Escapism and Connection: The Illustrated Life of Billy Perkins
Hustling Austin posters for 30 years, Perkins perseveres
By Raoul Hernandez, Fri., June 17, 2022
Engulfing Billy Perkins in living color, Paul McCartney, Bonnie Raitt, Cherie Currie, Dee Dee Ramone, and Joe Strummer swirled a cyclone chorus of his inked and illustrated iconography. South by Southwest reconverging physically this March likewise resurrected Austin's annual poster-palooza, Flatstock. When the city canceled its flagship conference March 6, 2020, in the face of global pandemic, the world soon followed suit, so the in-person return of SXSW in 2022 manifested a precious human commodity: hope.
"[Local] brand Billy Perkins held court in his bursting central booth," reported the Chronicle that music Festival Friday. "Deep blues double bill ZZ Top and Jeff Beck, a Mayan Foo Fighters, [and] Judas Priest screaming for vengeance at the Cedar Park Center: Perkins' pride of placement spot in Flatstock befitted a survivor detailing recent health emergencies in his pajama bottoms."
In fact, the rock-solid Texan stood tall and firm on a day dedicated to bed rest for lesser men. Three weeks earlier to the day, the veteran Austin artist lay on an operating table for the better part of four hours while doctors removed a cancerous tumor and more from his prostate. The road to Flatstock proved ... cutting.
"A tough week," acknowledged Perkins in the entryway to his Temple home. "I had this insane swelling at Flatstock, an atypical reaction, but not unheard of. That's why I was wearing those Buc-ee's pajamas. I couldn't put on pants."
Hardly hitching his stride, Perkins dished out jokes, laughter, and ecstatic art that afternoon, the brilliant gleam in his sky-blue eyes lighting the perimeters of his stall. Warm, unceasingly genial, innately Texan, he greeted one and all at the Austin Convention Center like only they populated the enormous ballroom. Behind him, Samuel L. Jackson argued gun control, Fleetwood Mac towered toward the moon, and Ronnie James Dio threw horns.
"Since I've been doing Flatstocks, it has made the quality of my life so much better," attested Perkins at the start of a marathon, post-Memorial Day summit. "The poster shows, wow, there's a community of people that share the same passion I do. They're all really interesting, beautiful, funny people whose work I just marvel at."
Fittingly, people use those same words to describe the art and affability of Billy Ray Perkins.
Growing Up Temple
Sixty(ish) minutes up I-35, Temple and Belton fuse. Native to the former and inhabiting the latter as a youth, our host, 59, shrugs off the whereabouts of their exact border. The property he and his partner bought in Temple last year sits a few blocks from a house he lived in briefly at 5.
"My dad shagged ass when I was about 5," says the first-time homeowner. "As soon as my mother got pregnant with my little brother, my dad took off. I'm named after him. I wasn't born Billy Ray Perkins. I was born Billy Don Mayes Jr."
Richard Perkins, who his mother met and fell in love with while still expecting, adopted both Billy and Kevin after his birth. The following year, 1967, Perkins volunteered for the war in Vietnam. Spat on at the airport by demonstrators, his return stateside marked a troubled existence.
"His first day in Vietnam – first day, fresh off the boat – they're telling him, 'All right, here's a map. Ten miles that way, you get your weapons,'" recounts his eldest son until the age of 17, when Perkins walked out on unwrapping Christmas presents and never came back. "They got ambushed on the way – no weapons. Somehow, he managed to get away, but most of the friends he made on the way there got killed on day one – right in front of him."
Jungle-bound and Tet Offensive-adjacent, a post-service Perkins decamped the family to a trailer park in Louisville, Kentucky, where they lived until Billy began the sixth grade. Relocating to Belton, the foursome shared "tightly wound" quarters. Outside proved equally hazardous.
"The cities blend together: Temple's the big high school that won the state championship every year, and Belton was the small guy," says Perkins. "You'd go to parties and talk to girls from the other city, so then the guys there would all wanna fight you. That's the state where we lived: Nobody pulled guns, but you always had to duke it out with somebody."
Napoleon Dynamite – an infamously nerdy teen with a "poofy Afro" sporting big, thick glasses that get darker the brighter it becomes – is how BRP paints himself at this juncture of Central Texaness. Bull's-eye on his back, the Marvel Comics obsessive took to heart lessons gleaned from the Sixties/Seventies superheroes he internalized since that key age of 5.
"Because of how stressed I was from my home life and that I couldn't fight the bully at home, when there were kids at school that would try to bully me, there was just no way," says Perkins today. "I said, 'I'll die right here on this hill. I'm not gonna take it.' And I was scared to death – scared to death – but I fought so I wouldn't get hurt, and I never lost.
