Billy Pilgrim

For nearly two decades, there was no documentation that the final work recorded by folk-rock duo Billy Pilgrim existed.
The master tapes burned in a fire in late 2000 at Nickel & Dime Studio near Decatur, Ga. One copy remained, and from it, about 500 CDs were pressed and sold at a 2001 performance at Eddie’s Attic, the Atlanta haven for acoustic music.
Following that concert, Billy Pilgrim’s Kristian Bush and Andrew Hyra went their separate ways – never disbanding, but also never speaking for the next 15 years.

“I remember thinking to myself, man, this band isn’t finished,” Bush said.

In Sept. 2020, Billy Pilgrim’s lost recording, the lone copy unearthed by Bush while rummaging through his closets during the coronavirus quarantine, will finally receive its widespread due when it is released on all streaming platforms.
The aptly titled “In the Time Machine,” a loose concept album, offers a dozen songs presented as they were recorded - the lyrical poetry of “Blindspot” and “Too Fast Coming Down” sitting snugly alongside the idiosyncratic instrumentation that colors “Billy In the Time Machine” and hazy introspection of “Bluelight” and “C’mon.”

Billy Pilgrim – named for a character in Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five,” a shared favorite novel of the pair – was the first band for Bush, who would later become the soulful half of multi-platinum, Grammy Award-winning country duo Sugarland, as he met Hyra in Bush’s hometown of Knoxville, Tenn., in 1990 at an open mic night hosted by Hyra and his sister, Annie. As Bush prepared to move to Atlanta to attend Emory University, he persuaded the siblings to also move to the city.

Between 1991-2001 the guys released 5 studio albums, with 2 that were supported by Atlantic Records. The last album, In the Time Machine.

The then-trio regularly played Trackside Tavern as The Hyras before Annie headed to Miami to work as a journalist, leaving Hyra and Bush to plow through gigs that might earn them $60 on a weeknight.
The band released their independent debut, “St. Christopher’s Crossing” (as Kristian Bush and Andrew Hyra) in 1991 before morphing into Billy Pilgrim and landing a deal with Atlantic Records in March 1992.
Their first major-label effort – the critically acclaimed “Billy Pilgrim” - arrived in 1994 and spawned the college and Triple-A radio hits, “Hurricane Season” and “Insomniac.” The follow-up, 1995’s “Bloom,” hit No. 37 on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart and offered fans the melodic-yet-muscular “Sweet Louisiana Sound.”
Billy Pilgrim’s videos regularly rotated on VH1 and the band was tapped for numerous high-profile opening slots, including Melissa Etheridge on her 1994-95 worldwide “Yes I Am” tour, the Cowboy Junkies, Matthew Sweet and Hootie & The Blowfish. In 1994, the band shared the main stage of the Beale Street Festival in Memphis with Beck and Bob Dylan.
Following their release from Atlantic Records in 1996, Billy Pilgrim began tinkering with what would eventually become “In the Time Machine.” Nearly five years later, the album received its only public outing at the Eddie’s Attic performance that ended with Bush and Hyra following diverging paths.
As Bush hit country radio gold with Sugarland, Hyra moved to Connecticut – where he still lives – put down his guitar for several years and dove into carpentry.
“I got kind of overwhelmed,” Hyra said of Billy Pilgrim’s initial success. “For me, it was such a whirlwind and it’s probably no surprise I wound up being a carpenter, because working in carpentry is very grounding.”
In recent years, Bush continued his high-profile run with Sugarland, released a solo album (“Southern Gravity” in 2015), co-wrote the musical “Troubadour” at Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre (2017), produced the debut of country upstart Lindsay Ell (“The Project,” 2017) and recently debuted the jam-rock band Dark Water with brother Brandon and guitarist Benji Shanks.
Hyra returned to music in the late 2000s and in 2014 teamed with Atlanta guitarist Brian Bristow, along with McCollister, to form the Smokin’ Novas.
While the “reunion” of Bush and Hyra took place at the 30A Songwriters Festival in South Walton, Fla., in 2015, it was a 2016 Bush benefit concert at Eddie’s Attic when the magic of Billy Pilgrim was initially renewed.
Now, the time machine is firmly pointed toward the future.
“This is a very honest way to re-approach this album. We left off in this moment,” said Bush, “and this is the moment we want to start back with again.