Billy Nashville was wailing on a red Gibson he\u2019d put stick-on gold letters up the body that read B-I-L-L-Y \u00a0S-I-X G-U-N. His real name, William Cosnosczski, wouldn\u2019t fit in neon, he claimed, so he changed it to a stage name he thought better suited to his debut in Nashville. None of us figured Billy had ever owned a gun, certainly never shot one, but Billy 6-Gun only had to write ballads of bad marriages, drunken brawls, truck driving romance, heavy drinking and hard living. He didn\u2019t know anything about those either and Nashville wasn\u2019t waiting for him to learn, not when most of the songwriters came in from Hard Rock County, Tennessee or Whisky Creek, Kentucky, practically born with a guitar in their pudgy little hands and bottle fed Jack Daniels.<\/p>\n
Poor Billy grew up in Olympia, Washington, then ended up on the South End when his parents moved here, not exactly an early retirement. We all thought maybe his Daddy shoulda gone to Nashville. With or without a 6 string.<\/p>\n
Billy 6 Gun or Billy Nashville or William G. Cosnosczki, he wasn\u2019t half bad on that cherry red Flying V Gibson. The trouble is, half the damn males in America aren\u2019t half bad either. And some of them write decent songs. And every now and then, one of them looks good on stage. Unlike Billy \u2026<\/p>\n
Music is like any art medium, it\u2019s hard — very hard — to make enough money to keep above water while you learn the ropes. And trust me, there are ropes. Some to hang yourself by, but some to swing to another level. If we made accountants work this hard for so little money, well \u2026 maybe this would be a world filled with song instead of one painted by numbers. Just my opinion, of course. Not based on scientific data. Or even much research.<\/p>\n
Billy still plays the open mike down at the South Grange every Wednesday night. He\u2019s talking about a Try-Out with American Idol. Good luck, Billy, I say. Just don\u2019t be too disappointed. Don\u2019t quit playing, don\u2019t quit singing. And if you ever get despondent, consider this: there is no, and never will be, an American Accountant. Because, really, why would anyone with a soul care? Just my opinion. Of course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Billy Nashville was wailing on a red Gibson he\u2019d put stick-on gold letters up the body that read B-I-L-L-Y \u00a0S-I-X G-U-N. His real name, William Cosnosczski, wouldn\u2019t fit in neon, he claimed, so he changed it to a stage name he thought better suited to his debut in Nashville. None of us figured Billy had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[7406,7407,7408],"class_list":["post-19323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-guitar-hero","tag-nashville-debut","tag-shooting-for-the-big-time"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19323"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19324,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19323\/revisions\/19324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}