For well over three decades Billy Sedlmayr has been at the hot and dry beating heart of Tucson music.
From his teenage years in early Tucson punk bands like The Pedestrians, Billy went on to become an early member of the legendary Giant Sandworms, later and still known as Giant Sand. That combo - Sedlmayr, Howe Gelb, Dave Seeger and the late, legendary Rainer Ptacek - laid down a blueprint for Tucson music that is still being played out over thirty years later. Billy was a key player in a scene that included such other much-loved bands like Naked Prey, Doo Rag, Al Perry & The Cattle and early Green on Red. He later went on to play and record with Tucson local Rich Hopkins, and front another local act, Las Cruces.
It’s sometimes been a difficult journey for Billy, and he spent portions of the 80's and 90's in prison. It was, however, during his time inside that he really found his voice as a songwriter and storyteller. With considerable help from Tucson musician/producer/studio owner Gabriel Sullivan, and a huge cast of Tucson locals musicians backing him up, Billy has realized two official solo records during the last decade: Charmed Life (2014), recorded by Jim Waters at Waterworks Studio, Tucson (Az) / Mixed by Craig Schumacher at Wavelab Studio, Tucson (Az); and Harlem River Drive (2018), recorded and mixed by Gabriel Sullivan at Dust & Stone Studio, Tucson (Az).This double album is a retrospective reuniting almost the entirety of these two albums, *including an alternative version of the song “Hardbound.”
These story-songs are some of the most brutally honest and beautifully evocative tales to emerge out of the Sonoran desert and Tucson's kaleidoscopic musical underworld. Billy has some stories to tell and it's really hurt.

- Carl Hanni -