Bio

[b]With a friendship that goes back about 30 years and a love of country music that comes from deep within each of their family’s roots, Billy McCormack and Len Buell of Montague, PEI are both seeing a dream come true with the release of “Nothin’ Fancy”. They started singing and playing together in 2004 after having lost touch for about 15 years. “We saw each other at a grocery store and started talking,” says Billy. “We were reminiscing about our childhoods and decided to get together some time. I brought my guitar over to his place a few nights later and we just jammed for a while. We found a few songs that we both liked and could play together pretty good, so we decided to try them out at a local open-mic concert. We got a really good response that night so we went back several times. Soon we were being invited to play at benefits and ceilidhs and everything just snowballed from there.”[i][color="red"]Ceilidh - an informal social gathering at which there is Scottish or Irish folk music and singing and folk dancing and story telling.[/color][/i] “The more we played, our set list grew as we learned new songs, remembered some old ones, and even threw in a few originals. We realized we both had some songs that we had written over the years, and although we never actually sat down to write a song together, we each continued to write and incorporate new material into our set. When Len wrote “I Was A Fool” he played it for me over the phone. I was blown away. I knew it would be a great song for us to do. The response was terrific and we even started getting requests for it over the next several months.” “Around May of 2005 I was looking into digital recording. I bought a recording program for my computer and started to learn how to use it. A few weeks later, Len and I decided to try recording “I Was A Fool”. It went well, but we still needed more material if we were going to record a full album. We also decided that we would only record our own original songs. We continued to perform locally, and people kept asking us for a CD. By December 2006 we started to write more and more songs until we had a dozen that felt right for the album. All of these songs were recorded on my computer. We never once went to a recording studio. Our CD is as home-grown as it gets.” Len and Billy both have a passion for music, particularly for traditional country music. They grew up with it. It’s in their blood. As teenagers they listened to the rock and pop music of the 80’s and those influences are evident in their music. But they always came back to their country roots. Billy is the only son of well-known PEI entertainer Smiling Bill McCormack and Len’s father Harry has been known to play guitar and fiddle at many Island ceilidhs and benefits over the years. “We just hope that anyone who buys our CD or comes to a show likes what they hear,” says Billy, “We love what we’re doing and we plan to keep doing it for a long time to come.”[/b][color="black"][/color]