Join Marco and Reverend Billy on this captivating conversation about the origins, present, and future of the Church of Stop Shopping, highlighting their unique blend of environmental activism, performing arts, and storytelling in NYC.
Guest: Reverend Billy Talen, Pastor, The Church of Stop Shopping
On YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/user/reverendbillytalen
On Instagram | https://Instagram.com/revbillytalen
On Facebook | https://Facebook.com/revbilly
Website | https://revbilly.com/
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Host: Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast & Audio Signals Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli
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Episode Introduction
In this remarkable episode of the Audio Signals podcast, host Marco Ciappelli invites us into a whirlwind journey of storytelling and activism with Reverend Billy, the charismatic preacher of the Church of Stop Shopping. This conversation isn't just another run-of-the-mill discussion. It is a compelling mixture of entertainment, philosophical digressions, radical activism, and entrancing narratives.
Reverend Billy stage is New York City, where he leads a group of zealous performers followers in the Church of Stop Shopping. They are activists at their core, being environmentally driven and anti-consumerist in spirit. Loaded with the energy of a typical New Yorker and the fierceness of an earth defender, Reverend Billy navigates conversations on music, storytelling, and performance.
Reverend Billy’s journey is anything but ordinary. Having grown up with abusive right-wing Christian parents, he struggled to break free from their oppressive beliefs. Eventually, he was introduced to an Episcopal priest, Sidney Lanier, who helped him regain his faith, not in institutionalized religion, but in a more secular sense, in nature, activism and the power of storytelling.
Reverend Billy believes in the pivotal role that storytelling plays in societal transformation. He believes that, just like how tales coming out of worship can make a societal impact, so can stories of resistance and activism. He takes us on a deep dive into his own experiences, influential childhood memories, vivid dreams, and powerful narratives.
The episode emphasizes the importance of radical activism. Reverend Billy's work is deeply rooted in anti-consumerism and resistance to harmful corporate activities. His tales remind us of the need for conscientious living and eco-awareness in a world captivated by excessive consumerism.
Reverend Billy warns about the impending perils of environmental damage. Profound and passionate, his final discourse reminds us of the urgent need to care for the planet.
This episode is not only a melting pot of philosophies, humorous anecdotes, and enlightening commentary, but also a pressing reminder of the need for collective eco-sustainability efforts.
Join me on this journey and subscribe to Audio Signals Podcast for many more stories about storytellers.
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Resources
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Please note that this transcript was created using AI technology and may contain inaccuracies or deviations from the original audio file. The transcript is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for the original recording, as errors may exist. At this time, we provide it “as it is,” and we hope it can be helpful for our audience.
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Marco Ciappelli: [00:00:00] Hello, everybody. This is Marco Ciappelli. Welcome to another episode of Audio Signals podcast, where we talk about stories, storytelling in general, and most of all lately, about the storytellers behind the story. Because, you know, you need somebody that actually share those, come up with it in a creative way.
Sometimes we're driven by pure entertainment. Some other times I feel like we're driven by, um, a deeper reason, like a vision or a mission that we want to change something in the world. I have the feeling that this conversation is about a little bit of this and a little bit of that. There's going to be a lot of, uh, conversation about performance, about music, about storytelling, and, um, As usual, enough about me chatting, uh, for people, for people watching, they can see that Reverend Billy is here with me, and for those listening, here it is.
Reverend Billy, welcome to the show. [00:01:00]
Rev. Billy: Glad to be here, Marco.
Marco Ciappelli: I'm very excited about this and it's going to be a journey of discovery for me as well, as I didn't really know about what you do until I got contacted. So I'm, uh, I'm all excited, all open to learn about who is. It's Reverend Billy to get started and then we'll go into what you do.
Rev. Billy: And in trying to describe what I do and coming up with my own self induced biography, I hope that I learned something about you and about myself as well. Yeah. Because, uh, you know. I know you're a mystery, but I'm, I'm a mystery to myself.
Marco Ciappelli: Agreed. You know, I started with, who are you? And many times I hear like, wow, that's philosophical because I'm not really sure.
So, we'll try to nail it [00:02:00] down to what characterize you instead of who, how about that?
