“[Billy] and multi-instrumentalist Ryan James Holzer have joined forces with drummer [Ralph] Molina and guitarist George Whitsell (who first made music with Billy and Ralph back in the 1960s) to create the band Wolves….The result is some of the most powerful music you’ve heard Billy Talbot create.”

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“I learned a lot from Neil. I’m also very interested in recording. And very interested in technique, and sound and mics.The real influence was on how important [songwriting] is, and how there is this possibility in capturing real feelings and real emotions.”

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“On his second album, On the Road to Spearfish, he takes the road less traveled and discovers fundamental truths. Reflective of the American conquest of the West, On the Road to Spearfish provides solace to its listeners while keeping an optimistic eye turned toward the horizon.”

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“I feel like the Pied Piper, talking about freedom. Freedom isn’t an easy thing; it really isn’t. It’s a big responsibility and I think that we should be celebrating as much as possible the fact that we can be free.”

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“I never wanted to be like anybody else. I have always figured that if you just be yourself . . . Who knows what yourself is until after the fact? So you just go moving along. I don’t know how odd it is to be playing rock & roll at 70, rocking and having people think that you’re as good as you were in your 20s and 30s.”

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“‘We’re capable of doing a lot, dynamically, in the right setting with good songs,’ says Talbot. ‘We don’t have to do them just in a certain way, and that’s something that I really appreciate and made use of more on this record.'”

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“It sounds elementary, but Neil has taught me that spirit is everything,” he says. “You can try to record something and refine and chip away and polish it – whatever – but unless you’ve got the juice, the good stuff, right away, you don’t have anything. It’s easy to kill spirit – most people do.”

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“I’m certainly not different than any other bass player. I’ve got four strings, tuned down an octave from a guitar, and I’ve got my Fender showman amps and precision bass from 1966 with a telecaster neck of maple from 1968. I’ve got my sound because that’s what I like.” Starts at 35:20

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“Thanks for taking the time to do this because we want to celebrate the fact that you have a new solo album out called ‘On The Road To Spearfish,’ so congratulations! Out now on Vapor Records, with a companion film, inspired by the work you and your wife did on a beautiful homestead in Spearfish, SD.”

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“Spearfish is an eclectic and ethereal album,…listen closely and you’ll feel like you’re in the studio with Talbot and his band: you hear the lift off a piano’s sustain pedal, the creaking of chairs, the breaths and strums that make this album sound as expansive as the prairies that inspired it.”

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“The performances sound live in the studio and unedited, creating an organic, rootsy atmosphere that makes them resonate with an emotional core rare in this era of sterilized, overdubbed productions. Talbot lets the songs go where they need which results in a pure, personal release.”

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“Rather than mimic the torrential guitar noise of his best collaborations with Crazy Horse, Talbot tells stories on a much more personal scale. “On The Road To Spearfish,” his second Billy Talbot Band recording, saves that kind of ferocious interplay for its title track.”

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“Talbot’s intimate look at raw personal emotions is a cathartic release and chronicles the joyous and sometimes melancholy state of the creative process as it relates to the personal experience. Wondrous soundscapes of lyrical poetry paint vivid imagery in a setting known for a stark existence.”

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“After years when he’d labored over each and every song he recorded, Crazy Horse helped teach Neil the value of working very quickly. ‘In a single day we did “Cinnamon Girl,” “Down By The River” and “Cowgirl In The Sand,”‘ bassist Billy Talbot told Rolling Stone in 1979. ‘There wasn’t much need to discuss it.'”

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“Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s Billy Talbot possesses a profound understanding of how to pick up on a tune and make it flow. From the explosion of 1969’s ‘Cinnamon Girl’ on through ‘Hey Hey, My My’ and into the present, Talbot has been Young’s rhythmic compass and eternal energy source.”

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“Young and Crazy Horse band mates Billy Talbot (bass), Ralph Molina (drums) and Frank ‘Poncho’ Sampedro (guitar) delivered an impeccable performance. Their voices have always melded powerfully, but hearing them in person for the first time was spectacular.”

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“Wild, surging guitars, a four-way jam between founding members of Crazy Horse (Neil Young, Billy Talbot, Ralph Molina) along with Frank ‘Poncho’ Sampedro, and dynamism. This was real life, played by real men. A force. Kinetics. Crazy Horse, on this particular eve on their Alchemy Tour, was ON.”

