Punk rock meets blues in Burbank with the arrival of Billy Bones

Legendary punk rock singer Billy Bones’ 40-year rampage through American music has been consistently vibrant and refreshingly creative. As vocalist for first-wave 1977 trailblazers the Skulls, Bones kicked a gaping hole through Southern California’s mellow, leafy rock ‘n’ roll convention and when he appears Saturday at Jimmy’s Place in Burbank, Bones will continue his remarkable evolution via a supercharged collaboration with youthful punk-blues band the Sold.

A performer renowned for his cheerfully aggressive, kinetic bandstand presentation, Bones’ history brims with wildly colorful tales dating back to his earliest musical iterations in Aberdeen, Maryland. “My high school band was called Purple Reaction. I drove a yellow hearse, with no muffler, because I got it cheap and it was easy to get equipment in and out of it,” Bones said. “When we played at school, I was singing Steppenwolf’s ‘The Pusher’ and as soon as I got to ‘God damn the Pusher man,’ the lights came up and I was suspended.”

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Billy Bones’ latest album, “The Complexity of Stupidity.”

(Roger Wilson / Staff Photographer)

“And I had a good, really cool black friend, Mike Briggs who was in a popular band called Soul Inspiration — they wore all these capes with fur collars, great Watts-Stax-type stuff and I went on the road as their emcee. They called me ‘Little Stevie, the White Wonder.’ It was a big musical revue: I introduce each player individually, bring ‘em up one by one. We went all over the South, opened for everybody, Clarence Carter, the Ohio Players, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. It was great.”

Born in England to a U.S. military serviceman and English mother, he spent his childhood in Northamptonshire. “But, in Maryland, I just didn’t fit in. I still had an accent and my uncle was a fashion designer in New York and he’d send me all these great clothes, leather pants, shirts with giant stars printed on them, and I got beat up all the time. I didn’t like it there.”

After hitchhiking to Los Angeles, Bones became a fixture at Rodney’s English Disco, infamous hub of the city’s slamming glam rock culture, and the Rainbow Bar & Grill, where he met his future bandmates, brothers Marc and Bruce Moreland. “Marc was a really great guitar player,” Bones said. “They had a band called Sky People at the time, they’d all dress in bright red spandex.”

Bones’ musical diet — Slade, Roxy Music, T Rex — provided an easy transition to the just-erupting punk scene. In 1977, Bones’ pal Sten Gun Mick Wallace drafted him as singer for the recently formed Skulls, and the group became a regular attraction at infamous subterranean Hollywood club and rehearsal studio the Masque.

“We went in there one day, and I heard this amazing guitar from one of the rooms — it was Marc,” Bones said. “He was auditioning for the Mau Maus but they went on a beer run and never came back. So we got him, and then we had Bruce on bass.”

“The shows were crazy. We could hardly ever get through two or three songs. The girls would tear Marc’s clothes off. There are tons of photos of him playing in his underwear because they’d just rip his pants apart. Alice Bag loved doing that. And he’d get pulled offstage — that happened one night at the Whisky and his Flying V [guitar] just snapped in two. It was like spontaneous combustion, everything would just explode.”

The Skulls themselves exploded within a year, leaving behind a scant legacy. “We only made one record, with Chris Ashford’s What? Records, ‘Victims’ and ‘On Target.’ I always wrote topical stuff and ‘Victims’ was about the Hillside Stranglers — I wrote it after they abducted and killed [Mau Mau’s singer] Rick Wilder’s girlfriend,” Bones said. “The entire city was terrified. I used to always start the shows by saying ‘Oh, the Hillside Stranglers are here tonight but the guy at the door wouldn’t let them in.’ And one night the FBI came around to investigate — they thought I was serious, that I actually knew them!”

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When the Moreland brothers moved on to form Wall of Voodoo, Bones turned his attention to his post-punk venture Martini Ranch, but after landing a development deal with Geffen Records, the project turned sour and he walked away, taking an extended hiatus and concentrating on family life. The Skulls would occasionally burst in and out of remission and recently the singer started his own group, the Billybones, playing all new songs written in collaboration with a talented gaggle of 20-somethings, and releasing the splendid “Complexity of Stupidity” album, a set of high-velocity punk and roll that showcases Bones’ unflagging creative zeal.

“These kids just find me, and they are all so good. Like Kevin Preston, who went to high school with my daughter,” said Bones, whose day job the last 20 years has been in sales at Ace Industrial Supply in Burbank. “He just showed up at the door one day asking if I wanted to start the Skulls back up, and now he is doing great with Prima Donna. Alex Mack just came out of nowhere and wrote that brilliant Billybones album with me, and my bass player Easy Lou Jones is a great player.”

“I had no idea, but he is also a phenomenal guitarist. I’d written a new song ‘All Night Rocker,’ and Lou said ‘Hey, I have the perfect B-side for that.’ We went into the studio, it all started clicking, one song led to another. It just happened. In a week we had 10 songs. So I jumped on it, and now we are doing the Sold! and Bones.”

This feverish modus operandi is Bones’ characteristic approach and the Sold! and Bones collaboration should be a particularly satisfying, blues-informed blitzkrieg. His unusual knack for mentoring younger musicians may be a role thrust upon him by fate, but Bones wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I enjoy teaching them, and there are important things to know — like how not to get ripped off, how to treat a soundman. I am just fascinated by everything to do with music, and I want to keep on doing it. I have ideas for lots of other projects and I really like where I am at and what I have to navigate through. The Skulls are playing soon, I have the Billybones and now this project with the Sold. I mean, I’m 62 now and just look at all the stuff that’s going on. I love it.”

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Who: The Sold! and Bones

Where: Jimmy’s Place, 1623 N. San Fernando Road, Burbank

When: Saturday, April 16, 9 p.m.

Cost: $5

More info: (818) 588-3693

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JONNY WHITESIDE is a veteran music journalist based in Burbank and author of “Ramblin’ Rose: the Life & Career of Rose Maddox” and “Cry: the Johnnie Ray Story.”

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