Inspiration can strike a songwriter at the damnedest of times. That’s certainly been true for William “Billy” King Reynolds, guitarist-vocalist for Austin rockers the Bad Bad Bad.
Take the fluid and groovy, Southern-rock walkdown he crafted for his band’s Alright (Believe in What You Say), which he thought up and quickly sang into his phone amid an especially slippery situation – while running the rapids on an inflatable donut.
“The lick came to me while I was floating the river in Texas,” Reynolds says. “The river was flooding, and the water was flowing over the dam so fast that it was creating a whirlpool effect. I was sitting in an innertube, floating in a circle, and then that little walkdown came to me. I recorded [the melody] on my phone, and as soon as I got home, I played it out and was like, ‘This is going to be something for sure!’”
When Reynolds and co-guitarist Cameron Wren co-founded the Bad Bad Bad, the group specialized in feverish, Roky Erickson and Pentagram-inspired psych-rockers that tended toward the supernatural (check out Werewolf of Love from 2017 debut EP Fever Dreamin’).
Their new album, Introspective Resolute, keeps up that awesomely eerie energy – the Lovecraftian punk-sneer of Re-Animated is a highlight, while opener There’s an Evil at Camp Creekhas Wren lunging into a ferocious solo between Reynolds’ beastly sung “Awoos.”
But Reynolds suggests that the good-spirited Alright (Believe in What You Say) and acoustic finale Uncertainty are also pushing the Bad Bad Bad’s overall sound into a bolder, big-picture era.
Nevertheless, some of Reynolds’ favorite moments on Introspective Resolute are still the nastiest-sounding. Take the burly bass tone Riley Sklar barrels into on That’s Just Who I Am, which he’d dialed up using Reynolds’ home-brew Fuzz War clone pedal (“I call it the ‘Fuzz Invader,’” the guitarist says).
Reynolds got grimy on the record while pairing a Park Fuzz with a Fender Hot Rod Deville and a vintage custom Gretsch, but more and more he seems to be scaling back on his onstage six-stringin’. As Reynolds put his focus on singing to the fans, they drafted guitarist/keyboardist Brett Marcom into the live lineup in 2024 to cover their bases.
“It was interesting at first, just because I felt it was difficult to relinquish some of my guitar duties to somebody. But it was also exciting in its own way,” the Bad Bad Bad bandleader says.
“Once I felt comfortable getting Brett and Cameron up to speed with my parts, it allowed me to step out and do more of what I wanted to do, which was to be more of an entertainer… and the crowd feeds off of that!”
- Introspective Resolute is out now via Spaceflight.
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