Name: Willy Moon
Locality: bred in New Zealand
Color: "Clown-round" Orange: for dry humor.
The Story: Willy Moon
is not from this time. Or is he? The history lesson that is Willy's music is
an irony in itself, for when he was growing up, he didn't exactly have a "favorite subject."
The over-towering svelte singer was raised in New Zealand much by his own doing. His mother passed away from cancer at age 12, and his
dad made money for the family by leaving him and his sister for Saudi Arabia. Willy ran a muck and got kicked out of several schools; his only wish out of
the establishment was to keep up friendships and catch up on sci-fi novels.
Officially labeling himself as an “autodidact”, he dropped out at 16, to move
to London two years later with a one-way plane ticket.
In London Willy dealt with minimal wealth, but that didn’t
stop him from living it up; granted, meeting his girlfriend in London made that
easier. She introduced him to the music of the 40’s, letting him listen to an
Andrews Sisters recording. These game-changers were implanted in his musical
psyche, and were the seeds of the music to come.
Willy and his girlfriend hopped around Europe, from
Valencia, Spain, to Berlin, where Willy wrote rock songs but got easily bored
with the repetitive sound. Upon returning to London, he prepared himself with a
few demos, one being “I Wanna Be Your Man”, which he wrote, recorded, and
produced. Actually, it only took that one shot to get signed to Island Records
in the UK.
Touring with Jack White also landed him a deal with Jack
White's label, Third Man Records, to which he released “Railroad
Track."
You may have seen him on tour, or caught him in the recent iPod
commercials swirling on the tube; needless to say Willy’s hybrid of
genres will have your ear (and maybe even your buck too).
Coloring Outside The Lines Because: It’s not just like
watching a rerun of American Bandstand. It’s more like watching it at a Kanye West show. What’s more evident than Willy beating tracks with hammers and axes and having a pompadour? That the jovial
remake of anything he does has a cross-platform. And, it rocks.
Think: tin lunchboxes, promise rings, Sadie Hawkins, The Honeymooners, The remake of The Great Gatsby with Jay-Z being the
master of musical production, Bo Diddley and his square guitar, black film
cinematography, hair gel.
