Fire in the Mountains

The William Loveday Intention is one of the current incarnations of the British musician, novelist, painter, poet, and troublemaker Billy Childish. (He is also active in The Guy Hamper Trio, CTMF, The Chatham Singers, and Thee Headcoats.) Few figures in the history of British song-and-dance men have created a body of work as bold and unique as Billy Childish, and practically none have been as prolific. Between his many projects, Childish has released over 170 albums (including 13 recorded in one year during the global pandemic) and even more singles since 1977, all dominated by the passionate, reedy bark of his vocals, the dirty, Link Wray-inspired roar of his guitar work, and a lyrical perspective that's a crazy quilt of deeply personal self-expression, pastiches of pop culture, pointed observations on the world around him, and tunes about good (and bad) times with the opposite sex. Artists as diverse as Mudhoney and Kylie Minogue have cited Childish as an influence, and he's built an international following despite stubbornly avoiding major record labels and following his own path.

Billy says “Fire in the Mountains” “is the true story of meeting up with my wife-to-be when she drove down from Seattle to meet me in the Ventana Wilderness of California in the summer of 1999. I was on a vision quest and there were fires in the hills, etc. Her directions were to meet me on such-and-such a date by a rusty water tower 20 miles down a desert road, where I stood playing an Indian flute. So, in all that is written within the song, if absorbed by the ears, truth will be revealed.”