Rev. Billy: Well, we, uh, in, New York City, which is where I'm speaking to you from, we have a group of people, about 50 of us or so, really dedicated, doing a couple things every week together. It's called the Church of Stop Shopping, and I am the preacher of this Of this secular, uh, anti consumerist, uh, earth defending, uh, we're basically wacky environmentalists.
And we're here in the middle of 10 or 20 million people, depending on where you put the city limits. And it's, it's, um, not a lot of environmentalists here. You know, we're, we're a city city. And, um, in California, you've got a mountain at the end of the road. You know, you got an ocean over there, uh, or a desert if you're in the other direction, but, [00:03:00] but the natural world is very, very much a hand and where I live.
I can, uh, I can take a subway for about 45 minutes and I'll be in Coney Island. In the other direction, I can take a subway for about an hour and 15 minutes and I'll be in Times Square. In another direction, uh, subway for a while, then wait in line, pay money, take a boat, and I'll be at the Statue of Liberty.
So, uh, having a kind of Earth centered, worried about climate change, trying to develop. Healthy ecosystems, pushing back against the toxins, the bad behaving corporations and so forth. It's a little bit unusual to do that here, but we take that as, you know, we love New York and we take that as our challenge and As befits New [00:04:00] York, we're performers.
So we were on stage all the time and we have, uh, award winning singers in our group, we call it the Stop Shopping Choir. 35 singers get up there and sing about the earth. Uh, some of us are. better activists than we are singers. You know, the people who join, uh, join the church to stop shopping, some of them come through the activist door and they teach the musicians how to, how to deal with the police, how to, you know, rope a dope the problems of being in public space, shouting about the earth, oftentimes going in, into, onto private property of, um, Misbehaving corporations like JP Morgan Chase and, you know, the fossil fuel banks.
That's very big here. Um, and then, and then people come in the, through the, the, the, uh, environmental door. [00:05:00] Uh, I mean, the musical door, they teach the activists to sing. So, uh, the activists and the musicians are, uh, always in a state, a dynamic state of teaching each other. And I'm the preacher. So I, I get to tell the stories.
In a preacherly fashion, we're secular. We're not religious, but we use, you know, I, sometimes I resemble Jimmy Swaggart. Sometimes I, I, you know, I, I love to get up there and preach Marco and, you know, it's, we kind of use, uh, the shape of a, of a religious ceremony as a. Kind of a basis for our, our show on stage takes about 75 minutes and our show on the sidewalks and streets and in the lobbies of bad banks.
Well, that's all different kinds of times timeframes, you [00:06:00] know, sometimes it's very quick when the police show up and kick us out.
Marco Ciappelli: Wow. I cannot think actually a better way to to do it as a preacher because if you love. The planet Earth and it's it's it's important. It's a religion in a way is a secular religion, but it is so I love that.
But I want to go to the beginning of this because I was doing a little bit of research and I think if I'm not wrong, you started in 1999 with this or around that
Rev. Billy: I was starting in the late 90s. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marco Ciappelli: So tell me about the origin story about how you come up with this idea and you started doing this.
Rev. Billy: Well, I was, uh, I was raised by abusive right wing Christians and, uh, uh, up in Holland, Michigan, Dutch Calvinists. And, uh, they are, you know, believers in the, uh, the Bible. What are they [00:07:00] called? The people who believe that the Bible, every sentence of the Bible comes straight from God, and it's all true. Even if it conflicts with stuff on the previous page of the Bible, it's all true.
So I was raised by the way, it's still true. I was raised in that kind of, you know, and a lot of Americans have been, so I'm not saying I'm all that special, but I, I was afraid of Christianity basically. And then I was all of a sudden, I met this, this gentleman. Up in San Francisco, I was a theater producer and a lot of the people that I produced were storytellers.
Um, Spalding Gray and, uh, Danny Glover reciting, um, Langston Hughes poems and, you know, I produced, uh, uh, people who got up there by themselves and held the stage by themselves and told a story. That's that, that's what fascinated me. Sold a lot of tickets up there in the Bay Area. [00:08:00] Well, then this one person shows up and, uh, takes me out to lunch.
