hiking

Finally!

I got to go hiking!!!

Runyon Canyon…it only takes a few hours but it’s beautiful. You can see all of L.A. and it’s minutes away from Hollywood (another great tourist-y type adventure is the Best View In the City horseback trails…check em out if you’re ever in the area!!!)

After hiking we went to Real Food Daily, a place which is fast becoming on of my favourite vegan joints in the area. They have every dessert ever…but vegan!!! 😀

I drank 2 extremely dark and extremely tasty beers then strolled around Venice for the remainder of the eve. It’s fun to be a tourist 🙂


More Photos Here

Evolution

I’m a soggy snot rag again.
What is it with me and illness.
This re-re-occuring ailment is ruining my life! Can’t sing, write, play, run, taste, breath…ugh.
Before I had this sore throat thing, thought it was strep. Then I got totally better. Now I have like, a head cold, or some junk.
Anyway. Enough about my sick, gross-ness.
Yesterday, amidst my snottiness, I went on my first California hike at Runyon Canyon. Being in the heat actually made me feel better. By the time I got home, I was barely snotty and actually thought: “Hey! I think I’m on the mend! :D”
Hiking was followed by food which was followed by a walk at Venice beach which was followed by a trip to the salt water hot tub in the backyard. After that, more food and a couple movies, one being Baraka, which I hadn’t seen since high school. It’s one of those movies that doesn’t say anything, but says SO much. I have been thinking all day because of it. There is no plot, no movie stars…just shots of this planet and the people on it. The theme seemed to be religion, or at least how people find/worship/speak to God. Intensely interesting. Amidst the global look at culture and worship, glorious panoramic views of the Earth and all it has to offer were dispersed amongst shots of crowded subways, traffic, assembly lines and even factory farming. It made me think of humans as somewhat of a plague…just ruining all that is around us and getting so far away from any natural beauty that we at one point possessed (in my opinion the Buddhists and Indian cultures seem to know what is up the most). Then you see these primitive tribes, existing naturally and living happy and healthy lives. Where did we go wrong? Are we really evolving?
Sometimes I can’t tell.

Random Me Fact of the Day: I was the last peron in my neighbourhood to learn how to ride a bike. True story.

Interview, Blog, Shows

New Billy the Kid Interview c/o our friends over at Animal Nation Doesn’t Know Anything.

Don’t forget to check out Billy’s upcoming shows, July 8th at Room 5 in Los Angeles and July 28th at The Troubadour with Our Lady Peace. If you’re in Vancouver there will be an August 11th show as well, we’ll keep ya posted as details arrive.

Lots of blogs, photos and updates over at BillyTheKidBlog.com. If you’re a Blogger user, sign up as a friend and feel free to leave any comments and questions 🙂

The Truth

Was thinking that maybe you come here to find out a little something about me every so often. Found this and figured, why not. I’ve never done one of these things. This one seems to cover all the basis. Enjoy, if you care 🙂

001. Real name → Billy the Kid (duh)
002. Nickname(s) → Billabong, William, Bill, Billster, Billamina, BTK, Billiard
003. Status → Severly taken
004. Zodiac sign → Aquarius
005. Male or female → Girl
006. Elementary → Hjorth Road then Riverdale
007. Middle School → Len Shepherd
008. High School → Tamanawis, Elgin, Langley Fine Arts
009. Eye Color → Change-y. Green-y gray.
010. Hair Color → Brown
011. Tall or Short → Short
012. Loud or Quiet→ Sometimes very quiet, sometimes very loud
013. Sweats or Jeans → Sweats 🙂
014. Phone or Camera → Phone
015. Health freak → Kind of…vegan 🙂
016. Clothing Style → Ex-punk folk gurl
017. Do you have a crush on someone? → Randall Cooke
018. Eat or Drink → both! lots 😛
019. Piercings → 7 ear
020. Tattoos → My body is one huge tattoo in progress
021. Water or Fire? → Water!!!
022. Love of your life or 4 Billion Dollars → love of my life

