Billy Dee's debut album "Heart Don't Fail Me Now" is a first for TCB. We've certainly had the pleasure of reviewing an abundance of outstanding debut releases but Billy Dee's arrived on our doorstep rather unconventionally. A TCB reader happened to believe in the album enough to send their very own copy in to us to review. After spending sometime chatting with Billy its easy to peg why his supporters go the extra mile, both he and the album are the real thing.

While many may initially recognize Billy Dee's name as Dale Watson's bass playing sideman, if you dig a little deeper you'll find there's a heck of a lot more to the man and his music.

If there's someone Billy Dee's life hasn't run parallel to or sideswiped I couldn't begin to guess who it would be. He's toured with some of country music's biggest legends and stood on the stage playing music with many artists as they got their honky tonk education prior to moving up the ranks to their own individual careers. At 46 years of age he's spent a lifetime singing and playing in honkytonks and bars, living a life that would eventually find its way into the lyrics of his songs.

Like most of his contemporaries, Billy Dee was exposed to country music early on his life, but his connection has an added personal touch. "I grew up listening to my Dad play all his country songs." Dad, was Steel Guitar Hall of Famer, Howard Donahue. "He used to play for George Morgan and all them but he had me and he decided to do the family thing and quit music. But he always stayed in it, playing on the weekends. I grew up learning chords on the guitar playing along with him in the living room."

Fresh out of high school at the age of 18, Billy Dee hit the road after answering an ad out of the newspaper. "Roger Lee and the Entertainers – 1975! I went out there and auditioned and got the job. We went on the road, playing Holiday Inns and Hiltons and doing the top forty crap. Roger Lee played everything from Tie A Yellow Ribbon to Disco Duck. Back then it was all 70’s stuff and the frilly jumpsuits." he recalls, and then adds with a laugh "I will not put them pictures on the website!"

When Billy Dee hit the road with Roger Lee, he didn't go alone. By his side was his high school sweetheart, Vicki, and they traveled on the road together for over six years before the opportunity came to put down roots in Florida as Billy Dee picked up a gig with the band 'Foxfire' in Fort Lauderdale.

There's a quote from somewhere that effectively declares "Life is pain, anybody that tries to tell you otherwise is selling something." Just as life was cruising along in comfort, Billy was about to experience the most painful loss that life put in your path, the loss of someone you love. "We got a house gig at Whisky River, right on the beach. I sent Vicki home to see her mother for a week. My Mom called three days later and said she'd died in a car wreck. That’s what I've lived with all my life. I guess that has a lot to do with how I write and you know that takes a little piece right out of your heart when things like that happen."

Devastated, his dreams of settling down gone, he took the first opportunity that came his way to move on. "The next couple of days after that happened I didn’t even want to go to work. Wendell Atkins came through with his tour bus with his name on the side of it and the band jackets and all the guys were talking to me backstage and told me they had just lost their bass player. I said 'I have nothing to stay here for', so I just sold everything and got on a bus the next day and left."

His travels with Wendell afforded him many opportunities from co-writing songs to touring with David Allen Coe to an eventual seven year stint as the band leader of the Bourbon Cowboys at Gilley's. At about the time when things began to sour at the Houston nightclub between Sherwood Cryer and Mickey Gilley, Billy left town. After a brief stop in Music City he headed back down to Florida. "I had my own band for a couple of years but down in Florida the crowds want to hear southern rock, and I wanted to play real country." He soon found himself back in Nashville. "I stayed there a couple of months with Wendell, but couldn’t find work and so I took a cab and I was going down to the bus station." he recalls, "Right before you get downtown, there’s an exit and it said 'The Rose Room Lounge’ I told the cab driver to stop there, I wanted to have a beer before I got on the bus."

"We went in there, and I bought him a beer. The band, Mark White and his band were up there practicing in the day time and apparently the bass player had just quit and Mark kind of yelled out at the few people in there "Hey, is there are bass players in here?" like joking around. I said "Yeah, I’m a bass player." He kind of looks at me, and he comes up to the bar and introduces himself. I told him who I was, and I had my equipment in the cab. I swear this is all true," he laughs before continuing, "I went up on stage, plugged my guitar in and played like I had a job with him."

