A Mystery to Me is the name for the revival of Billy’s main high school band, which went by various other names back then, including Great Zot, Good Question, The Gimp, and probably a few others we’ve forgotten.
Its roots began when Billy was in 9th grade. A friend and former classmate, Drew Stevyns, asked Billy to play bass for his band, which had a bass guitar and amp, but no one to play it. Billy agreed, and soon befriended the drummer, Colin Avore.
The following year, Billy formed a new band with his brother Luke on rhythm guitar and vocals and fellow guitar student Lindsay Renbaum on bass. Originally, they intended to practice for just one month and play only one show, the 1996 St. Louis Parish coffeehouse in Clarksville, MD, but they ended up continuing to play for about six months, performing at The Heights School Battle of the Bands in Potomac, Maryland, and a few high school parties as well.
When Luke left for college and Colin moved to California, Billy thought that was the end of the band, but a few months later, Colin called him and told him he wanted to move back to Maryland.
Billy reconnected with Lindsay and started writing new music for the new lineup, taking the band in a heavier, more serious direction, and making the bass more prominent in the arrangements to fill in the space created by the lack of an additional guitar. The band played its first show as a trio at the 1997 St. Louis Parish coffeehouse, and continued until Billy and Colin graduated and entered different colleges in different states.
In 2006, Billy and Colin reconnected, and a couple of years later recorded drum tracks for most of the songs they played together in high school, but never completed the recordings.
After losing data in a hard drive crash, getting his arm seriously broken in a car crash, toiling through years of physical therapy, traveling to various international destinations, and thoroughly mastering the art of procrastination, Billy began working on resurrecting and finishing the recordings in 2020.
Unfortunately, in June 2021, as Billy was about to send Colin a draft mix of the first completed song, Shot Down Again, he learned Colin had just died. As a result of this and other circumstances, the intended schedule for completing the recordings was set back considerably. As such, songs will be released individually here at Currano.com and on YouTube at the Currano Music channel, with the full album only available once all are completed.