FIRSTS:
023. First fear → Slow motion zombie nightmare
024. First best friend → Scott Sproxton
025. First award → T-shirt that said “I read over 700 books” (it was actually more like 900 but whatever)
026. First crush → Darren something-or-other…grade one
027. First pet → Cats, Jack and Jill (creative, I know)
028. First big vacation → Disneyland
029. First big birthday → The first birthday I remember was at Chuckie Cheese
030. First kiss → Grade one. See: First Crush 😉

FAVORITES:
031. Food → Today it’s vegan beet tartare at Madeleine’s in L.A. (all vegan gourmet…amazing)
032. Person → Randall Cooke
033. Color → Black
034. Sport/Team → Lost Causers
035. Country → Canada
036. Actor/Actress → I like them all equally.
037. Music → Ryan Adams
038. Movie → Today it’s Up
039. Scent → Randall Cooke

ABSOLUTELY HATE:
040. Food → all things dead
041. Person → no comment
042. Color → I am the least fond of orange, but I certainly don’t hate it.
043. Sport/Team → None.
044. Country → no comment (for fear of being bombed)
045. Actor/Actress → paris hilton
046. Music → paris hilton
047. Movie → There are many truly bad movies but I’d still rather watch one of those than most things on television
048. Scent → New tar roof

CURRENTLY:
049. Eating → nothing
050. Drinking → tea
051. Talking to → no one
052. Thinking about → never you mind!
053. Listening to → new five for fighting leaking through Randy’s headphones as he charts for a session tomorrow. Other sounds include: The sound of a pencil scribbling on paper, his tapping and funny sounds that come out of him when he is concentrating/counting.
054. Plans for today → Watch a couple Robot Chicken on the ol’ DVR then pass out!
055. Waiting for → Randy to be done and come over here so we can get our Robot Chicken on!

YOUR FUTURE:
056. House → I hope!
057. Car → Dream car is ’57 Belair
058. Want kids? → no
059. Want to get married? → no
060. how many kids do you want → 0
061. any name on the mind → Dylan
062. what did you want to be when you were little → veterinarian
063. what did you think you’ll be doing in 5 years → hopefully on tour. Realistically probably working some shit job though :S
064. mellow future or wild → totally wild to begin with and then extremely mellow
066. something you would never try → cheating on Randall
067. when do you wanna die → Before Randall does

WHICH IS BETTER FOR A BOY:
068. Lips or eyes → both.
069. Shorter or taller? → Taller
070. Long or short hair → short (!!!!)
071. Romantic or spontaneous → BOTH
072. Nice stomach or nice arms → Arms
073. Sensitive or loud → sensitive
074. Hook-up or relationship → relationship
075. Trouble maker or hesitant → trouble maker

EMBARRASSING:
076. Had your pants rip in public → I was hopping a fence with Matt Dander on tour once does that count?
077. Peed your pants in public → nope
078. Talked to someone you thought you recognized but it wasn’t them → My life story
079. Tripped and fallen on stairs/escalator/hallways/etc.. in public → always

HAVE YOU EVER:
080. Lost glasses/contacts → YES. Once out a moving vehicle on tour. Spent hours trying to find on side of highway. No dice.
081. Ran away from home → Many times.
082. Hold a gun/knife for self defense → no
083. Killed somebody → no
084. Been heartbroken → yes
085. Been arrested → no
086. Been drunk/high → yes
087. Cried when someone died → yeah
088. Kissed on the first date → yeah

DO YOU BELIEVE IN:
089. Yourself → sometimes
090. Miracles → sometimes
091. Love at first sight → sometimes
092. Heaven → no
093. Santa Claus → no
094. Sex on the first date → no
095. Kiss on the first date → yes

ANSWER TRUTHFULLY:
096. Is there something you wish you could change about yourself → my metabolism
097. Is there one person you want to be with right now → I’m with him
098. Are you seriously happy with where you are in life → no
099. Do you believe in God → sometimes

To Bowl

Today I will attempt bowling for the third time.

I will also attempt to be not completely bummed out when I score very low and most of my turns ending up in the gutter.

Maybe You Didn’t Know… After baseball, gymnastics, piano lessons, guitar lessons, tae kwon do, figure skating and swimming, I still do not know what I want to be when I grow up nor do I have any skills relevant to any sort of job whatsoever.

Cakes n Coasters

Today was a fun day. The funnest day in a while.