After a couple of years with Mark's band, Billy eased into the role of band leader at the club when Mark decided to move on. A year later the Rose Room closed and Billy moved on to Printer's Alley. "I got a job at the Carousal Club, two guys from Detroit came down and put a lot of money into the club and wanted a new band leader there. So I started my band there and played there for about year and that kind of folded up and went next door to the Rainbow Room, which was right next door to Printers Alley."

The thing to do in Nashville if you're a musician is try and get a record deal and Billy Dee was no different than the rest. Struggling to get noticed in a sea of musicians isn't an easy task. You can always count on real friends to voice their straight forward opinions and Billy Dee still recalls the words of advice he got from his friend John Anderson. "I was out on his bus one night, and he said ‘You know Billy I know you’re out here trying to get a record deal and everything and you’re great, your songs are good – but you’re never going to get a record deal."  I said "Why not?" He said something I’ll never forget – "People aren’t going to buy your records when they can see you for free." he shares "I thought having my name in lights in Printer’s Alley in Nashville was going to get me a record deal, but that was wrong."

Six months later Billy heeded John's advice. "He said: :What you need to do is to move to another city, get in a band down there and have somebody with money bring you to Nashville and get you a record deal, so I tried that." He headed to Atlanta following up on an offer to be the band leader at the Southern Comfort Lounge. "They wanted me to get a swing band together. I had a really great band down there but those Georgia people are yelling "Lynryd Skynryd" and "Allman Brothers," they didn’t want to hear this Texas swing stuff."

Things were a little rocky for Billy in Atlanta. While things were slowly going downhill with the band, things on the home front were looking up. Billy was settling in nicely with his girlfriend and had gained unexpected custody of his 10 year old son Billy. Three years later, out of the blue, the phone rang - Dale Watson was on the other end of the line calling from Scotland.

"He said my bass player is going to quit and do you want to come to Texas and play some real country music?" Billy found himself in a dilemma. He had just been presented with what he knew was a chance of a lifetime to play in Texas with Dale and yet on the other hand his home life was settling down comfortably. "I had a long talk with my girlfriend and my son. I had my dog, my chair my furniture everything and my family but things were just going really down hill at the club and I just didn’t want to be there anymore, but Billy had already been in school there for couple of years and had all his friends and his girlfriend there."

The decision was made that his family would stay behind and he would commute the fourteen hour drive once a month between Austin and Atlanta. "I did that for a couple of years and well, you know how that turned out."

If you have a copy of Heart Don't Fail Me Now you have the answer to Billy's rhetorical question. Five years after heading to Texas to serve as Dale Watson's bass player, Billy Dee has released an album that represents a little of everything he's done and experienced. The 'genuineness' of his music comes from the realities he's faced during his lifetime. Billy Dee's music draws from the pages of his own book: the tragedy of lost love, broken relationships, the challenges of family, long distance love, heartaches while all the entire time looking for that certain break as the lure and pull of the music led him on. "I’ve been hurt a few times like everybody else. Its helps me to get them out, I’ve shed a few tears most songwriters do. I had long talks with Harlan Howard in Nashville and he told me "You know man, you know what it takes a lot out of you to write a song, when you’re there at four o’clock in the morning."  

Backed graciously by someone who believe in him and his music, Billy Dee recently headed into the studio with a group of stellar musicians and a stack of great honky tonk songs. "All the guys played on it for very little money they just did it because they were really good friends, which I really appreciate.. I can’t believe they did it for me like that." he shares with an admirable mix of humility and pride. "I can’t believe how it came out, I really never thought it would sound like that. I think its really good. I am very proud of it."

Dale Watson chips in his talents to the project as a co-producer. Selecting him to help pull the project together was a no-brainer for Billy. "He was great. He gave it 100% . He’s real good at it because he’s done what 10, 12 of his own. I play for him, but its not that I felt obligated, I just wanted him to do it. I think his records sound really good and I wanted mine to sound good."