And, um, he's a, a priest from the Episcopal church. And he says, don't be afraid of Christians. Don't be afraid of all that. Uh, they're doing what they can just, uh. You know, we have lots of different religions in our culture here in the United States, and some people call it a Christian country, but it's everybody now, so just take it easy, you know, and he kind of mellowed me out.
And then he said, you know, Americans get their meaning of their lives from Bible stories and, uh, He said, check it, check it out. And so he started taking me to Clint Eastwood movies, like High Plains Drifter is a Bible story. It's a Jesus story. Mysterious man comes to town. Everybody falls in love with him.
They want, they want him to save them from the wicked gangsters. You [00:09:00] know, it's, it's all very, and he, he does miracles, you know, selectively kills the evil people and delivers everybody and then he leaves and nobody can remember his name. You know, he's like this mystical force. And then this man's name who, uh, I should say this man's name, um, from California who revolutionized my life and took me to the idea of Reverend Billy.
His name is Sidney Lanier, Reverend Sidney Lanier. And so he took me back to New York, uh, where, where he had been a priest when he was a priest and, uh, before he quit the priesthood. And he, uh. Or was he defrocked? That's a question.
Marco Ciappelli: Leave a little bit of mystery there.
Rev. Billy: Yeah. Uh, but he, uh, he was a radical here in New York when he was here.
He, he ripped out the altar of, of the, of the church where he [00:10:00] was a vicar. And he brought in, um, the studio and the method actors. And he brought in, he, he turned it into a. theater. It was a theatrical church. So I was, I worshiped there for a while when I was still trying to be a Christian in some way. And I would, I would get on my knees for the, the, the blood and the body of Christ, get on my knees and I'd be in the middle of.
That week's play. I might be in the middle of a Sam Shepard set, or, you know, I might be in the middle of a, uh, um, an Arthur Miller play, and the set would be all around us, not, not a, not a, not an altar. So he adjusted the storytelling of the preacher toward The stories that come from plays, but he thought he could combine the two and he succeeded to some extent, I would say, so he took me, he took me back to how, um, [00:11:00] how stories come emanate from, uh, from worship, from being, being Uh, and then of course I, I never really got back to church, Marco.
My worship turned out to be forests and deserts and wetlands and oceans. And my, my church is, is the earth. I never really became a believer, uh, in that old way. And I don't think he was either. He was a secular type ex priest and he passed away recently. Um, in, uh, Santa Barbara, just north of LA. Where are you right now, Marco?
Yeah, I'm in the LA area. Are you in Silver Lake?
Marco Ciappelli: I am not. I'm on the other side. More in the San Fernando area. Nope. On the other side of the mountain. So, San Fernando area. Burbank. Oh, oh, oh. Yeah, yeah.[00:12:00] I was listening to you and, and, and I am seeing, seeing this is how I am. I, I watch, I say I like to watch, uh, TV on the radio. Like I like to imagine things when people tell me stories. Oh, yeah. So I, I am envisioning this church where you guys are acting and I'm thinking like all the stories, they're connected together by, the archetype, like you talk about the Bible and how even the character of in a movie, like Clint Eastwood is the story of. You know, maybe
Rev. Billy: the, he has a lot of Jesus stories,
Marco Ciappelli: right? But, but they're all stories that if you look at the archetype of how we tell story, you can find that in, uh, in Star Wars.
So you can find that in the, in the Disney story.
Rev. Billy: So, yes,
Marco Ciappelli: right. So, but then we, we do find a different way to. To dress them up and to, and to, and to share them. But at the core, there's [00:13:00] always some kind of hero, some, kind of problem, some kind of enemy. And in your case, you, you decided that your background was going to be also a mission and, and a vision to, to make a change.
Because that's what you're doing. Um, so at the beginning was pretty much you, I'm guessing.
Rev. Billy: I was out there by myself for years, Sidney advising me and so forth. And I, I was in, uh, Times Square a lot with the other crazy preachers.
But then Sidney started saying, Sidney started saying Times Square is near the church where he Did his experiment of tearing out the altar, St. Clement's, uh, on Restaurant Row, 46th Street. But he, he said, choose a devil. And, uh, we, we, uh, we need, [00:14:00] we need to make up a kind of secular theology, uh, to tell that story.
