Biography
Also known as Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Will Oldham became a celebrated cult figure on both the indie music and movie scenes thanks to a prolific number of lo-fi folk albums and Sundance hits such as "The Guatemalan Handshake" (2006) and "Old Joy" (2006). Born in Louisville, KY in 1970, Will Oldham began his career as an actor, making his screen debut in country music comedy "What Comes Around" (1985) before showing up as a teenage preacher in coal mining drama "Matewan" (1987), father Chip in TV movie "Everybody's Baby: The Rescue of Jessica McClure" (1989) and Miles in American Old West tale "Thousand Pieces of Gold" (1991). Frustrated by the film industry, Oldham then switched his attention to music in the early 1990s, fusing alternative country, freak folk and Americana on a handful of albums recorded under the guise of either Palace Brothers or Palace Music, including 1993 debut There Is No One What Will Take Care Of You and 1995's highly acclaimed Viva Last Blues. After releasing 1997's Joya under his own name, Oldham adopted his more familiar Bonnie "Prince" Billy moniker for 1999's I See a Darkness. Oldham's work rate became even more prolific as he entered the new century, with a new LP arriving on average every twelve months. Alongside acclaimed albums such as 2003's Master and Everyone, 2006's The Letting Go and 2009's Beware, Oldham also recorded joint efforts with the likes of Tortoise, Matt Sweeney, Dawn McCarthy and The Cairo Gang, provided the soundtrack to documentary "Seafarers" (2004) and formed a brief supergroup with Jason Molina and Alasdair Roberts named Amalgamated Sons of Rest. He also returned to the film world in 2005 with a cameo in indie drama "Junebug" (2005) and a year later landed the leading roles of demolition derby driver Donald Turnupseed and hippie camper Kurt in Sundance favorites "The Guatemalan Handshake" (2006) and "Old Boy" (2006), respectively. After briefly showing up in lost dog tale "Wendy and Lucy" (2008) and "Jackass 3D" (2010), he once again took center stage as evangelical Christian Ike in "New Jerusalem" (2011), played artefact-smuggling novelist John in Mexican small-town drama "Eden" (2014) and appeared as the Prognosticator in supernatural mood piece "A Ghost Story" (2017). He also maintained his reputation as the indie-folk scene's most idiosyncratic artist, covering both a collection of Merle Haggard classics and the entirety of Susanna and the Magical Orchestra's Sonata Mix Dwarf Cosmos, recording EPs with Trembling Bells, Oscar Parsons and Marquis de Tren and reinterpreting several Bonnie "Prince" Billy favorites under his own name on 2018's Songs of Love and Horror.
