

Articles written by the Reverend:
Backside (Musician June 1996 - .pdf)
Backside (Musician July 1996 - .pdf)
Backside (Musician September 1996 - .pdf)
Backside (Musician March 1998 - .pdf)
Backside (Musician July 1998 - .pdf)
Backside (Musician November 1998 - .pdf)
"What Is Professionalism?" (Musician July 1998 - .pdf)


 
 
 
© 2005 Reverend Billy C. Wirtz