Billy Ray Cyrus revisited: Part 2

Editor’s note:

This series on Billy Ray Cyrus appeared several years ago in The Greenup Beacon. It was a work provided by Gregg Davidson a frequent contributor to the paper. This series has been revised with some new information ad restructuring by its author. The content presented is of his work and we have protected his poetic license. Any content or opinion in this series is his work and doesn’t express the paper’s stance or opinion.

In 1982 when Billy Ray Cyrus and brother Kevin  a.k.a. “Kebo” (rhymes with gazebo) formed the Rock and Country music covers band Sly Dog (a name inspired by Spike, the Cyrus brothers’ one-eyed bulldog), in less than a year they’d landed a house gig at Changes, a bar in Ironton, Ohio.

Yet over time, many different musicians jumped ship, forcing them to make membership and set list adjustments before in September 1987 (and for reasons likely known only to him), Billy Ray decided to fire Kebo and reexamine the direction of his personal plans for the future of his career.

In an attempt to better understand the band’s station at that point, we should first backtrack to the beginning of Sly Dog to hit on some key points.

After graduating from Russell High School in 1979, Billy’s mind was initially set firmly on a baseball career (he had also been a member of the Red Devil’s football team #46, the 1978 AAA state champs).

Still living at home on Long Street with his mother Ruth Ann Adkins and his step-father Cletis, Billy had left his job as a forklift operator at a cigarette distribution warehouse in order to play music full time, but since it had taken nearly ten months to land a paying gig, he took a construction job with Cravens’ Construction (an Ashland-based company owned by Ken Cravens) while remaining convinced that he was destined for something bigger.

As he rehearsed on the guitar, the band slowly filled out their personnel with the addition of Catlettsburg guitarist Paul Williams, Ashland bassist Paul Rice, and Ironton drummer Bob “Bubba” Wileman. After performing at parties and a show at the Summit Elementary School, Williams left the group and was replaced by another Russell classmate and teammate of Billy’s who was already a highly skilled guitar player and vocalist, Flatwoods' own Lowell “J.R.” Gullett Jr.

J.R. was a Country and Folk Music aficionado, and especially loved Bob Dylan, an artist whose emphasis on memorable melody lines and lucid lyrical imagery helped to mold J.R. into a fine songwriter in his own right, but at this point in time, Sly Dog was still primarily a Rock-n-Roll covers band, a situation that would soon change. If anyone helped ease Billy Ray’s career closer to becoming an aesthetic Country artist, it was J.R. Gullett.

Outside of their first true public performance a show at Greenbo Lake State Park, and the group’s gig at Changes must have seemed a step up from at the Marting House Sand Bar, a rowdy Ironton watering hole. While I never witnessed any Sly Dog performances at the Sand Bar, I did once catch a Mike Murphy and Zachariah show there while I was actually still too young to even legally be in the place.

One disturbing memory that I wish I could repress is being pinched on the bottom by a tipsy, haggard-faced streetwalker who had just strolled in the door, and I became so appalled by this event that I never returned. Changes however, was a remarkably different atmosphere altogether.

“Changes” indeed! Roomier, with comfortable seating at larger tables, warmer lighting, and more modern furnishings, Changes felt a lot more welcoming.

Billy must have felt that he was moving up in the world. The service bar was a large rectangle, strategically placed in the middle of the room for easy access from every direction. More importantly, it possessed a decent stage area for the band. Once securely at ease with their approved position as the resident entertainment, the band members slowly began to exhibit more concentrated showmanship. It was here that Billy Ray and Sly Dog slowly accrued a loyal following, often playing five nights a week while they polished their craft and began together to learn how to read an audience and connect with them in a way that seemed personal.

