Page 90 - The Westerner Magazine Halloween 2018

New York and California and he opened songs. One minute he’d be singing,
those doors for me. “Hey, good lookin’, what you got
cookin’?” and the next minute he’d be
I had a game show on ABC that got
doing a recitation called “Men with
cancelled after about a year. The lady
broken hearts.”
who was in charge of programming at
ABC in those days was a big fan of Both of them appealed to me. I was a

mine. She told me, “We’re not going to fan of both and I was influenced by that.
throw the baby out with the bath water. He had songs as Luke the Drifter where
We had to cancel the game show but I’m he sang and talked. So it wasn’t totally

going to put you into a soap opera.” foreign, because I heard him do it, and it
fell into place for me.
I thought, “Yeah, sure you are.” Next

thing you know I was on the set of One
Life to Live playing the part of Bill
Anderson, country singer. It was type-

casting so I didn’t have to reach too far
to play the part they wanted me to play.

They gave me freedom. One of the

storylines was a girl singer in this little
club that was trying to make it big. They

asked me to tell her what I’d tell
someone who came to me for career
advice. I didn’t follow a script because
they let me put things in my own

words. That was kind of them and made
me very comfortable.

Bruce: Who influenced your early
music? Bruce: Do you consciously think of

incorporating that style into your songs
Bill: I was very influenced as a young
today?
boy by Hank Williams. He had an alter
ego called Luke the Drifter. In those Bill: It’s funny, I wrote a song back in

songs he would talk, and they were 2006 with two other writers. One was
mostly recitations and serious kind of Buddy Cannon and the other was a