Oh, they say Surf City is the promised turf,
but I'm stuck here at home in the Mississippi Surf ya'll.

Ain't no surf in Mississippi. Bill House was born in the south and raised on the wrong side of the tracks, but from the minute he learned the West Coast existed, he wanted to move to that golden land of palm trees and canyons and dreams. With visions of a career in music and a record deal, he set his sights and energies on California.

Dreaming California was the place to be.
Lying in the sun 'neath a big palm tree,
Or riding a board down a deep blue curl,
Just hanging ten with my surfer girl.

"Our agent said our band didn't sound southern enough to sell in England and sounded too English to sell in America. I needed to survive and the technology explosion was getting ready to happen, so I just figured it out and started running computers while most people sat around proclaiming their pending demise."

Bill kept trying to get his music career going, but his survival got in the way. Without much effort, he became a very respected and sought after developer of computer software specializing in application programming. He was even a co-convener of a convention to adopt a new world-wide programming standard, an effort eventually killed by one unnamed Seattle based company. His most recent creation was a program that analyzed finances and automatically picked stocks for investors.

"It was very successful, so much so that the investors in the development of the software realized they didn't want their competitors to have it, so they basically kept it for themselves and their very rich clients."

But Bill doesn't care. His music is more important.

"The doctors said I had a chance for a cure when they diagnosed me with Hepatitis C. I decided then and there I wasn't gonna leave this planet without making my music and telling my story. That was 1995 and that's when I resurrected my music career and started looking at my life much differently."

Today, Bill has been told by his doctors that he is one of the few people who are actually cured of the disease.

"The chemo-therapy is a nasty, nasty thing, and I remember sitting there in 1999 feeling sick and deciding, 'Screw this, I'm gonna make a record.' I had songs I had written years earlier, and I went to Pennsylvania, hooked up with some old musician friends and producer Mickey Dean, and started recording."

"As we began to play, I realized a style and sound were emerging even though some of the songs were quite old. I began to understand the music more and worked to further enhance that sound and style."

Bill's roots in the blues, his love of Latin and salsa rhythms, and his fondness of surf guitar all started to merge into a unique sound he found very likeable and fun to play. He introduced this record, Beach Blues, to MP3.com last year as a test market to judge the acceptance of his music. "Lisa's Blues" rose to number one on the blues charts, and "Cajun Holiday" sat in the top ten on the charts as well.

"Now that I've become more comfortable with my musical roots and have put together a band here in California, the music has taken on a much more defined sound. It merges surf, Afro-Cuban-Latin and bluesy, jazzy tones. It should be ready for release the end of June. All American music was born from ethnic separation and segregation, and I believe the new music of Americana is the merging, the melding of all those sounds."

Mississippi Surf, an autobiographical album, is the result of this unique new blend called Americana.

Finally I decided I would do my best,
If I loaded up the truck and headed west.
Across plains and deserts over mountain tops…
Gotta make Surf City 'fore I'm gonna stop.

"This new effort more fully realizes my vision. I do plan to do an offline release this time. I feel like I've found the missing pieces I needed. Percussionist Carlos Hatem and the Latin rhythms he brings, new songs I've written in the last year, and the fact that I will be around to hear the result has really gotten me excited about this new record. It really is the new music of America."

And finally I crossed that Orange County line,
Now I'm in surf city and doing fine, ya'll.

May 2001