"One time, actually.
"The [PE] coaches in Belton set up this fight. They knew I didn't like bullies and that this other kid – I don't want to mention his name, because I see him at my high school reunions now and he's actually a really nice guy even if he's a Republican – was one. They knew both of us had been in fights in high school. I want to say seven or eight for me, starting in the fourth grade.
"They put the gloves on us, on a thin little mat on the concrete. 'Ding, ding,' motherfucker, and it's ON. There's no break in the action and nothing but punches flying. And I got caught, boom. For a split second, I thought, 'Oh, man, this is embarrassing.' That's the last I remember, so he either knocked me out or when I fell backward, I whacked my head on the concrete.
"I came to an hour later and everybody's gone. The coaches didn't stick around to see if I was okay and the other kid took off running thinking he had killed me. I had to call my mom to come pick me up – I had a concussion.
"So I lost that. He was a big dude. Punches hard too."
Armadillo Art Squad 2.0
Nearly as tall, obviously as vintage, and unquestionably as tough as its owner, the metal comic book stand in the corner of Billy Perkins' home studio towers over an acoustic guitar and Flying V electric sitting next to his drafting table at the head of the long, wide, well-lit front room. Open and accommodating like the rest of the 2,000-square-foot, 1950 build, immaculately refurbished in 2020-21 (and bought for more than one-half the Austin rate!), the office crackles with the same current as Flatstock.
Framed concert photos (Eddie Van Halen, Gene Simmons), an entire wall of Austin Music Awards for Best Poster Artist, his own show announcements (Widespread Panic at the Backyard, Slayer at the Austin Music Hall), an early Jim Franklin sketch for Roky Erickson's Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye, plus records, books, and his encased ticket and guitar pick for the Ramones at the Armadillo World Headquarters make for a Temple Museum of Pop Culture.
"Until this, I never had a workspace that wasn't a spare bedroom," grins Perkins.
D.C. Comics – Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman (dig that Lynda Carter photo on BP's screensaver) – Charlton Comics (crime, sci-fi, horror), and Mad Magazine ranked fittingly high with their preteen patron, but No. 1 with a bullet remains Marvel, whose Avengers series rated as high as Alice Cooper and Kiss on the eye charts. Perkins rattles off a Marvel Comics Mount Rushmore of inspirational forebears: John Buscema (Silver Surfer), Gene Colan (Daredevil), Jim Steranko (Nick Fury), Barry Windsor-Smith (Conan the Barbarian), Jack Kirby (Captain America). That comic rack upholds some of the 20th century's weightiest visual pioneers.
First his mom read him comics, then he did. Somewhere in between, a drawing implement affixed itself to his right hand – oddly, he boxes and plays most sports as a lefty – and never detached. "Escapism, absolutely," he nods. "One-hundred percent sure."
Perkins credits the aforementioned publishers, illustrators, and storytellers for his stint as a reigning spelling bee, so directly over a whole row of Avengers on the comic stand hangs his 1987 Commercial Art BFA from Texas State University. What began at junior college in Temple and detoured to the chemical plants of Freeport finally deposited him in Austin afterward, where teen treks to Barton Springs familiarized him with the live music capital not long before his first Texas Jam in Dallas indoctrinated him to sonic theology.
Ecstasy, still legal in the late Eighties, came easily procured at warehouse district danceterias where he raved to roadshows including Dead or Alive, Romeo Void, and Bronski Beat. By day, he screenprinted fraternity tees in San Marcos, then joined Austin Screen Printing, followed by Bee-Bop Printing, which counted future ATX trailblazers Frank Kozik and Lindsey Kuhn. The latter business contracted with restaurant empire Chuy's, which became a fiscal lifeline for Perkins when he began freelancing commercial art.
"As the managing partner in Dezine Deluxe, the Chuy's T-shirt company for over 20 years, I had the privilege of working with many extraordinary local artists, but Billy Perkins stood at the top!" emails Terrie Thomas, a half-century live music denizen locally. "Billy's art promoted the vibe of Chuy's, Shady Grove, and the Hula Hut. People LOVED his designs and I saw Chuy's T-shirts while vacationing in Playa del Carmen, San Francisco, and in the mountains of New Mexico!"
