Billie Sawyer has been performing music professionally for thirty-eight years.
He was bass drummer for the Junior High School band at the age of eleven,
& continued through High School as snare-drummer.
Billie Joe began playing trap-drums, and performed with a country band at the
Cain Break Tavern on Highway seventy for six dollars a night in ninteen-seventy.
Recognized as a natural drunner, Billie Joe set the rhythm for several of the best
bands of the time in that community. He also took up folk guitar as a senior in
High School, and made side money performing at weddings.
Expanding the musical training of school & church, Billie Joe Sawyer attended
Austin Peay State University as a music major in ninteen-seventy-two. He
specializd in percussion, as well as studying voice, singing in the award winning
choral department, and taking the usual courses in theory, music history, strings
and performing arts. This was his foundation in music for the years to come.

Billie Joe Sawyer was on the road for many years. He toured with the wildly
popular band Thom Thumb, performing at the Wreck Room in Daytona Beach,
Florida, The Colleseum in Peoria, Illinois, The Cotton Club in Huntsville,
Alabama, The MoonWalk Club in Columbia, Tennessee, Ireland's at the
Harding Mall in Nashville, Tennessee, the cult following Pioneer Club in Pulaski,
Tennessee, and as the opening act for Nitty Gritty Dirt band at Belmont College
in Nashville, Tennessee in ninteen- seventy-three. Thom Thumb performed the
music of such popular bands as Chicago, the Almann Brothers, the Dooby
Brothers, ZZ Top, Linnard Skinnard, Edgar Winters, and Led Zepplin. Thom
Thumb recorded at Studio "B" in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. During these years
Billie Joe Sawyer began playing mandolin as well as guitar, drums and vocals.
In ninteen-seventy-six Billie was drummer for Shadow Fax, a band performing
in Clarksville & Nashville, as well as touring in Waterloo, Iowa, and Warsaw,
Wisconsin. In ninteen-eighty Billie Joe Sawyer became drummer for The Darlein
Shaddon band, Recording live video performances in Nashville & Georgia.

Longing for a more settled life, Billie Joe Sawyer settled in Nashville, Tennessee,
managing apartments on "Music Row" in nineteen-eighty. He continued to play
drums in lounge bands at such clubs as The Zodiac on Dickerson road. It was at
this time that Billie Joe was introduced to and began playing the Concertina,
invented by Charles Wheatstone in the eighteen-forties.
In nineteen-eighty-seven, Billie Joe Sawyer, with the help of his horse Gracie,
began taking part in the one-hundred & twenty-fifth aniversary American Civil
War reenactments around the country. He, along with many other southerners
chose to join the ranks of the Federal Union under the old flag. It is important to
have Federal soldiers properly represented at reenactments. It was natural that
Billie would be drawn to reenacting, having been a student of the war from
childhood. Fifty years of study have given Billie a deep admiration & affection for
all those wonderful people who experienced the war, north or south, east or west,
male or female, pink or brown, doing well or failing hopelessly. "Tenting on the
Old Camp Ground" was like being on the road again. Playing the concertina &
mandolin around the camp fires in the "evening dews & damps" was a magical
experience. At reenactments everyone strives to make everything authentic, even
the music, & there was much encouragement to play & sing more "civil war music".
This opened up new fields of music & allowed Billie Joe to expand his song list by
a third, reviving the beautiful music of the ninteenth century.

Billie Joe Sawyer began using kick percussion and harmonica with the concertina
in ninteen-eighty-nine, and was voted best one man band by The Nashville Scene.