And so the devil, uh, was Mickey Mouse and Disney is a 100 percent sweatshop company and a union busting company, bad behaving company. And so he put me, Sidney put me right there in front of the. Times Square Disney store. And, uh, you know, that was for, that was where I learned to preach on the sidewalk, which is a very difficult thing to pull off.
It's, you really have to, as the, as, as the preacher say, you have to get your whoop, like whoopie Goldberg, whoop, you have to get your whoop. So I was out in front there in the first, the first. Several months, all I could do was get hoarse. I'd lose my voice because the white noise level in Times Square is so high.
But after a while, Sidney worked with me. After a while, [00:15:00] you know, I was standing in front of the Disney store. Don't bring your child into this den of iniquity! There's nothing on these shelves! But sweatshop products! 29. 95 for a Pocahontas pajamas! What is that? 14 year old girls in Tanzania working all night for nothing!
You know, that kind of thing. And so I scared some tourists away from there. I would arrest me once in a while. I'd go to jail for overnight. I could feel something was happening. And when I, when I really got my whoop after like a year or so, then, uh, people, and I really, I really had my rhythm and I, people would be sitting on cars and they would, they would, uh, a little group would come around me and then, I looked back and there'd be like three or four people kind of going, [00:16:00] and,
and, and we, we, we started getting a kind of a gospel environment going on. And, uh, um, that was the birth of the Stop Shopping Choir. Now I have 35 singers and we perform in the public theater down here where Hamilton came from. You know, we have a Tony nominee in our choir. We have a Grammy winner in our choir.
Uh, We, we, we have some really good, really good singers. We have some really good storytellers. We make our own songs up. You know, we, we don't adopt other people's songs. We compose our own songs.
Marco Ciappelli: So let me ask you this. I love the fact that you're performing. I mean, people listening or watching, they can actually understand exactly what you do.
So you were improvising. At [00:17:00] the beginning, right? You, you were just going there and I mean, you had a theme. You were going to choose a corporation and then you were going for, to lose your voice. You were going for, I'm assuming, hours doing this.
Rev. Billy: Yes. Yes. The preacher, preacher, preacher has boundary issues.
Preachers just keep going. , you have to put them in jail. .
Marco Ciappelli: But, but you, what I'm saying is you, you were just improvising. Uh, lines and I'm, I'm sure maybe you had a script in your head, but then you pass from that to working with other people. So you become some sort of a director, some sort of a, you're the leader at that point.
Rev. Billy: I fell in love with a woman named Savitri right at about the point when I had got my whoop. I, I started hanging out with this lady who turned out was a talented theatrical director. And so. Salvatore and I, 20 years [00:18:00] later, we have a 13 year old daughter and we have this This big, rousing group of New Yorkers, uh, who go into Times Square and just shout and shout and shout and, uh, then we go into the concert stage for a while and, uh, the serious artists listen to us and then we go back out to risk arrest.
So it, it, it, uh, sometimes we go straight from The concert stage and, and Sovereignty leads us. We had a, um, one of our local performers, a man named Jordan Neely was a Michael Jordan, uh, Michael, uh, Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson, imitator and excellent dancer, and he made his living in the subways, mainly.
Um, uh, well, especially I, I always used to see him in the train that I take from Brooklyn, which is the F train and, and, um, [00:19:00] Jordan was, um, uh, killed by a soldier, um, because he was having some issues, you know, he was behaving in not exactly a. Sociable way. But that happens all the time on the subway. And this soldier must be from the suburbs or something.
I don't know. He thought it was threatening. Nobody else did. But, uh, we went, our favorite place to perform is the public theater, Joe's Pub, right over here on Lafayette Street in Astor Place.
Well, it's it's just a few blocks from the Broadway Lafayette subway, where the F train, which is where where Jordan was killed.
And, uh, so we went right out of the, right out of the theater after our 75 minutes on stage and went right down Lafayette Street, uh, singing. And we, we went down into the train, uh, train station and [00:20:00] sang and sang and sang. Uh, that was last, uh, Jordan was killed last May. So there's a little bit of a tragedy here.
Marco Ciappelli: Yep. Yep. You said something that it kind of touched me, like, if you are a New Yorker, you're not bothered by this thing. You, you know that there is that. And I spent some time in New York. There are the performers. I mean, I remember walking in Central Park and hearing unbelievable music, comedians and, and all of that.
