Billy On The Brain & Changing Woman Blues

February 18, 2011

Thanks to lobbying by Robert Ray, I am working on a new Classic Gunfights, this one The Battle of Battle Flat, which took place on June 2, 1864 between American prospectors and Apaches "on a flat in the valley of Turkey Creek, near the junction of that stream with Tuscumbia Creek, almost twenty miles southeast of present-day Prescott, Arizona," according to Frontier Times, May, 1967. Anybody know about that fight? Or, where exactly the location is?

Got up this morning and went out to the studio and whipped out a small study of Changing Woman With A Cradle Board:

The Apaches believe that just before dawn, Changing Woman changes the night into day.

Still, buzzing about the actual Billy the Kid ferrotype being in our office yesterday. As you may know I have done dozens, if not hundreds, of takes on the face in that piece of tin. Here are just a few of them:

Yes, that's OJ Billy, second from the left, top row. And Boss Billy, and Alfred E. Billy, and Beatle Billy, Degas Billy and Manson Billy. Collect them all (these are actually on a coffee mug we sell, see store).

My son Thomas Charles told me he has found a great, new Mexican food spot in downtown Phoenix. He said this over Korean bar-b-cue at a John Hopkins' sponsored dinner (his girlfriend Pattarapan is a graduate of John Hopkins and we were invited) on Wednesday night. We're supposed to go try it this weekend, although I'm heading up to Sedona for the film festival and the premiere of a new film called "Sedona," which stars Barry Corbin. I was supposed to interview the great Texan actor (he soared in No Country For Old Men) but he has come down with pneumonia and can't travel. Hmmmmmm.

"No matter where I am, conversations on Houston always seem to come back to music and Mexican food."
—Billy Gibbons, ZZ Top