Billy Sedlmayr - Charmed Life (2014)

For well over three decades Billy Sedlmayr has been at the hot and dry beating heart of Tucson music.

From his teenage years in early Tucson punk bands like The Pedestrians, Billy went on to become a founding member of the legendary Giant Sandworms, later and still known as Giant Sand. That combo - Sedlmayr, Howe Gelb, Dave Seger and the late, legendary Rainier Ptacek - laid down a blueprint for Tucson music that is still being played out over thirty years later. Billy was a key player in a scene that included such other much loved bands like Naked Prey, Doo Rag, Al Perry & The Cattle, Green on Red and The Sidewinders. He later went on to play and record with Tucson local Rich Hopkins, and front other acts like Las Cruces.

It hasn’t always been an easy journey for Billy, and he spent portions of the 80s and 90s in lockup. It was, however, during his time inside that he really found his voice as a songwriter and storyteller, and boy does he have some stories to tell. With considerable help from Tucson musician Gabriel Sullivan and a huge cast of locals, Billy has finished recording his official first solo record, Charmed Life. Recorded at Waterworks Studio by Gabriel and Jim Waters, mixed at Wavelab Studio by Craig Schumacher, and featuring a numerous local and international musicians backing him up, the story-songs on Charmed Life are some of the most brutally honest and beautifully evocative tales to ever emerge out of the Sonoran Desert and Tucson’s kaleidoscopic musical underworld.