And somehow you said, you mentioned this, this person that then killed your performer, your friend. It wasn't even from there and it wasn't part of the vibe. I don't know if I'm going somewhere with this, but you become part of the CD and And you accept so much more than what you would do in a, in a sub world.
Rev. Billy: Well, we know, we know that for evolution, you have [00:21:00] to have mutation. And there are stray radicals that don't, they don't necessarily fit. Although he, he, he grounded his basic gestures in, This most famous of all people, Michael Jackson, he looked like Michael Jackson and he was very good at it. And then he would go from there, you know, he would go from there.
It wasn't just, it wasn't just the superstar. It was, it was this individual duetting with. With Michael Jackson. And so we know that we know that in New York, you're going to get scared once in a while because you're making new culture. That's the job of this place. And I think that's a, that's a, that's about our activity in public space, like subways.
Uh, we're a walking city. We're canyons of buildings and we're always like walking into each other and knocking each other over and, What the hell?! Hey, watch where you're going! Hey, hey, hello! You know, [00:22:00] we're constantly, if you land in LaGuardia airport, and you come out of your gate, you know, from your airplane, You get, you get, uh, New Yorkers who are listening to me right now know exactly what I'm talking about.
You, you, you get hit by other people's luggage and they knock you over and they're like, like, glad to be home in New York. I'm, I'm not going to make it to baggage claim here. Right. But you love that you're back, you know, that, that it is that crowded and that, that there's so many strong willed people, uh, who are just a little bit less polite.
Then perhaps they should be on some occasions, but yeah, uh, Jordan Neely, um, we named a forest down in East River Park. We named the forest, the Jordan Neely Memorial Grove, mostly red oaks there by the East River. And, uh, now the, they're trying to cut those trees down. So. [00:23:00] Yeah. Yeah. The, the, um, the people, the people that make trouble are sometimes the people that, um, later on you realize how badly you needed them, how badly you want them.
And a lot of them are storytellers.
Marco Ciappelli: Yeah, let's go there. Let's go on the storytelling part of things. But I have a question. Do you think you could do what you do and, and to have The crowd that follows you, that joined you on this mission, if you were in another city or in the United States, or do you think that it's, it's intrinsic to, to New York, kind of what you do?
Rev. Billy: Ah, well, Savitri is from Taos, New Mexico. Um, she grew up on the, the, uh, Llama Mountain. North of Taos and then she moved to [00:24:00] Charlottesville and I lived mostly Minnesota and South Dakota. So we both, we both had, uh, uh, we're both Western people with, uh, with, um, you know, the, the beauty of Northern New Mexico up there and then, uh, South Dakota, the prairies.
And they both, both places have a strong native history down in New Mexico. The, uh, the Hopi people, the Zuni people, the Apache people, the Navajo people up where I was a kid, um, the Ojibwe and the Lakota, the Mandan, the Harakara, the Sioux Indians, the, the, the big nation. If the big nation down, down in New Mexico and Arizona is, are the Navajos, the, the, the big, the big, the big nation, the big Indian nation up where I lived would be the Sioux nation.
And they both have their [00:25:00] own, um, story of resisting the invading white man. So that we brought, we, we ended up in New York and, but, but the two of us bring with us a, an exposure to religiosity that just, you just can't help.
Marco Ciappelli: Right. Where, where I was going with that. And I love that. 'cause I, I wanna go into the storytelling and what you incorporate because I can see all this legend and, and spiritual thinker from the Navajo, and all the, the tribe, the, the audience.
I'm thinking the audience that you have in the street of New York, I just don't see it in la. I don't see it, uh, I don't know, in a city in Europe, maybe London. I don't know. I'm just thinking about this cultural environment that is more receptible to, to having street performer. Maybe it's just me thinking this.
I don't know.
Rev. Billy: That's very much a, um, London. [00:26:00] We go to London whenever we can. We have a stop shopping choir there. Okay. 30 singers, but they don't have a Reverend Billy. So you can't, you cannot clone yourself. Get your own Reverend Billy, but they say we don't have one yet. So, so, uh, uh, but they, uh, they rehearsed last night, Monday night.
