"The deep south was a fairly intensive place in the 60’s.  I remember some of my friends and I sneaked out to go to  Saint Jude’s Hospital, which was the end destination of the Selma to Montgomery March.  I wish I could tell you that we were motivated to do so for reasons of political activism.  The truth is we just wanted to see PETER, PAUL & MARY," Billy continued. "Music was just starting to make the first of many steps, which in retrospect brought about the musical revolution we now associate with that time.  We were listening to folk music and some Elvis.  I remember the Beatles on Ed Sullivan.  I was awed.  I conspired with my mom to buy my first guitar on my Dad’s Sears credit card.  That guitar had strings so heavy you could have towed a pickup truck with it.  My fingers did literally bleed because I played so much.  My friends Richard and George got together to form our first band. If the Beatles had knocked us off our feet, then the Rolling Stones mopped up the floor with us.  There was no turning back."

Billy recalls auditioning a skinny blonde kid in Montgomery, with Richard and George for a band they had called THE OSSENBERGER MEMORIAL WING, which incidentally never took off or got out of the garage.  "I remember that this kid showed up with a Gretch or large bodied Gibson., that was bigger than he was.  He had a big Fender Twin Reverb.  I was pretty amazed that he even had the strength to carry the stuff, cause he was so thin.  We played some covers and he came up with some of the loudest spaghetti that I had heard."

In September of 1972 Billy married Deborah Kopecky.  The following May, they were blessed them with a daughter, Barbara Ruth Ray.  In 1974, I met a kid named Mike Cross.  He stayed with us and we became his foster parents.  He introduced me to Scott Coleman and Rick Padero and our band OUTLAWED was born.  Rick left after a year and the band continued with new guitarist Steve Lynch who was to later find fame with the 80’s band AUTOGRAPH.

OUTLAWED continued through late 1975 in this configuration and Billy continued with another group of musicians under the same until 1976.  He also tried several other Seattle bands.  In retrospect, says Billy, "when you’re young,  you have all this energy, you’re cocky and then you get beat down a bit.  I started to feel like a failure as a parent, what with one utility being turned off this month and one next month.  I was going to quit music.  I wrote 40-50 songs over the next 15 years and played a party or two.  Being a musician is like being in the circus.  You never get it out of your blood.  I contacted guitarist Scott Coleman of the old band and Paul Sylvain, a truly gifted bassist, over at their place on Alki point in West Seattle.  I strummed a few of my tunes and they liked them.  Several months later Scott asked his friend Ed Nitsche to join us on drums.  The whole focus in the beginning was to record my songs to submit for demos to see if I could get a publishing contract.  Then the damnedest thing happened.  We got good and the music took on a life of its own.  We sounded good and our friends urged us to play live.  Maybe its crazy for people in our age group to throw our hat in the ring, but then isn’t Rock N Roll a bit crazy by definition."