Will Oldham
Will Oldham
Will Oldham, better known by the stage name Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, is an American singer-songwriter and actor. From 1993 to 1997, he performed and recorded under variations of the Palace name, including the Palace Brothers, Palace Songs, and Palace Music. After releasing material under his own name, he adopted the "Bonnie 'Prince' Billy" moniker for the majority of his output since 1998...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionFolk Singer
Date of Birth24 December 1970
CityLouisville, KY
CountryUnited States of America
rain hair hands
The first music I bought when I was nine or 10 was pop music from the '50s and '60s, like The Everly Bros., Elvis, Del Shannon, The Flamingos, The Platters, whatever I could get my hands on. And then some musical things, like Camelot, Singing in the Rain and Hair.
ideas records might
My hope has always been that each record could have its own audience. Of course, it's awesome to have a cumulative audience for more than one record, but I like the idea that there could be a record that an individual might like.
karma thinking balance
On days where I feel the karma is in balance I'm not afraid of death. And when I feel it's weighing heavily on the negative side, then I get very scared and just think about eternal damnation and how unpleasant that would be.
government years play
In the United States the government has become less important. So, it's democracy, but as each year passes it seems that the government plays less of a role in people's lives, and so they're living in whatever situation their employment imposes upon them more than they're living in a grand political system.
voice looks singers
Frank Sinatra's never been handsome, but he's one of my favorite singers. Who needs looks when you have a voice and power?
taken order knowing
At the same time, you don't want to be blindsided at some point because you've taken too much comfort from knowing nothing. So you try to keep a little store of practical knowledge. At a certain point you have to pretend that something is true in order to have a relationship with the world.
fun want festivals
Making money is awesome and fun as hell, but they're saying, "Well, you're offered a whole lot of money to do this," and it's like, well, I do want the money, but I don't really do that - like headline a big festival or something like that. I could go there and do that, but it isn't really what I do. It feels weird to me.
couple hard-work years
Yeah, it's hard, but it's the kind of hard that if you work hard enough at it, you can do it and it feels great, because it was so hard. So we'll continue maybe even over the next couple of years to perform that and to expand our collaborative repertoire.
couple successful years
I want to be successful and I want people to hear the music and I want to make money at it, but if it isn't what you do, eventually it seems like that will cause you to not be able to do what you do. If you did that for a couple years, you would just become someone else, which is fine, I guess...but I don't want to become someone else. I want to do what I enjoy and what feels right.
numbers care want
There are a limited number of promoters out there who care about that. You rarely meet a promoter who's like, "I want to be responsible for the best shows, I want to make sure that these are the best shows these audiences have ever seen."
space remember shows
The ideal is to put on shows where, if you go into the same space again, you don't remember ever having been there before, because where you were was a space that only existed that one time, created by the music.
kids thinking ideas
As a kid you learn that there are thinkers and there are philosophers and there are theologian, and I'd hear little bits of the ideas that these people pursued or developed or created and I'd be really excited. Then I'll start to read it and I think, "Wait a minute, this is a rabbit hole. This isn't a gateway or a ticket to anything except itself."
years together six
I gathered all the different Peel Sessions recordings together - I did six or seven of them over the years - and listened to all of them. These definitely have at least a superficial relationship to each other because they're all very spare.
writing records promotion
I still make music. I still write music and I record music, I just don't trust music promotion [and] distribution right now enough to record a new set of diligently worked-upon compositions. I do trust the audience and the audiences very much.