Okay. All right,
Marco Ciappelli: so tell me about the stories that you, that you share and how do you build them and how you create them with the music and the singer. You say you all come together. Somebody's better at one thing. Somebody's better at another, but you all come together in, in a, in a body of performer.
Rev. Billy: Well, in my, in my talks, um, sometimes I'll, I'll use a structure from, uh, my own childhood.
[00:27:00] Um, recently I, a couple, a couple of my sermons ended with a story of when I was five years old and I was intrigued. I kept asking my mother, what is inside the darkness there at the end of the trumpet? We had a trumpet hanging in the wall from my father in his days in a high school marching band. And I, I said, well, what's in there?
And she was amused. And then, um, after, after my mother passed away, I had this dream of, um, being just a little one, like, I don't know, five, six years old and kindergarten age, you know, and I'm, I'm holding her hand. So she's just in her, she's just like not even 30 yet in the dream [00:28:00] and we're walking and I remember looking up at her and smiling and we walk.
And there before us is the bell of a trumpet and that flare at the end of the trumpet. And we, uh, mother just takes me right up the slope of the trumpet into the darkness. And we walked and we walked in the darkness and I felt secure because I had my mother's hand. And then it opened up again. It must've been the music inside the instrument.
It opened up again. And there inside was this brilliant meadow and forests and vivid leaves waving in the wind and, uh, hawks flying overhead and, uh, butterflies and birds and flowers tossing in the wind and the meadows and, uh, just a magic, magic land. And we were walking on this little country road [00:29:00] together.
And then, um, we walked and walked and I was so happy and my mother was happy. And then it started, the light started dimming again. And we were walking back into the darkness,
and I started getting a little bit scared. Mom, what's, where are we going? Oh, don't worry Billy, just keep walking, keep walking, whatever happens, just keep walking. And we kept walking into the darkness until it was pitch black, just dark. Kept walking, and kept walking, and then I realized my mother wasn't there.
And I [00:30:00] remembered her instruction, KEEP WALKING, and that's what I did. I walked and walked and then
I thought I was getting light again.
Marco Ciappelli: Wow. You sure know how to tell a story. So how do you add the rest of the group to, I mean, this is, I'm assuming this is the core story that you're going with. And then, do you add music to it? Do you add performing art around you? Or is it just something like this that you just say alone?
Rev. Billy: Well, um, I'm never alone up there because the, the, the, uh, when we're, when we're in our storefront, when we're in our [00:31:00] church, which is on Avenue C in Alphabet City, East Village, um, the, then the, it's, it's casual and it's open and, and there might be 50, 60, 70 people there, but we, we can just walk out among the, the choir can walk out among the, the, the congregants and sit down and just leave me up there.
Now we're, we're at this, uh, this fancy theater. Uh, in the public theater here, Joe's Pub, and, uh, you can't leave the stage. Because there's all
Marco Ciappelli: So you adopt yourself in the old performance. You have to adopt if you're in the middle of the street, you have to adopt if you're in a mall. You have to adapt, exactly, you adapt to the setting.
Does it change quite a bit? Do you have to script the change or the group knows more or less how to be flexible?
Rev. Billy: Well, right now, right [00:32:00] now, um, the charged stages, which are out in public space. Like, like a park, uh, like, uh, the front door of a, uh, a polluting company like JPMorgan Chase or BlackRock or Citibank, um, the, the various places that you can go, they're changing a lot right now, Marco, because Um, there are thousands of people marching in the street right now.
We're in a very special moment. I don't know when this show will be, uh, aired, but this is, this is December 12th. So October 7th was two months ago. And, uh, it's just as fresh as can be. It's like Black Lives Matter. It's like Occupy Wall Street. It's, it's a, it's a, it's a major convulsion. Um, nobody's staying indoors right now.
Everybody's out on the streets. And as a result, streets, public space is [00:33:00] where the public plaza in front of the city buildings, you know, the government buildings, uh, that's where revolutions happen. That's where change takes place. And all around the world and like a hundred different countries, this is going on, but it's definitely going on in New York.