Acolyte of both Armadillo poster artists and their West Coast corollaries at the Fillmore – Franklin, Danny Garrett, Micael Priest, and Sam Yeates vs. Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso, and Stanley Mouse – Perkins began building his portfolio of gig shills. Concrete Blonde in 1992 at the Austin Opera House starts the counter, followed by a scotched Ramones/Social Distortion poster assignment Kozik got instead. Third, an Arc Angels farewell performance in Bee Cave, began Perkins' long association with Austin concert promotions czar Tim O'Connor and Direct Events: Austin Music Hall, Backyard, La Zona Rosa.
A 100-watt white owl with different-colored eyes to promote its protean lifeforce's similar condition (anisocoria) – David Bowie at the Backyard in 2004, Ziggy Stardust's last tour – grasps Perkins' style: bright, nature-loving, with a comic whimsy that's never crude, yet pleasingly rounded. His posters pop like animation cells, as if you're waiting for them to start moving.
Perkins singles out ocular mage Guy Juke for Austin Music Award frameables, plus a dazzling run for Carnaval Brasileiro, and even his early Chronicle ads. A Juke painting hangs in the living room of our tour guide, who laments not owning a Priest original. PBS concert staple Austin City Limits, H-E-B's Cedar Park Center, and Stubb's still contract Perkins, who says the concert poster pool caught a drought when artists began accepting stacks of their work – most don't physically print their own pieces – in lieu of actual payment.
"Billy's work originally came as a recommendation in 2014 from a co-worker to our former General Manager, Sammy Wallace," writes in Elyse Scally, vice president and general manager of the H-E-B Cedar Park Center. "We were looking for someone to help us create custom posters as gifts for the various musical artists who come through our venue. Sammy liked the edgy style of the local band album cover art Billy created. It appealed to Sammy's inner rocker.
"Sammy passed unexpectedly in 2021, so Billy honored him with a mention on the Judas Priest poster. It was the last poster Sammy requested from Billy. That poster had a much deeper meaning for all of us, so we knew Billy needed a signed copy."
Judas Priest thus inked Perkins' Flatstock-shown poster, which now decorates his home hub.
"Gosh, Billy is the living bridge between the old-school postering that made its mark for Austin via the Armadillo Art Squad, and a new generation taking things into their own capable hands," states Leea Mechling, 19-year head of the Austin Museum of Popular Culture, on whose board Perkins served for over a decade. "It's clear to me he is influenced heavily by the work of Micael Priest and Guy Juke. I see their design work in his imagery, but he takes that and puts his own style on it. Billy also moved beyond what most AWHQ artists accomplished by creating posters for national acts outside of Austin.
"He's a favorite of ZZ Top, Cheech & Chong, Metallica, and Cheap Trick to name just a few. His series called '77' clearly channels Guy Juke."
"Billy's an illustrator, but that doesn't pigeonhole him as a guy who just draws," choruses Geoff Peveto of homegrown design firm the Decoder Ring. "There's a wide swath of styles within his work. He can do cartoons just as effortlessly as portraiture. On occasion, he will toss in found images or photography more in line with how designers work. He's thoughtful in his approach and really clever.
"[He's] a multidimensional talent, but it's all instantly recognizable as Billy Perkins. That's pretty rare. Does that mean Billy's style is uniquely his? It's undoubtedly rock & roll, but the nuance he brings elevates it to where it can be viewed as a show poster or an art print.
"Billy's also one of the kindest, most positive guys you will ever meet. No matter what he's been through, he's there to support you and the scene he loves so much. That's also pretty rare."
Le Freak C’est Chic
Peggy Perkins, christened Peggy Jean Murrow on April 17, 1943, owns her wildness.
Standing in the dappled, late-morning light of the foyer to her Temple home a week after Billy, her kid, endured an afternoonlong grilling, she radiates a ramrod spirit blazing through steely blues eyes. Widowed in March 2021 after 20 years of her fifth marriage, the mother of two – younger son Kevin works in Austin and helps raise her only granddaughter in Cedar Park – underwent heart surgery 10 days later to replace an aortic valve. This February, two weeks before Billy's prostatectomy, she recuperated in his studio following a second hip reissue.
Chic Beauty Salon proprietress since the year of Billy's birth, 1962, she reaches up almost reflexively and touches my hair, a gesture limited to her firstborn's beard given his trademark look: Mr. Clean.
"Anything I could get into, I did," states Peggy soon thereafter, standing in the 300-square-foot Chic. "My daddy was very [strict]. He was in the D-Day invasion and when he came back from the war, you couldn't really carry on a conversation with him. My mama, who was sheltered and not very understanding and could be a real you-know-what, she said he'd been very easygoing, but when I grew up, he didn't interact with people, so if something set him off, you never knew what it was until it was too late, and of course I wasn't very cooperative."
