Billy Pilgrim

WELCOME TO THE TIME MACHINE

Billy Pilgrim’s Andrew Hyra & Kristian Bush Rock the Politics of the Heart

BY LEE VALENTINE SMITH

LIKE THE BAND’S NAMESAKE from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, the founders of Billy Pilgrim are also time travelers. During the first week of September, the duo of Andrew Hyra and Kristian Bush were busy with writing and recording sessions, photo shoots and live-stream performances. Not bad for a band that had been inactive for almost two full decades. Now that other projects are on hold due the uncertain times, the two musicians have resumed the project they originally formed in 1991. Successful live shows, popular indie releases and even two major-label albums later, they went separate ways in 2001. Hyra avoided the spotlight while Bush toured the world with Sugarland and produced a slew of other projects. But their independently-released catalog of music is available again and their final album is getting a the deluxe treatment. In The Time Machine, originally intended for a 2001 release, was only sold at one live show and then filed away as time marched on. INsite spoke with Hydra and Bush by phone during sessions for bonus material for the Time Machine vinyl edition.

Billy Pilgrim is in the recording studio again. What year is this? Kristian: I don’t even know at this point. It’s 2020, right? In the Time Machine there’s 20/20 vision so I guess it’s all strangely appropriate to be here. If you had to calculate when would be the best time to do this, what better time than now to revisit the band with the biggest heart, right? I know this is happening when I need it and I hope everyone is gonna have the same experience we’re having now.

How are you both dealing with the pandemic? I know Kristian has been busy with the Dark Water guys but now you’re both back into Billy Pilgrim mode. Andrew: I’m a renovation carpenter

IT’S LIKE THE ORIGINAL ALBUM IS THE PAST AND NOW WE’RE STEPPING OUT OF THE TIME MACHINE AND LOOKING AROUND AT NOW.

now and in March I was in the middle of a really complicated project in Fairfield, Connecticut. That was sort of ground zero for Covid at the time. I finished that project and Kristian and I got back in touch just as Covid really started rolling. Then maybe a couple of months ago we started talking about In The Time Machine because he had some extra time. A lot has happened to in a really short period of time - as far as thinking about this record and getting it out there. In the middle of that, I’m moving to Charleston from Connecticut, partially to be closer to music. So the pandemic has been a time of change. This week, we’ve put it on the books to get as much done as we can. So we’re rolling.

How does it feel to be back at it, especially to reignite a project you began almost thirty years ago? Andrew: We’re writing, we’re recording, we’re doing some livestream stuff, so it’s an exciting time. I’ve been out of it for quite a while but to work with an old friend like Kristian has been a really easy way to get back into making music again. Here we are recording again, playing again. Yeah, we’re in the Time Machine indeed!

In this era, people may have time to focus on an entire album again, rather than fast-forward through a playlist. Andrew: That’s such a good point and today we’re actually recording new, bonus material to make Time Machine into a double vinyl album. Like you’re saying, people do have a little more time to sit down and actually enjoy listening to music again, rather than just catching it on a stream in a car.

Old-school folks like us tend to focus on an album rather than a download link anyway. Kristian: Exactly and it goes well in these days when people are kinda learning how to cook again or making our own drinks. There’s an entire life out there that we were just too busy to really have. Last time we were around, people were busy but we could still sneak an album out. There were mixtapes and all that but the internet really started to happen right around the time we stopped working together. At first we had no idea how all of it was going to go. So for us, it was just for the fun of it. Then instead of just putting out this one album out we decided to just put all of it out. You’re probably the first person we’ve told about this, but when In The Time Machine drops, we’re putting out our entire catalog.

How’d you wrestle your stuff back from Atlantic? Andrew: It’s all of the material we released independently. Kristian: With the Atlantic stuff, somebody did put it out there. We don’t even know who did it. When the internet happened, it was like somebody sort of grandfathered us in. It’s like, ‘Well who gets paid for this?’

Like the fictional character, the band Billy Pilgrim also defied eras. When you started out, grunge was thriving and commercial alternative radio was a remarkable force. Now things are more segmented than ever. Kristian: Yeah. Now here we are at another sort of cultural crossroads. These days, people can’t even agree on the truth. At least in the early ‘90s, we could agree that we wanted to sit in a room together and listen to music. That hasn’t changed, but just about everything else has.

All these changes must somehow color the music you’re writing now – as well as the songs from the old days. Andrew: Yeah, Kristian was just out of college when we started and now we’ve had families and kids. That always changes your perspective. But he’s been in a very high-profile band while I’ve been writing songs for myself for the last however-many years. I’ll write political songs just to kinda relieve the pressure a bit but when it comes to speaking out on the larger stage, the politics we come from is the politics of the heart. That hasn’t changed for us. It still comes down to, what do you want to see in the world. Even the song we’re working on today fits right in that same space.

In any politically-loaded time, it’s the duty of folk musicians to speak out. Kristian: There is a responsibility to not only speak out into the noise and confusion of it all but to help people see the same things at the same time. That’s harder than ever these days. Over the years, I’ve been totally confused as to what to tell my kids. But all we can do is keep asking the questions. We don’t always have a lot of answers but we’re still asking the questions. Andrew: We have to keep asking the questions to continue the dialog. It’s the answers that really polarize you. The questions open ya up. We need a lot more questions, actually. I have dear friends and family that are on the polar opposite end of politics from me. But if you ask the questions, it’ll bring more people together. Then we can at least think about it together. We really need that right now. comprise an entire album of the expanded version of Time Machine? Kristian: I spent a lot of my early years with music, based on playing an album or a cassette. I’ve found that my attention is about enough for one side. When CDs came along, it really confused me because there was no break. I’ve always felt the four of five songs from a side were somehow connected. So these songs will be oddly connected too. They seem to have no real gap or break, so it’ll be a full side of music to listen to until it’s time to turn it over. Vinyl only gives you less than half an hour per side so the original album is spaced out over three sides. I’m enjoying it because I’ve never really had the opportunity to write with the vinyl in mind like this. Andrew: It works to show where we are now, too. Kristian has been working with his brother Brandon and Benji Shanks who is an incredible guitar player so for the new material we’ve collaborated with them. So it’s a picture of where we are now, combined with how we were then. It’s like this is where we’ve been and hopefully where we’re going next. It’s just us, updated for now. Kristian: That’s it. It’s like the original album is the past and now we’re stepping out of the time machine and looking around at now.

So this project ties up a lot of loose ends in a way. Kristian: Yeah, but the way we’re looking at it, we’re creating new ones. The gumbo of music we make, along with he guys from Dark Water, is folk but it rocks and it’s also psychedelic - which came from a time that I didn’t live through. I just know how it makes me feel. There’s a whole lot of upside down going on in that kind of rock and roll. So I think that makes it perfect for the way we’re feeling today.