Where the most Palestinians outside of Palestine live and where the most Jews outside of Israel live. So we're, we're very involved in a family argument here in New York right now. And so, um, you know, we come from all kinds of backgrounds in the, in the church of Stop Shopping, including, uh, Hindu, Muslim, but especially Christians and Jews.
But we're all, uh, not religious anymore. We're basically resisting our grandparents fundamentalism. And we think that the, the major church, the major [00:34:00] fundamentalist church in the United States, is consumerism. Stop shopping, Marco! Back away from the product, my child!
Marco Ciappelli: How do people Contribute to to the cause like there's some people become part of the of the singing group the musician the performer I'm sure you have also other people to say, you know, I love what Reverend Bill is doing. I love what they're doing I saw them I listen to them and I'll be sure to have all the link to To your website and so people can really see if they don't know you But, but how can, I mean, what are you looking for right now, apart from keep doing what you've been doing, that when you clearly have an unbelievable passion for it and a talent for storytelling, if people want to get involved, what can they do?
Rev. Billy: Talk to us, you know.[00:35:00] Our, our website is rev billy.com. There it is. Next to my chin right there on the, on the screen. Yep. Uh, the, uh, we're pretty open. We're pretty out there. We, we have a storefront right on the, on the. It's a converted bank, ironically enough.
It's right on Avenue C, and there it is. It's right on a, a supporter like, uh, rents it to us at a cut rate. And, uh, uh, the door's always open. People just walk in. Um, and we don't, we're not careerists. We don't, we don't separate from, uh, the hoi polloi. We, I don't think it's a time man. In the, in the art world, it's not a good time to be, um, have a prestigious position that's removed from people because the [00:36:00] crisis of the earth and the crisis of humanity, uh, is, uh, is not something you're going to get away from.
You know, that I know the wealthy people think that they can, um, hop on in a spaceship with. Elon Musk can go to Mars. In fact, you know, we're not going to even be able to get to Long Island. We won't be able to get to San Fernando. We're not going to, you're not going to get up the grapevine. You're not, there's no, there's no escaping.
It's the earth. It's the earth. The earth is in the sixth extinction. It's in a state of fast evolution, lots of death, lots of life. Um, the, the, the book is being rewritten and the stories will be changing. Uh, so, um, we, we, uh, we, we let it be rough, Marco. We let it be rough. We let, we let the, the Jordan Neely's come in and.
[00:37:00] Scream if they need to, um, that makes, that makes my stories sharper. It makes the songs better. We have one song. Maybe you can, um, play it in the course of your, it's called the great outdoors. And, uh, uh, Neil Young made it a, the, the song of the week on his, uh, On his website, cool. What did you do to the great outdoors?
And it's a, it's a, it's a punk from the future who is appearing in the doorway of some consumer tourists. And she demands to know, where is the earth? I want to go for a hike. What did you do to the earth? And you, uh, and it's sung in our performances by Francisco, Francisco Benitez from Chile. And, uh, she just gives it [00:38:00] this, this very special flavor.
Uh, so we will have, we will have prophetic songs. We will have songs like science fiction. That song takes place in 2044.
Uh, that, that punkette, the tattooed punkette in the doorway, the terror of the middle class. She sings, I am the X in extinction, you fool. She's scary. I, I, I, I, that's such a visual song that I, I think it's going to be a movie.
Marco Ciappelli: I hope so. One last, one last question. You've done this since 1999. You've met so many people.
You had different changes, experience. You've been to jail. I mean, do you feel something is changing? For the best, do you think we [00:39:00] are awaking as a humanity given we have a ton of problem, but is your vision the one of the punk singer that come back and say, you ruined it? What the hell did you do? Or do you, or do you have, or do you, or do you bring it to the extreme in your storytelling so that you move people, but inside, are you, you still positive?
Rev. Billy: Right, right now we're, we're in hell. We're in Marco right now, you've got a good Christian name Marco. Well, we're uh, we've got the International Climate Conference in Dubai The host is an oil executive. He invites everybody there. He pays for it. And then it's like it's a joke He says and by the way, I don't believe in the climate science.
I don't believe it's really happening I don't believe we'll ever get to 1. 5 Celsius. I don't think you know You know, he, [00:40:00] it's a cruel joke that he's turned this worldwide conference and he invited 2, 500 people from oil companies and, and it's like a feast. It's like the triumph of fossil fuel over the people who, the scientists and the people who are, who are trying to, to save the animals and plants and trying to.