Lost in the moment, girls would occasionally jump onstage to dance with Billy Ray or Kebo as they continued to crank out hit dance songs while grinning like a pair of Cheshire cats. During guitar solos, Billy would sometimes dance around in a display reminiscent of an Indian rain dance. Upon other occasions he might hoist Kebo, guitar in hand, upon his shoulders during a song’s more vigorous movements. Even the usually demure J.R. Gullett began to exhibit a more relaxed air, obviously amused at the band’s growing popularity and feverish adulation. One thing was certain - the guys were having the time of their lives. At least most of them were.

Wileman left in February of 1983 and Donnie Bear was quickly initiated into position behind the drums.

With renewed confidence, Sly Dog took their first step toward a recording career by making a 45 RPM vinyl record of their own material at Barnhill Studios in Catlettsburg, a $500 venture financed by the brothers' dad Ron and Lowell Gullett Sr.

From the sessions, “Suddenly”, a song inspired by the tragic suicide of Billy’s high school buddy Rob Tooley, was pressed onto vinyl 45RPMs (backed with the raucous B-side “What The Hell Is Going On?”) and were sold at gigs for a paltry $2 apiece with the resulting run of 1500 copies being snatched up quickly by adoring devotees. Likely inspired by the local success of the single, Billy's dreams of hitting the big time grew more lucid and he quickly devised a plan to stack the odds in his favor. To expand his opportunities within the music business, he prepared a portfolio on the group and made the six-hour trip to Nashville with a song in his heart.

Without an inside friend, the music industry’s doors remained steadfastly closed to Billy Ray as he went from office to office on Music Row approaching reception desk after reception desk, pleading with anyone who paused long enough to give him an opportunity to speak to please give his tapes a listen.

The only people that did give a listen to his raw demos declined any offers, informing him that he was too rock-n-roll for the town, a statement that now seems unbelievably ludicrous when you listen to any of the big hits on modern Country radio.

Billy knew that stars like Hank Williams Jr. and Garth Brooks were getting away with releasing rocked-up and pop-infused country songs that were selling like hotcakes as they raced up the charts and influenced a whole new generation of future Nashville songwriters, but Hank Jr. came with a pedigree and Garth held a rare place in the Country music arena because of his elaborate KISS-inspired stage sets and use of pyrotechnics and other special effects.

Despite his home turf status, in Nashville Billy Ray was just another brash small-town upstart whose confident sales pitch was nothing that they hadn’t heard many times before.

The cold indifference that he met there during his first trips would have immediately slaughtered the confidence of any lesser man, but Billy was blindly determined to make his eventual mark and only accepted failure as a stepping stone to success, a philosophy that he adopted from inventor Thomas Edison.

Such optimism was amplified due to the fact that Billy had taken to reading self-help and career-starter books, especially those of the motivational variety that placed a great emphasis on resilience and an unwavering faith in yourself and your gifts. He exacted profound truisms from the works of Zig Ziglar, Napoleon Hill, and Norman Vincent Peale.

Back at Changes, it seemed that nothing outside of a tragedy could put a damper on things. Every night was a party with beautiful girls coming out in droves to see Billy sing, which in turn brought more guys in to see the girls, meanwhile spending their hard-earned cash and tipping heavily. Apparently, everyone was having a high time and appeared happy as larks including Jimmy, the club owner.

And so in compliance to Murphy’s Law, when the tragedy did come, it hit in a devastating way that had a profound effect upon both Billy and the band. On August 15, 1984, Billy became informed that there had been an unfortunate and unforeseen event at the club.

The structure had caught fire and all of the band’s gear was either lost or ruined in the blaze. When the band went to see if anything at all was salvageable from the ashes, Billy found that a small palm-sized copy of The New Testament that he'd previously found on the floor and stashed in the back of his guitar amplifier, was slightly singed, but relatively unscathed even though the amp was nearly demolished.

Astonished that it could have survived such an intense and all-consuming fire, he decided that it was a sign from heaven to persevere and once again re-immersed himself into his motivation books and his Bible.