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“With Billy Talbot and Poncho Sampedro pulled in close, [Young] delivered some truly visceral moments on his guitar Old Black, hitting his pedal board to dial in apocalyptic crunch and distortion and coruscating notes that tore through the air and throughout the Centre.”

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“This is as inspiringly strange as anything [Young’s] done. It opens with the 27-minute ‘Driftin’ Back,’ a free-associating timeline that morphs from coffeehouse folk to charred Crazy Horse jam. Feedback and flashbacks, sentimental and not, flow between inspired moments of old-coot humor.”

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“The signature Crazy Horse move is The Huddle. No matter how big the stage, Neil Young, Billy Talbot, and Frank ‘Poncho’ Sampedro will inevitably find themselves tightly packed in front of Ralph Molina’s drums, bobbing and flailing in such close proximity that it’s a miracle they never crack guitar necks. “

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“Young, Billy Talbot, Ralph Molina and Frank ‘Poncho’ Sampedro muscled through two exhilarating hours of especially stout guitar rock…[T]he guitar is a language with its own vocabulary, inflections and slang. [The group] spoke it fluently for two hours, communicating and communing.”

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“With roadies and techs dressed as lab technicians running amok on the ‘Rust Never Sleeps’ stage set, Neil and Crazy Horse — Frank ‘Poncho’ Sampedro, Billy Talbot and Ralph Molina — stepped out to the national anthem, before surging into 13 blissful, distortion-soaked minutes of ‘Love and Only Love.’”

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“Young, Billy Talbot, Frank ‘Poncho’ Sampedro and Ralph Molina were locked in tight, the song wrapped up with eardrum-bursting waves of feedback and distortion. It’s a controlled chaos that Young and the band thrive upon, and it was beautiful to see him once again embracing this side of his craft.”

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“If the new ‘Americana,’ with its renditions of folks standards, isn’t exactly what you expected from Young’s first new album with Crazy Horse in nine years, then stick around. ‘We have another record coming out, and that one is more like a ‘real’ Crazy Horse album,’ said Frank ‘Poncho’ Sampedro.”

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“It’s their first album together since Greendale in 2003, and their first album with the full Crazy Horse line-up of Talbot, Molina and Sampedro since Broken Arrow in 1996. The songs are all classic American folk songs, including ‘This Land Is Your Land,’ ‘Gallows Pole,’ ‘Tom Dooley’ and ‘Clementine.’”

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“After 35 years of playing on Neil Young albums, the Crazy Horse bassist is now riding the range with his own band. Talbot’s first ever solo album, Alive In The Spirit World, released through Sanctuary Records in 2004, showed that the classic Crazy Horse sound is still alive, well and in good hands.”

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“Billy Talbot has been [a] bassman in the greatest fuzz-box-rock group of all time, Crazy Horse, since 1969, so he knows plenty about cleansing properties of distortion and sunlit vocal harmonies – more than enough to make his own, substantial magic as a singer and songwriter.”

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“Talbot kept himself busy during his time off in 2001 after touring South America and Europe by starting the Billy Talbot Band, as well as a projected reunion with the ’80s version of Crazy Horse with Ralph Molina (drums), Matt Piucci (guitar), and Sonny Mone (guitar), this time under the name Raw.”

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“Released on October 5th, Alive in the Spirit World is Talbot’s first of hopefully many more projects. [H]e uses his fragile voice and contributions of Matt Piucci, Jeff Chase, Stephan Junca, Erik Pearson, and Tommy Carns to deliver the songs that he originally wrote—and now they finally have a home.”

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“Those familiar with the rock-solid bass lines and sweet harmonies of Crazy Horse will appreciate the eclectic and powerful songs that make up Billy Talbot’s first solo effort. The band developed their sound together through a number of rehearsals, live performances, and stripped down vocal sessions.”

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“Billy Talbot is regarded as a technically challenged, sensitively brilliant bass player. An unbridled rhythm partner who allows the music to transcend to eccentric angles. His own band is built around similar sound that Talbot’s lent rhythmic efforts towards for the past 30 years.”

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“An interviewer observed that Billy Talbot doesn’t waste his words, and that he doesn’t make much of analysis. ‘He knows he’s part of something beyond words and that is good enough.’ Billy finds the necessary outlets for his creative energy. His latest venture, the Billy Talbot Band, has an album in the works.”

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“Billy Talbot has written quite a few songs over his years of performing with Neil Young and others. With Crazy Horse taking a break for a while, Billy has brought together a band of his own. The band, an eclectic mix of established players and young raw talent, will record and tour as the Billy Talbot Band.”

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