Bill was born in East L.A. with his twin sister Roxane and raised in L.A., Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Florida, and Arizona. Bill has worked as waiter, bus boy, ticket seller, product promoter, ice cream server, stadium hawker, movie theater guy, olive harvester, caterer, teaching assistant, camera operator, production technician, editor, translator, census worker, mail carrier, high school teacher, college professor, science internship coordinator, special event coordinator, and musician. He has a B.A. in Languages, an M.A in Latin American Literature, a PhD. in Semiotics. He also taught college Spanish, French, and World Literature for 7 years. For the last nine years, he’s been coordinating the Hughes Science Pipeline Project at Barnard College. Bill has lived in California, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Florida, Tennessee, France, Spain, and Mexico. He loves to travel whenever possible. In 2001, he began the Agua Trip project with Lindsey Boise and moved to New York in 2002. He is currently preparing to go surfing for the rest of his life. He is also very happy to be sharing his life with Tanya Carrasco (www.tanyacarrasco.com) and his daughter Sofia Azul.
“I first started making music with a saxophone at age 10. When I was 14, I quit the sax and started messing around with an old, out-of-tune piano. I came up with tons of melodies, most of which I forgot. I also learned the lyrics of every single Beatles song and would sing them to myself everywhere I went. A year later, I got my first guitar in Paracho, Mexico and began learning Mexican corridos. Since no one was there to show me the difference, I taught myself to play guitar upside-down and left-handed by looking at the chord diagrams in Mexican songbooks. For years, I wrote melodies in my head until I decided to actually tape record them. It wasn’t until I was 27 that I began to practice playing the guitar seriously. I was living in Toulouse, France, hanging out with my Tahitian neighbors who were part of a reggae band. I would show them some Mexican songs and they would teach me to play Bob Marley. Suddenly, I realized that I COULD write and play music. From that point on, I started generating a new song almost everyday. Eventually, I accumulated over a hundred cassette tapes full of song ideas! Most of Agua Trip’s repertoire was born in these tapes. Today, instead of cassette tapes, I have a million computer files. I hope I can get all this stuff out some day….”
Birthyear: the Summer of Love, when humans first walk on the moon and Abbey Road is released; when Sesame Street debuts on TV and 250,000 protestors march against the Viet Nam war in Washington, D.C.; the year of the cock and Woodstock.
Influences: John Lennon, The Beatles, Bill Withers, Bob Marley, Paul Simon, The Smiths, José Alfredo Jimenez, The Bee Gees, Violeta Parra, Paul McCartney, Eddie Palmieri, Rafael del Estad, Louis Armstrong, Mercedes Sosa, Stevie Wonder, Tears for Fears, Sublime, Michael Jackson, XTC, Elton John, Georges Brassens, The Cure, Caetano Veloso, Lionel Richie, Gilberto Gil, Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys, U2, Digable Planets, Lole y Manuel, Depeche Mode, Carole King, Tribe Called Quest, Elis Regina, The Police, Sting, Snoop Dog, Manu Chao, Echo and the Bunnymen, Mexican Folk Music, George Gershwin, Hector Lavoe, Ben Harper, Joao Gilberto, Willie Colon, Prince, Cindy Lauper, Celia Cruz, Blondie, Tracy Chapman, Culture, Nirvana, Billy Joel, Billie Holiday, The Doors, James Brown, Carol King, Wham!, George Michaels, Midnight Star, New Order, DOA, Los Manolos, Camarón, Queen, Stan Getz, Sergent Garcia, Dr. Dre, Modern English, Broadway musicals, the Tropicalia movement……and every song I ever liked.
April 17, 2010
Muy cool. More power!
Luis