Billy Reavis Takes the Merle Haggard Route
When Johnny Cash performed at San Quentin State Prison in 1958, it certainly changed at least one inmate’s life. In the audience for that performance was a 21-year old convict by the name of Merle Ronald Haggard. Seeing Cash sing had a profound effect upon Merle and inspired him to become a singer-songwriter as well. Upon release, he embarked on a music career and wound up being one of the great all-time voices in country music history.
Billy Reavis had no such Johnny Cash moment but had been in tough Texas prisons most of his adult life due to drug addiction. “Somewhere along the way,” he explains, “I started writing down my experiences and chronicling it all. I never had any music training before but around the same time, I found my love for music in a 4x8 cell while serving my time listening to a clock radio. Day in and day out I started teaching myself to sing by learning every song I heard on that radio. Over time, I got better and better. That led me to start writing my own songs about my own life.”
After Reavis finally got out of prison in 2011, he met and fell in love with a Jersey Girl who was living in Texas at the time. In telling her his life story, and his hopes and dreams to make his kind of music his way, she fell back in love with him, and they got married before moving to New Jersey in 2015. “There was nothing in Texas for me anymore but bad memories,” he says ruefully. Goodbye Texarkana. Hello Clayton (Gloucester County).
Reavis is now getting his music recorded, released and heard. “I have a very good band backing me and an awesome producer who believes in me. Now I’m ready to share my music and my story with the world,” he says happily. “All I want to do is use my music and story to help people, especially people with addiction and mental health problems. Y’know, to give folks some hope.”
Listen to “Back Door Betty” from his Bonafide debut.