Billy Wilson

I was born, Gerard Matthew Egan, on April 8, 1979 in Summit, New Jersey to Gerard Francis Xavier Egan & Nancy Ann Egan. As a child, my earliest music influences were Warner Brother cartoons. I can remember being mesmerized by how the action in Bugs Bunny cartoons perfectly synced up with the orchestral accompaniment. My parents always had music on the stereo and encouraged me to listen from the very beginning.
I started playing violin at age 5 thanks to my mom. My best friend, his younger sister and I all started taking lessons at the same time. When I was in 8th grade, we formed a string quartet with a cellist and started getting gigs playing weddings, restaurant openings and private parties. Since my friend and his sister both played violin, I decided to switch to viola to round out the quartet. I remember getting paid $800 for our first gig and thinking, "hmmm... maybe there's a future here." It took me some years of reflection to realize what a fantastic learning experience I had had playing classical violin in youth symphonies around New Jersey. I learned so much about the language of music, dynamics, listening to others etc. Truth be told, I was never that thrilled playing violin and it wasn't until the guitar hit me like a ton of bricks when I was 13 that I suddenly loved playing music. I spent all my time practicing guitar and pouring over music magazines and books on how to repair guitars. I couldn't get enough. My first teenage guitar idols were rock n rollers. I quickly developed an obsession with Jimi Hendrix and researched all of his influences, trying to figure out how he had developed such an outlandish sound and style. This led me to all the classic blues music from Chicago, Mississippi and Texas. This was the first roots music I had heard. The more I got into it, the farther back I looked. Towards the end of college I was getting into rockabilly. Always the music researcher, I wondered what had inspired these guys in the 50s and that's how I discovered Western Swing. I felt like I had found THE music. I loved that it embraced the full American music spectrum. As much as America is the melting pot of cultures, Western Swing seemed to be the melting pot of all American music from jazz, cowboy songs, fiddle breakdowns, polkas, blues, country and Hawaiian music. It represented total musical freedom and encouraged diversity. As a kid who was raised with music on MTV in the 80s/90s and later grew to fall in love roots music from the 20s-50s, I felt like Western Swing's philosophy was to embrace all your influences, spin them around and do your own unique thing with the music. I also dug how at its core, Western Swing is dancing/party music. Those musicians were having a ball and encouraging their audience to do the same. It is a music that encourages virtuosic playing while seemingly not taking itself too seriously. It was danceable jazz with a cowboy hat and a big ol' grin. What's not to love?
My wife, Carolyn Sills, and I write and produce a lot of original songs in our band, The Carolyn Sills Combo. We’ve been playing together for 18 years, making our way to our current home in Santa Cruz by way of Connecticut, Brooklyn and Phoenix. She and I met as students at Connecticut College, sharing a mutual passion for blues music. She was a singer and bass player and played in several bands on campus. When we graduated, we moved to Brooklyn (where my father grew up) to play music together. Our various bands in New York evolved from bluesy rock bands to more of a rockabilly sound. In 2005 we decided to learn a bunch of Patsy Cline songs. We began performing all over NYC with our group, The Poor Man's Roses. It was a fantastic
education in Patsy's music. I played tic-tac bass in that project. It was around this time that we started learning Bob Wills songs and other Western Swing gems.
We love spaghetti western films and our old vinyl record collections of Bob Wills, Patsy Cline and Merle Travis and Les Paul & Mary Ford. We try to keep our music real and swinging, something you might here on an old juke box. We’re tipping our hats to the music that made us want to play, and hoping our original takes on these classic styles that will keep the genres moving forward. My early exposure to classical music and reverence of the film score work of Ennio Morricone has influenced some of our songwriting with a 'soundtrack visual' quality. Because of that and the multitude of genres that we love outside of traditional western swing, we describe our music as 'spaghetti western swing.'
We’ve been fortunate to attract top Monterey Bay talent to our combo. We feature Charlie Joe Wallace on non-pedal steel guitar, Jim Norris on drums and Sunshine Jackson on harmony vocals and percussion. We keep our live show full of three part vocal harmonies, dueling guitar and steel instrumentals and tight arrangements of our own distinct brand of Spaghetti Western Swing.
Carolyn and I both have dream jobs for musicians. After nearly a decade living in Brooklyn, we had had enough of big city life. I had been inspired to learn how to build guitars after working at Rudy's Music Stop in Times Square. It was where I was first exposed to master guitar makers like John D'Angelico and Santa Cruz Guitar Co. In 2009 I decided to enroll in a guitar building school in Phoenix, AZ, which offered a 6 month immersion course in guitar design and building. Upon graduation, I landed a job building guitars at Santa Cruz Guitar Co. Carolyn ended up being hired by the small company to work in the office. Her various skill sets, resourcefulness and incredible work ethic were quickly recognized and she is now Head of Operations at the world renowned custom guitar manufacturer. After 8 years building guitars at SCGC full time, I decided to leave and pursue music as my main source of income. I still repair instruments part time as well as teach guitar lessons, play solo shows and co-host a radio program with Carolyn on KPIG dedicated to western swing, country, surf and rockabilly music. It's called The House of Twang. I love the idea of people driving around the Monterey Bay listening to us spinning records by the Sons of the Pioneers, Duane Eddy and Hank Thompson etc. Both our careers allow us amazing flexibility to take 3-4 weeks off at a time to tour with our band throughout the year.
I've had the honor of opening for and/or sharing the stage with western music legends, Asleep At The Wheel (at the Fox Theater), James Hand, Don Edwards, Nokie Edwards and Dale Watson. We are currently preparing to release our third album which we recorded in the high desert of Southern California the fall of 2018. It is a concept record inspired by Marty Robbins' 1959 smash hit, "El Paso." We wrote 5 songs from the perspectives of the characters in "El Paso," with insightful lyrics that reference Marty's original song while expanding on the back story of that fateful night at Rosa's Cantina. It was recorded, mixed and co-produced by Sylvia Massy (who has recorded Tom Petty, Johnny Cash, Prince)
I’m proud to say that The Carolyn Sills Combo has been nominated for five Ameripolitan Awards in the last three years (2016-2018). Three times for western swing group and twice for western swing female. The group took home the trophy for 2018's Ameripolitan Best Western Swing Group. We have also received four nominations from the Academy of Western Artists.
Our current release, Dime Stories Vol 2, was named by No Depression as one of the top new releases of 2016.
It's a thrill and an honor to be nominated for the Sacramento Western Swing Society Hall of Fame. To me, this music is as vital and fun as ever but I also recognize that it takes a little digging to discover it these days, particularly for a younger audience. It's also been great living in an area of California that was such a hot bed of the pioneers of Western Swing music. I'm proud to call Shorty Joe Quartuccio a friend. We met over a mutual admiration of Dude Martin. I see the Sacramento Western Swing Society as a vital organization in keeping this music alive for current fans, celebrating its founders as well as attracting new fans and musicians to sustain it and help it grow in the future. I like to think that between the music we play in The Carolyn Sills Combo and our radio show on KPIG, that we're playing a small but important part in keeping the flame of Western Swing burning bright.

Gerald Egan