Memorable moments are many, and the musicianship is first class. Stepping in and lending a hand are Dale Watson and Redd Volkaert on electric and acoustic guitar, Dave Sanger, Chris Gilson and Ron Erwin on drums, Ricky Davis' stellar pedal steel and Erik Hokkanen on fiddle, and of course Billy Dee keep its it all pulled together throughout on bass.

Listening to the album its easy to determine that his honky tonk attitude is earned rather than contrived. "I write heartfelt songs that Nashville tends to forget about. All these twenty year old songwriters in these cubicles writing about sexy tractors, that is a bunch of shit to me and I don’t agree with it."

Billy songs don't come from any formula by a long shot -- nothing but reality is the inspiration for his music. ""If I picked up the guitar and started writing right now I'd just think about things I’ve gone through and I just write. I just can’t explain it, I just write. I just hope people like my songs and I am 46 years old and I figure I’m going to keep doing it. It’s all I know how to do."

The album is a diverse mix of real country songs that Billy has co-penned over the past couple of decades with some of his most prominent influences (Redd Volkaert, Wendell Adkins and Dale Watson) but each song has his personal touch. With a voice that's made for dimly lit barrooms and sawdust covered floors he covers many of the bases of the country genre but he never crosses the line. Every nook corner and cranny of this album is rock-solid country as the heartache of life's hard knocks comes in the form of two steps, shuffles and down right cry in your beer tearjerkers. Emotions are sometimes raw from the loneliness of Everybody's Got Someone But Me, May Your Heart (Rest in Pieces) or Your Memory Wins but the hope of new found love pulls you up by the bootstraps and gets you out on the dance floor again with gems such as Don't Give Up On Love or New Tune on An Old Fiddle.

When all's said and done Billy accomplishes what he set out to do. "My ultimate compliment is when I sing one of my songs and I look out there and I see someone crying. That’s my ultimate compliment. I used to play for Vern Gosdin and you wouldn’t believe the women that were in the audience that were sobbing. I’d never seen anything like it. I think that is the ultimate compliment to a songwriter is when you reach in and grab somebody’s heart and tear it out. That’s what I try to do when I write, I want people to feel what I’m feeling when I’m writing that song."

Billy Dee continues on as Dale's sideman -- something he's quite content to be. "When I first took the job with Dale I knew he was the headliner and I knew that I was going to be the bass player. I knew he’d let me do a few songs a night, he always does, but I have never in five years sat down and asked him, hey Dale let me sing. People know who I am, I have my own identity but I still want to belong to Dale and he knows that and appreciates it I’m sure."

He continues to write and is looking forward to his next album. "I got seven new ones written for the new album and I think I would compare it to a Vern Gosdin's Chiseled in Stone album. It's going to be all me and my songs, instead of songs I’ve written with other people. I’ve got seven of them done here just sitting under my telephone." He's even chosen a tentative title for the album, The Only Thing That’s Missing Is You and has the cover art developed in his imagination. "I think the album cover is going to be me sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace looking at her picture on the desk there, having the candles lit, having the wine glasses ready, filled with wine and you know the only thing that’s missing is you."

In the meanwhile, he and Redd kick things up a notch around Austin on Dale's off nights, playing Saturday afternoons at the Continental, while Tuesday nights have them hitting the stage at Ego's, forming a trio with drummer Chris Gilson and they expand to a full quartet when Ricky Davis joins them on steel. To make things even more interesting Cris and Ricky are also members of Dale's Lonestars so when they're on the road you'll catch Redd with a completely different set of cohorts.

These days you'll also find Billy's venturing tepidly into the internet age and with the help of Bill Groll he's setting up his own little corner on the net. Check out  www.billyfdee.com listen to the audio jukebox and see for yourself that this album is a more than honorable addition to your honky tonk music collection.

Laurie Joulie Take Country Back January 2003