Save their own children. And then just across the way from the Arabian desert, you have, of course, the, um, the two tribes there that are now in full, full,
that's just so sad. I'm gonna start crying. It's, uh, um,
it's a hard time to make a. An optimistic scenario, uh, right [00:41:00] now we have to go, we have to go down into how we got to this place where we have the wrong people in charge. We, we have the wrong people have weapons in their hands and gas and oil billions of dollars in their hands. And, um, we, we have not been political in the way that we should have been.
We didn't know when to stop them. We let it keep going. We let her, we allowed ourselves to be depoliticized by, by consumerism and, and, uh, by nationalism and religion and these, all these fundamentalist belief systems that don't apply anymore. They're just dangerous. Now we have to be peacemakers and to be a peacemaker is to be a radical.
It's to really reinvent your story and to share it with the people around you and to accept the details of their stories. I think it's a time. A time [00:42:00] of, uh, to be a radical again, we forget that the freedoms that we enjoy right now, here being on this podcast, the freedoms that we enjoy come directly from people that were considered crazy.
They were considered dangerous and a lot of them got killed. Uh, but, but the movements. Think of the abolition of slavery. Think of the labor movement. Think of the suffragette movement, giving women the vote. Think of the labor movement. Think of the civil rights movement, the peace movement, the women's movement, the act up.
Think of all the movements. And, and they always had people who were willing to take the big risk. And, and we're getting to that place now. People are dying as we speak, Marco. I mean right now, it's just a time of great mortality, mass mortality, ongoing. And it's so much of his children looking into those children's eyes is something we're all doing right now.
All of us, we can't avoid it. And it, it, it is changing [00:43:00] us. We're in a state of change right now. Just, just talking about myself with this history. You wanted to go back to my origins. I feel like my origins are right here right now. I think it, I think it goes the other way. I think this is my history and it goes, time goes backwards towards the, the other direction.
I, I, uh, I think it is that radical. It is, that's like a, that's like the science fiction story, right? What I just said, time going backwards. Uh, that, that's, that's, that's exactly what's happening.
Marco Ciappelli: So, I agree. I agree with you. I think what your picture is, it's very moving again. You're an amazing storyteller.
You're very passionate. You're not just doing it for, uh, you know, the some, some economic gain or celebrity status. I mean, I can tell and people that watch the video and listen to you, I know you can, you can tell this and I love this. I want to end with this because I could go forever, but you know, we [00:44:00] have a time limit and maybe you'll come back again, but I'd love to, but I would love to end with this thing where I talk a lot about society and technology and artificial intelligence, generative AI.
We never talk about ethics in technology as much as we're doing now. And I feel like it's a moment. Which connect with what you said, that we really need to stop looking at ourselves in the mirror and really maybe go back a little bit from, from the end to the beginning once more. So I love your metaphor of this sci fi movie to like, I'm just born right now and then maybe I'll, I'll go back from now.
I love that. Very, very much. So, Billy, I enjoyed very much to have you on, been moving me, and I think you've been moving people listening, and I hope everybody's going to go check out your website, come and see you in the street, in the theaters, going in the [00:45:00] UK, where I'm glad to hear that you have something going on there, and, uh, and share.
Share the story, participate, donate, uh, come and sing with you. Why not? I think you will welcome that.
Rev. Billy: You're welcome to look us up here. We have, starting on January 14th, we'll have, uh, we'll be here every Sunday in the East Village. At 5 p. m. at Avenue C and East 3rd Street, and you can get all the information at RevBilly.
com. We're just going to be local all the way through. We're not going to travel anywhere. We're just going all the way through to the end of the summer, all the way through to August. We're going to be seven and a half, seven months of just every Sunday, baby.
Marco Ciappelli: I have made a mission to get myself in New York soon.
If I come, I'll show up. Come visit. Right there for
Rev. Billy: sure. We got a couch here
Marco Ciappelli: for you. You'll see me. You'll [00:46:00] see me. All right, Billy. Thank you so much
Rev. Billy: Hallelujah. Thank you everybody. Bye. Bye. Bye now