After some soul-searching, Billy Ray and Sly Dog performed a few more local gigs including an opening slot for George Jones in front of 15,000 at the short-lived Melody Mountain (an outside venue atop a great hill where the Ashland Wal-Mart now sits) before he decided to take the advice he was given by some of his Nashville contacts and packed his bags for Los Angeles.

If he was too rock-n-roll for Music City, he would travel to the hub of the rock music industry and try anew to find someone who saw his potential as a recording artist. In California he struggled to find any gig he could, often performing for free on open mic nights at the Palomino Club. To survive, he took a salesman job at a car lot and even though he admits to being ill-suited for the job, financially he did quite well on his commissions.

But he grew disillusioned when told by local recording industry contacts that he was too country for LA, and soon came to see his west coast trip as fruitless and a dead-end pursuit career wise.

In early 1986, Kebo made the drive to bring his brother back to Flatwoods and assured him that he could join Main Street, a band he'd launched in his sibling's absence.

After a few months of gigging back at the reopened Changes, and some key membership adjustments, their name was changed to Billy Ray and The Breeze after a favorite Lynyrd Skynyrd tune.

With new determination, Billy again began to make weekly trips to Nashville in an attempt to encounter anyone who might see him concerning his career.

That September Billy met an Ironton girl that he favored, and after a few tumultuous weeks together, they stopped in Gatlinburg and got married during yet another return trip home from Music City. Needless to say, his band mates were shocked at the news when Billy called to tell them, but more on that later.

It was also around the time of this occurrence that another shocking incident came about – Billy told Kebo he was out. It could not have been easy for him to do no matter how you look at it. On one hand, Billy Ray owed a great deal to his big brother in terms of friendship and encouragement. After all, they were brothers and best buddies who shared nearly everything together, especially music. On the other hand, the singer owed it to his fans to provide as seamless a show as possible, and someone outside of the band seemed to indicate to Billy that Kebo wasn’t thinking about the group as a whole, but was instead sacrificing efficiency by reveling in extended lead guitar soloing and upstaging the others.

In Kebo’s defense, he was quite a showman himself and certainly understood how to work a crowd up with his always upbeat personality and devil-may-care stage antics, both perfect qualities for anyone in a bar band that plays to rowdy, working-class audiences. Personally, I question whether any criticism of Kebo’s character or intentions was the sole factor in determining Billy Ray’s decision.

Maybe Kebo didn’t like the direction that the band was headed since they had already begun to incorporate more and more Country tunes into their otherwise straight-up bluesy Southern and Classic Rock repertoire. Kebo was and still is a Country music fan, but has always been much more of a rocker at heart. Perhaps his showboating did appear to get out of hand for Billy’s liking, but Kevin certainly had his own share of fan adoration and many of the girls found him to be as hunky and desirable as Billy.

I sincerely doubt that there was any professional envy or measurable amount of competitiveness involved, but there was very likely much more going on between them than we shall probably ever know.

Brothers may of course be strongly competitive at times, and the Cyrus brothers were certainly no exception, but in the end Billy Ray had to make a decision that must have been profoundly painful both personally and professionally for all parties involved. It could not possibly have been easy for him to take control of the group’s future by restructuring it from within, but now that the deed was done he had to face the aftermath and many fans were shocked to suddenly hear the news that Kebo was out.

Inside, Billy undoubtedly felt that he wanted what was best for his career, but at what cost? There was no doubt that the band had a strong following, but Billy must have experienced a modicum of doubt as to whether the fans would still accept the band without such an endearing personality as Kebo’s.

As it happened, what remained of the band fell apart anyway, while the brothers’ fraternal bond was weakened at best. Several years passed before they were able to put aside their differences and begin to mend the rift in their relationship that I’m sure left a deep emotional scar as a constant reminder of their heady salad days.

Since he could never find the time to put one together another band while in LA, re-launching with all-new members was something that Billy had never had to deal with before, but fate came calling when bassist Harold Cole asked him to join his group, The Players, and a new chapter of BRC’s career began.