Billy Sedlmayr has been deep in the fabric of Tucson music for over three decades, from his early days as an underage musician playing dusty bars long since gone with punk rock pioneers The Pedestrians, to playing with Giant Sandworms and laying down the blueprint for Tucson music.
"Billy Sedlmayr doesn't have to pretend. He doesn't have to pretend when his voice cracks while telling some ragged story and he doesn't have to pretend when he strings his songs together like only a lifelong singer can."
"...many of Billy's songs show a kind of untranslatable mystery. Beauty from areas few others see, either because they're too disconnected, too happy, too adjusted, too depressed, too whatever. Gives Billy's songs a necessity, for him, and, perhaps, for the world around him. Only greats find that sweet spot."
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"...a completely original, homegrown singer and songwriter, with a poet’s eye for language and a master storyteller’s gift for creating vivid, broad-ranging and often highly personal stories."
"Once Sedlmayr was everywhere in the Tuscon punk scene; then for long years he was nowhere. This is his first solo album: a True Detective soundtrack after the fact. The case blows up with 'Grapes in My Garden.'"
"Sedlmayr's poetry, fiction and songs transcend the bounds of genre; they don't tread on devices like irony because they don't have to. Instead, they come heavily armed with a passion, an empathy, an almost old-world willingness to spill guts, and all with a heart beating through."
Brian Jabas Smith, author of Spent Saints and Tucson Salvage: Tales and Recollections from La Frontera
"It is said that grace is the amount of light in one’s soul and in recent years Sedlmayr... has diligently used his imagination to fill the fissures through which grace might pass. His pain was a school unto itself and writing prose, poetry and songs enabled him to exorcise his demons and tap successfully into his vast store of creativity. Without the sand there would be no pearl and with the help of good friends, Sedlmayr has transformed the detritus of his life into a lustrous gem of a record."
"Billy Sedlmayr's music captures the sparse beauty of the desert: the ghosts that populate its wide open spaces, the toll its harsh environs take on the human psyche and the wonderous otherworldly escape it offers. Billy laments and transcends the human condition at once. When a song is powerful enough to encapsulate mood, setting, character and philosophy, it must be used on film. "
Maggie Smith, director of Tucson Salvage: The Documentary
