Event

The Billy Nayer Show

The San Francisco born, New York based Billy Nayer Show was created by singer/songwriter/electric autoharpist Cory McAbee and drummer/musical producer Bobby Lurie. For over two decades BNS has performed and recorded with over fifty musicians, most notably Lee Vilenski, Yuri Weber, James Beaudreau, Mike Silverman, Matt Cowan, Crugie, and Frank Swart.

By the time of The Billy Nayer Show's self-titled debut album in 1994, the group had already gained a cult following in San Francisco. Genuine love songs like "Apartment #5" stood in contrast to angular post-punk allegories like "Window". The band evolved with its own logic. The Ketchup and Mustard Man (1994) was a stream-of-consciousness type radio show. The Villain That Love Built (1998)—easily the band's most sinister and mean-spirited album—unleashed a malicious and heavy tone. Inspired by the band's new life on the East Coast, BNS released Return to Brigadoon (1999), a lush, romantic ode to love, which stabbed at the dark crevices of religion and politics. Their double CD, Goodbye Straplight Sarentino, I Will Miss You (2003) was the group's most epic and political work to date. A dense, psychedelic, and cerebral album, it spawned the future classic "Three Monkeys" and added the "Angel Projector" to the BNS iconography. The following year, BNS took their sound in a different direction with the release of Rabbit (2004). With a sound that is at once slinky and angular, lush and bright, rough, raw and refined, Rabbit sparkled with a glam rock aesthetic delivered with straightforward garage attitude. It's an album about sex, deceit, homespun faith, and death.

In 2001, the band's feature length film, a space western musical entitled The American Astronaut, debuted at The Sundance Film Festival. Written and directed by Cory McAbee and produced by Bobby Lurie, it features an original soundtrack by The Billy Nayer Show. The American Astronaut has gone on to win numerous awards and participate in major film festivals worldwide. It has been translated into eight languages and continues to screen theatrically.