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BILLY KAY was content with his high rolling, rock and roll lifestyle in Las Vegas when the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) swooped in like a vulture, taking his way of life, but not his dreams.
Kay began playing the guitar when he was four years old but didn’t pursue a music career until four years ago when he picked up a $25 guitar at a pawn shop for his son’s music class. His son kept the guitar and Billy picked up a black Ovation for a music video as a prop, and started writing his own material.
“I wrote my song, ‘Honestly’ about a girl named Aunsty,” Kay said. “At fifty-five I was unsure of a career as a musician, with no back-up plan, but I did two more songs, which became the most downloaded songs in Las Vegas.”
The day after the IRS seized his assets, Billy Kay watched his son, Jesse (www.jessekaymusic.com), graduate from a Sin City high school.
After the ceremony Kay packed his guitar and the few precious things that would fit in his convertible BMW and he hit the road.
A successful $14,000 Kickstarter campaign (started by a friend) helped Kay and his convoy make it to the shores of Florida where he settled into a trailer park on the ocean. “It was an old person’s retirement community,” Kay said of the property his older brother from New York owned.
Soon, Kay’s brother sold his summer home in Florida and Billy had to find a new place to call home. “My other brother lives in Maine so I was heading there,” Kay said. “While I was on the interstate in South Carolina, I asked God to intervene, because I did not want to go to Maine.
Then I got a phone call from Florida and they had found my honorable discharge papers and they told me to check in to the next VA Hospital I could see.”
Kay had served in the United States Air Force and was a veteran with no home. The Veteran’s Administration (VA) were the ones on the other end of that phone call.
“When one branch of the government (IRS) takes away, another one gives (VA).” The VA gave him a home, albeit temporary.
He got off the road and reported to the VA Hospital in Columbia, South Carolina, who put him in a shelter for homeless veterans the same day. “You have to stay there for thirty days to prove you are homeless.”
“It was a nice place,” Kay said. “It was like a college dorm; private gated place.”
While there, Kay continued to work on his music and filmed two videos, one featuring a Bentley that was donated for the video. He said he spent every day trying to improve himself.
VA shelters have specific rules that the residents are expected to live by and frequently those rules involve early curfews and a policy that forbids residents from frequenting establishments that sell alcohol.
"At 55 I was unsure of a career as a musician"
Behind the Music
By Kiva Johns-Adkins