Utter Trash--Billy & the Bullets

Straight Shooters

An interview with Bob Capuano of Billy & the Bullets

By Bob Ignizio

Billy & the Bullets l to r: "Tennessee" Kurt, Billy, Bobby, and "T"

Superheroes and schizophrenics aren’t the only ones with dual personalities. Billy & the Bullets (Bill “Billy” Capuano – guitar and vocals, Theresa “T” Capuano – keyboards and vocals, Kurt “Tennessee” England – bass and vocals, and Bob “Bobby” Capuano – drums) lead a double life as well. For more than 10 years these four have been one of the most successful blues bands in Cleveland under the moniker of Blue Taxi. But as passionate as they are about the blues, the band members also share a love for rockabilly. And so Billy & the Bullets were born.

Utter Trash: Billy & the Bullets is basically the alter ego for your other band, Blue Taxi. How long have you been doing Blue Taxi, and how did that turn into Billy & the Bullets?
Bob Capuano: Blue Taxi was started about1989, and we’ve been playing locally and regionally since that time. It’s more of a blues or blues/rock kind of band, but we were always into rockabilly. Eventually we got more into rockabilly, and even though we’re still doing Blue Taxi we’re also doing rockabilly as Billy and the Bullets. We did our first show as Billy & the Bullets on January 30^th of this year, opening up for The Lords of the Highway. They were nice enough to have us open, that was our start. Last night we just opened for Nick Curran at the Beachland.

UT: So is the line-up for Billy & the Bullets identical to Blue Taxi?
BC: Yeah. Kurt, our bass player, plays a stand-up when he’s with the Bullets. He does that a little bit with Blue Taxi, too. Everybody uses slightly different instruments. Billy will play an Epiphone instead of his Stratocaster. I play a different set of drums. We use the same keyboard in both bands, but the sounds are a little bit different.

UT: The band is kind of a family affair, right?
BC: Yeah, Billy is my brother, Theresa is my wife, and Kurt is a good friend of ours. We all get along and have the same musical influences. We’re really into writing. With the blues, you’re a little bit limited in the writing. With rockabilly, you can do a few different styles. It’s a little more open than the blues. Sometimes the blues people want everything traditional. That’s great, but it’s not what we wanted to do. As a musician you don’t want to just limit yourself to one style. With the blues, some people are like the blues police. We play a lot of gigs with Blue Taxi, and if you play the same songs the same way night after night we’d be out of our minds. With the rockabilly, you can change it up a bit and it doesn’t seem to bother anybody, so that’s cool.

UT: Do you dress differently when you play as the Bullets than you do with Blue Taxi?
BC: We’re definitely rockabillyed out.

UT: Do you perform mostly originals or covers?
BC: We do some covers. We do a Johnny Cash song, and a couple Carl Perkins and Stray Cats songs. The CD we’re releasing is mostly originals, though.

UT: What sort of songwriting process do you have?
BC: Usually Billy or Kurt comes up with the music and we kind of jam to it. Whoever has some lyrics, we just go with what fits the song. Bill and Kurt are the main writers, but we all help. They may have an idea they came up with at home, but we all work it out at practice.

UT: So what appeals to you about rockabilly?
BC: It’s a lot of fun. It’s real good stuff to dance to, so people get into it for that. And as far as musicianship, it’s kind of challenging. It’s different than the blues. The guitar playing, the drumming, it’s all a little bit different. We’re really into it.

UT: Of course there are some similarities, too. Does any of the blues influence from Blue Taxi work its way into your originals for The Bullets?
BC: Yeah, a little bit. Even as Blue Taxi we never fit into traditional blues. We always had a little bit of that rockabilly influence. We did a lot of fast shuffles and things like that, and it kind of bleeds over into both bands. When we played with Nick Curran he played blues, rockabilly, and jazz and it fit together because it’s all roots music.

UT: You guys tend to be more straight forward rockabilly than “psychobilly”. Is it tough getting the attention of younger fans into the faster, more aggressive stuff like Reverend Horton Heat or the Cramps?
BC: Actually, the younger people seem to really like it. When we play live, I think we have enough of an edge that it works. The crowd that we played for when we opened for Lords of the Highway, we just went back to that bar and a lot of the people who saw us before came back to see us again. They’re all younger people, and they seemed to really get into it. They seem to be pretty open minded. As long as it’s rockin’, they don’t care if it’s more traditional or more punk. It’s really a great attitude to see, because sometimes it’s lacking in other genres.

UT: I understand you have a full CD recorded.
BC: Everything’s done. We’ll probably release that in June. There’s 14 songs on it. We’re trying to work out a date for a CD release party. We recorded at Harvest studios in Streetsboro. A real good friend of ours, Bob Carothers, owns it. He’s a lot of fun to work with. We recorded all the songs live in one day. We wanted to get that live feel to it without any overdubs. It worked really well. We recorded 18 songs and narrowed it down to the 14 for the CD.

UT: So is your focus more on Blue Taxi or Billy & the Bullets now?
BC: The thing with Blue Taxi is, it kind of runs itself. We have gigs that we keep going back to. We’re really fortunate to have places call us to do gigs, but we’re not lazy musicians. With Billy & the Bullets we wanted to do something different and challenge ourselves to go out and be an unknown band again. We’re not going to get rid of Blue Taxi, but we’re definitely going to push Billy & the Bullets.