Tamar’s in town. I met Tamar for the first time while shooting the (upcoming, soon to be released) music video for These City Lights. Tamar is down here for a cool make-up conference and after spending the weekend learning about prosthetics, latex and all kinds of crazy special effects makeups things, we spent the day in Santa Monica and Venice.

For all the times I have walked around the Santa Monica pier today was the first day I went on the roller coaster. It wasn’t all that good but, ya gotta do it once in your life yknow? My photographer buddy Aaron Schwartz (who was also at the These City Lights shoot) is supposed to come down next month to coaster hop with me for a few days so I wasn’t too worried about it. I did, however, have a fantastic time on the Scrambler. Every time the ride went around, a “Weeee!” escaped from my lungs, like the sound you make when you’re five and on a swing. After awhie we weren’t sure if we were laughing from the ride of the “weeeee!” Either way, there was giggling the whole ride through.

Then we walked to Venice (which I had no idea was that close to Santa Monica). It was a beautiful day and a ton of interesting people watching went down. Oh! I almost forget the most important part…before these adventures we lunched at Real Food Daily and split Salisbury Seitan (with vegan gravy and mashed potatoes oh boy) and a Mexican Enchilada type dish followed by (vegan, of course) coconut cream pie and peanut butter chocolate pie. And then a cookie. To go.

Random Fact: I have not done anything productive for about a week now.

Sick

Oh to be ill.

The moping, the coughing, sneezing, snot, no energy. sore throat.

Not singing. Not doing much of anything, really.

So far I have seen Into the Wild, JFK, W., Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Idiocracy and about a million episodes of Robot Chicken. Healing. More on this later.

Thing you maybe didn’t know about me: Sometimes I fall asleep with my arms over my head and I wake up in the middle of the night thinking that my arms have been stolen in my sleep.

Shows

Today’s Question:

“how many songs have you written for acoustic guitar that you perform?

do you usually play by yourself, just with a guitar & singing? how often are you play with a back-up band, with drums & bass etc.?”

I just looked at my iPod and apparently I have 101 demos. Some of these are probably duplicates and some are likely songs that ended up being Billy and the Lost Boys songs but at any rate, I really only play about 10 of them live!

I’ve been playing shows with a band lately but it really all depends on the show. Last Thursday at the Hotel Cafe I did the first half of the set by myself (which allows me to play songs that are new or that I don’t have recordings of) then the band came and joined in for the rest. I’ve been super fortunate to play with some uber talented musicians lately…it sure adds a lot to the live sound to have a great backup band. I like the idea of playing a bit alone and then adding musicians. Sonically it changes things up and if people aren’t really in to one, hopefully they will be in to the other.

On Thursday, Randy (who has payed with the likes of Ringo Starr, Dave Stewart, Chantal Kreviazuk, Kelly Clarkson, Five For Fighting and Raine Maida’s solo project) played a cajone (this cool box thing you sit on) and a bunch of percussion stuff…he has a tambourine hooked up to a kick pedal so he can be playing a beat on the cajone, shaking a shaker, and then on the backbeat hit the tambo. It’s super cool! Andrew Doolittle played some ambient guitar stuff (what I like to call Whale Sounds) and Joe Karnes from Pedestrian was on bass this time around. My last show at Hotel Cafe we had Ben Peeler from the Wallflower/Jakob Dylan on guitar and Eric Holden from Five For Fighting and Josh Groban on bass. When in Vancouver, I try to steal Sarah Mclachlan’s band. If they’re not around to do it I just play by myself 😉

Random Fact of the Day: I feel as if my best songs were the result of not writing anything down or picking up an instrument. I would just have something stuck in my head and make up words as the day passed. By the time I picked up a guitar, I already knew how the song went and just had to figure out how to play it.

Bowling at Pinz:

Ask Billy + New Videos

I’ve been answering reader questions every day on the blog…head on over and feel free to leave a question or comment.

Also, got a new YouTube page. Just posted some shorts videos of recording with Raine Maida and Steve Mazur from Our Lady Peace, as well as my All Time Favourite Recording Moment with Stan Behrens. Head on over to http://www.youtube.com/billythekidofficial and don’t forget to become a Subscriber so you can be up to date on the latest vids as they are posted.

Thanks for your comments,

Billy the Kid