Bill Royal

I was born in Daytona Beach, Florida, during the ’64 Daytona 500, the youngest of three children. I started my instrument originally at 10, but didn’t get serious until around 14 when I lived in San Antonio Texas. Blessed with a guitar teacher that was able to instruct me in both structure and improvisation, I worked at learning the music I loved: Zeppelin, Beatles, Rush, Queen, Yes, and many other Classic Rock cornerstones. After forming the band Works in high school, and a stint at UC Irvine as a Math and Music double major, I left school to pursue a career in music, playing the Southern California scene with a series of original bands, the longest running being Reckless Momentum.

During this time I also continued my musical education at Orange Coast College (OCC’s unofficial motto: “Why go to college…when you can coast!”—no seriously, there’re a great school) branching out into blues, jazz, and classical guitar. That also offered me the opportunity to work with LA studio players like Zappa alumnus, drummer Chad Wackerman, thanks to an amazing musician and teacher at OCC named Alan Remington.

In the early 90s, I decided to get serious about a career other than music. (The roadies and groupies didn’t kick in nearly as fast as I’d hoped.) Starting at KCLB-FM in Palm Springs, I began the nomadic life of a Radio DJ: Palm Springs to Banning to Modesto and finally to Albuquerque in 1997, where I've enjoyed working at several stations including 104.1 World Class Rock, Arrow 102.5, Eagle 104, and Hot 95.1. I'm also an award-winning Producer and Copywriter, and do live pledge breaks on TV for KNME, the local PBS station.

Somewhere during that run, after being freed from the rigors of doing a morning show (i.e. a 4am wake up call) I decided to put live music back onto my priority list. Though I'd continued to write and record original songs over the years, I decided to delve deeper into the blues, focusing on the work of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton and others. Thanks to an ad in the Alibi, I met Randall and we worked in a few bands together over the following years including Atomic Blonde and Blues Royale, the latter of which opened for ZZ Top on the side stage at Journal Pavilion.

The call came to join what would become Strange Brew at just the right moment. I'd decided to revamp my equipment, diving headfirst into Line 6 technology. Line 6’s digital guitars and amps allow me to expand my sound to just about any amp and guitar combination at the touch of a footswitch. From Strats through Fender amps, to Les Pauls though Marshals, to authentic sounding acoustic instruments, I had a whole new arsenal of sounds to draw from. Thanks to a well-timed call from Randall in the fall of ‘04, I found Strange Brew to be the perfect match for my new musical palette. Plus, It’s great to play with people who are not only solid musicians, but also folks who are fun to be around!