A cousin one year her senior wedged open a second window of escape for Peggy when her aunt, who worked the salon circuit, suggested the "boy crazy" relatives attend beauty school – in Waco.
"Give a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old a car and send them 40 miles down the road, and see what happens," laughs the younger. "It's a wonder I wasn't in jail or dead from the things we were doing."
Married, divorced, and remarried not long afterward – all to Billy Don Mayes, who Billy and Kevin interacted with briefly as adults – Peggy Perkins sustained tempestuous households through Chic, which operates today by appointment only. She points to the sink where Billy's baby bed sat directly home from the hospital, then at the kitchenette.
"He would sit down on a stool and draw, and the customers didn't even know he was there. He was so good. Billy was as good as he could be."
Outside, as we depart for Mexican food, Peggy gestures to a corner of Chic's lot.
"He used to catch the bus and he was little, so the kids used to pick on him," she begins. "There was a building over here, and I'm like, 'Okay, see this building, I'm gonna be standing right here. And I can see, so you tell those kids to leave you alone or you're gonna whup 'em. He would look back where I was and it was so cute, because once he was sure I was there – and I would wave – he would stand up to them.
"'Course when he did, they started leaving him alone."
"In the fourth grade was the first time," remembers Billy over taquitos. "Kevin and I were on the bus. He was a kindergartener and had a little note pinned to his chest. He'd done good on some project and they wanted to make sure it got home so he could show Mom. He was all excited and this bully in my class said, 'What is that?' and ripped it off his chest and made him cry.
"I didn't even have to think about it. That's my little brother. Next thing, we're duking it out."
"I just wanted him to be strong and self-confident," stresses Peggy.
"You struggled with taking on the role of the male figure and finding the right things to tell us to do in those circumstances," answers Billy.
Could Peggy tell that sense of self-worth extended to his art?
"Oh yeah," she waves. "His one picture through all these years that fascinated me, because it showed his imagination, was when he had to draw water faucets. You've never seen a water faucet that had so much personality. He had the most vivid imagination.
"One teacher didn't want him to have comic books at school. He would draw that stuff and she didn't like it. I told him, 'Everybody thinks differently. Just be glad she's not your mama.'"
She laughs, while Billy puts an arm around her.
"I was," he smiles. "I'm glad nobody else is my mama."
"Me too," she replies, nestling into the hug.
Broken Is Not Beaten
"There's only been one piece I've done that's not for somebody for money – done just as a piece of art to express something. Only one! In my whole life! Any other time I'm drawing, I'm drawing robots and shit. There's no sentiment behind that. I'll show you the piece."
An anatomically realistic red heart – cracked, broken – sprouts creamy blue flowers, each blooming an eyeball. Wrapped around its green stalk, a ribbon reads "Broken is not Beaten." Drawn in the wake of back-to-back romantic dissolutions, a 17-year relationship and marriage followed by a partnership and broken engagement lasting almost as long, it resonates in 2022 considering his cancer. The day after our lunch, his doctor confirms Billy's PSA test, prostate-specific antigen, came back clear.
"I made the right decision," says Perkins, 60 on November 24, about having ruled out radiation in favor of organ removal, which carries lifelong ramifications.
"In 2012, I was told I had prostate cancer," checks in first-wave Austin guitar god Van Wilks, a friend, client, and occasional instrumental instructor to Perkins. "It's something all guys should be proactive about but few are. Frank Zappa and Dan Fogleberg died of it. I was an advocate for several years lobbying in D.C. for more [money] for research.
"Since Billy has done so much artwork for me, including my 21st Century Blues [album], he certainly knew what I'd been through. I've been contacted by many around the world asking about [it], but when Billy called to say he'd been diagnosed it hit close to home. The important thing is to be aware of the treatment options, find a doctor you truly trust, and know it's not the end of your world – unless you're not proactive.
"Billy and myself are lucky in that we caught it early and dealt with it."
Driving around Perkins' neighborhood after lunch, listening to his band Butcherwhite's fourth full-length, 2021 hard rocker Ride It Out, we swing by a house near to his now, where he lived briefly at 5. A youth speeds past on a stripped-down mini-bike and my wingman IDs him as the area methamphetamine dealer. Tough street, and Perkins himself survived extreme drugs, but he's still swinging – dodging, dancing, jabbing.
"I never thought about whether I was good at [drawing] or not," reflects Billy Perkins late in the day. "I just enjoyed doing it, but since you're asking me that question, I honestly think I was good at it from the beginning. It must have been kinda natural, my interest in it and how many times and how often I was studying positions and faces and line work and foreshortening and fists.
"A lot of fists," he laughs. "I drew a LOT of fists."
