Billy + the Lost Boys

Billy the Kid might be only 21, but she's already made quite an impression around town. In fact, she was recently a peer's choice in the "Local Musician You'd Most Like to Get Drrrty With" category for the second year in the Straight's Best of Vancouver issue. (Last year the honour was called "Most Bootylicious Local Musician".)
"What's cool about it is that they didn't say, 'She's hot!'" says Billy over a Friday-afternoon ale with Billy and the Lost Boys bassist Aaron Weiss at the Silvertone Tavern. "They said, 'She's cute because she slays on guitar.' That's what they thought was attractive. That always makes me happy, when someone says, 'You're good at what you do.'"
The precociously gifted musician has been playing since someone donated a bunch of guitars to her high school nine years ago. By 15, as the youngest member of a band called Blue Collar Bullets, she had earned her nickname. When that unit folded, Billy realized she didn't want to cancel the shows that had already been booked.
"I was sitting at home playing guitar and my foster dad said, 'All you've gotta do is find some guys to be in your band. That's all it takes.' Because I'd always been in other people's bands. He said, 'It doesn't matter if they can play, as long as they show up.'" The next night Billy the Kid found the original Lost Boys, Rob Retread and Al Deviant.
Strong Like Prawn, the group's debut, soon followed. The 2001 release is a fine, fun record that sounds like what it is, a document of a young band led by a burgeoning singer-guitarist and songwriter still learning her way around a chorus while basing lyrics ("Tyranny of the Majority", for example) on what she was learning in university.
Not so on Breaking Down the Barriers That Break Down Your Music. Recorded with a new Lost Boys rhythm section of Weiss and drummer Shane Wilson, the disc shows a growth spurt in Billy's songwriting. That's apparent right from the opener, "Between the Lines", which contains a razor-sharp riff that sounds like something from Hüsker Dü's final album, Warehouse: Songs and Stories. The energy and catchiness seldom flag after that; the choruses are fuller, the leads meatier, the musicianship more confident.
Unfortunately that record won't be out for a few months. The band recorded it in February, but release has been delayed while Billy and the Lost Boys search for a label with distribution. "Distribution is pretty much the only thing we need," Weiss says.
"So now we're thinking 'You know what, let's just do it ourselves and sell it out of our trunk,'" Billy adds.
In the meantime, Billy and the Lost Boys remains one of the best bets on the local live-music circuit, and the trio wants to get the word out about its Cobalt show on October 17. "A lot of people have been asking what's going on and when the record is coming out," Billy says. "So it's good to let your friends know you're still alive and doing stuff."
The Kid's resolve to keep rocking is apparent on Breaking Down the Barriers. She was so devastated at losing her band when the first lineup of the Lost Boys dissolved that the ensuing frustration runs through the lyrics of tunes like "Not Giving Up" and "Name All Your Songs After the Chorus".
"It destroyed me for a little while," the young guitar slinger says of the loss of the original Boys. "A lot of the lyrics were written when the last lineup broke up, when I took a look around and said, 'Okay, now what am I gonna do?' The band is the most important thing I do. It's where my heart and soul are. Everything I do is for this band." - The Georgia Straight

If you're at all familiar of the tale
of a boy named Sue, you know
that names can be deceiving. Billy
the Kid and the Lost Boys is a
good example of this; although
the moniker suggests shit-kicking country, the trio plays circa- 1977
punk. That means singer Billy the
Kid sounds every bit as snotty as a 13-year-old juvenile delinquent
who has just discovered the Sex
Pistols, while the ramrod rhythm
section of Rob Retread (bass) and
Al Deviant (drums) sounds like it's done extended time for assault
and battery.
The production and mixing on
Strong Like Prawn won't get big shots like Butch Vig and Andy Wallace thinking about updating their job skills, but that's all right. Billy the Kid and the Lost Boys compensates for that by attacking it's songs with a foaming, pit-bullish fury. And, for that reason, it won't tale long for this debut to win you over; the first track, "Strong Like Prawn (Not Like Shrimp)" is a potent punkabilly rave-up containing the great line "I'm busy fucking up my life/Why don't you go and fuck up yours?" Subsequent highlights include the barbed-wire beauty "I'm Going Out", the frightening feral "The Day the World Blew Up", and "Billy Won't Be No Hero", which boasts the best whoa-whoas this side of the Misfits' Walk Among Us. What really is the tougher-than-rawhide vulnerability of Billy the Kid's vocals.
She howls with the kind of old-school conviction that made Penelope Houston an underground icon a quarter-century ago. Yes, that's right, she; in case you haven't seen the band, Billy isn't a he. Names can sometimes be deceiving.
-Mike Usinger - the Georgia Straight

Fire. The wheel. Sliced bread. Punk music.

Some inventions transcend time and defy the seemingly inevitable decline towards cliché. Fire will always keep us warm. Wheels will always roll. And the future will always hold a place for dear old sliced bread.

But what about punk music? Has the mainstreaming of punk rendered it obsolete? Does a band that features three chord songs and a whole lot of screaming still mean anything anymore?

Billy and the Lost Boys make a strong case for a band being able to ride the cliché and still deliver a powerfully musical experience. The usual punk subjects come up on Strong like Prawn: rebelling against your parents, going to punk shows, being broke, drinking, etc. But with the intensity of Billy’s vocals, the precision of her words, and the tight playing of the band, it all sounds fresh again. Like if you’re camping and it’s a freezing night, the last thing you’re going to think about is how formulaic the fire is. There’s no need to worry about how sitting by a fire has been “done” already. Even the ever-ironic “post-punk” generation can appreciate being warm when it’s cold out.

So while Strong like Prawn may not reinvent the wheel, it does make for one hell of a good spin. “This Is Your Country (Aren’t You Proud?)” is a good, old-fashioned attack on patriotism, what Samuel Johnson once called “the last refuge for scoundrels.” The interlude on “The Day the World Blew Up” sounds like early Smashing Pumpkins and shows that this band knows what they’re doing musically and aren’t afraid to stray from the punk rulebook. Likewise, the epic final track “Last Words” clocks in near ten minutes, building from a piano-laced pop tune to a thrashing instrumental barrage.

“20 CCs of Pop…Stat!” is a hard rocking punk tune and sounds like an unofficial band manifesto. “These three chords mean more to me / Than any judgment anyone could pass on me” Billy informs us. The band doesn’t care if they’re cliché. They are making music for themselves, not to please others. In the end, Billy and the Lost Boys don’t give a fuck what me or anybody else think about them. This is exactly why I like them so much.

Every now and then, when I’m hungry, I’ll make a piece of toast with butter as a snack. It’s not very trendy or gimmicky, I know, but it gets the job done. Billy and the Lost Boys get the job done too. Heck, I think they’re the best thing since… well, you know. - VancouverIndie.com