It was 15 degrees outside and the night before Valentine’s Day. I was running late and pretty sure I’d already missed band practice. When I opened the door, the members of Billy and the Box Kid were lounging around the living room. Whiskey-filled colored glasses and quarters were stacked in neat towers before them, ready for a game of poker. Guess I’d be interrupting this now, but the guys were more than happy to oblige.
Songwriter and guitar player Billy (aka Anderson Koenig) met the Box Kid (Scottie McClelland on the cajón) three years ago at an open mic at Silver Moon Brewing. As a trio including mandolin player Tommy Lutz, they played their first official gig on May 1, 2022.
Today’s quintet features Eric Niziol on lead guitar and Ben Woessner on bass, and the group celebrates its three-year anniversary at the Volcanic Theatre Pub on Saturday, March 22. Sacramento funk-soul octet The Gold Souls will open, and Billy and the Box Kid’s set will feature some special guests from the community who have been a part of the band’s evolution.
While Koenig’s rough song ideas provide the foundation for Billy and the Box Kid’s musical output, the band is “five unique personalities coming together to make [each] song a whole,” he explains.
“We’re kind of an everything band in some ways,” McClelland adds, describing the band’s sound. “We have coined the term ‘acoustic dance music'” — or ADM, instead of EDM. There’s Americana, bluegrass, blues, rock ‘n’ roll, funk, jam and country in there. “It’s kind of a mishmash,” depending on the song.
On that cold winter night, Billy and the Box Kid spoke with the Source Weekly about dreams and zombies, the goal to record and release more new singles in the near future and so much more — answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Source Weekly: I know who Billy is. I know who the Box Kid is. Are the rest of y’all offended that your names aren’t up on the marquee?
Anderson Koenig (aka Billy): We talked about it. Scottie and I started it. Then we brought Tommy in, and we’re like, “First things first: Should we change the name?” Tommy was the first to say, “No.”
Tommy Lutz: Yeah, doesn’t bother me.
SW: How long were you two playing together before Tommy came?
Scottie McClelland (aka The Box Kid): A couple of months.
AK: Tommy started with us a week or two before [our first gig].
TL: It was one week before. I was so nervous. [Laughs] I barely knew the songs. I blew it. I remember going home being so bummed, and I was talking to my wife. I was like, “I think they’re gonna kick me out of the band.” Didn’t get kicked out of the band. So that was good. Learned the songs a little better.
SW: A few more members came in and out of the band and now you’re a five piece.
SM: There’s been a couple rotating [members]. Happily, can say that we finally found our core five, and Ben was the glue once he came in. Keeps us together. Keeps us grounded.
AK: Helps to have at least one person who knows some musical terms.
Ben Woessner: Yeah, then you can keep the music in check. [Laughs]
SW: Are you the only one who’s classically trained?
BW: Tommy’s had some training. But yeah, I’ve got a lot of music school — a degree in music education. Taught school for a couple years.
SW: Billy and the Box Kid are the stage names for two of you. Do the rest of you have nicknames?
AK: Daddy! [Pointing at Ben]
SM: Mr. T for Tommy. One has not found Eric yet…
BW: Mr. Niziol.
SW: What have y’all bonded over as a band?
Eric Niziol: We have a common sense of humor. That’s huge for me. We don’t really take ourselves too seriously, but then we take the music pretty seriously, which I think is important.
BW: We’re all just in the scene, all the time. We’re all going to shows and seeing other bands.
TL: Yeah, I’ll just run into these guys at shows. Didn’t really plan it, just see each other.
SW: Where’s a place where you’ve been too drunk or too high when you shouldn’t have been?
TL: Very first show. [Laughs]
SM: Probably the first show. I would agree with Tommy.
TL: So nervous.
EN: There’s definitely a balance, too. It’s like a tool, you know. If you’re using substances, they can definitely improve your performance. But they can also impede it. So it’s a double-edged sword.
BW: Plan accordingly.
SW: When we fall asleep, where do we go?
EN: Oh yeah, dude. I’ve been on the sleep and dream train lately. There is a belief that when you fall asleep you kind of like astrally project into another dimension. Or some people think you go back to some of your spirit guides, like the in betweens, and you reconvene with them and check in on where you are. Then you come back and you’re refreshed for the next day to pursue whatever you’re supposed to pursue.
SM: [Dreams are] kind of like the shadow realm before and after life. Every time you go to sleep, it’s where it takes you. I don’t know where that is, or how to explain it. [Laughs]
BW: Every once in a while, [I have] a stress dream of the world is ending. This time it was zombies, but they were, like, manageable zombies — not “Walking Dead” zombies or anything. They were just, like, you could easily just push them over and walk away. So it’s just like a nuisance. You just had to live on the second story. They’re just annoying. So, like, society didn’t collapse. Just go up a ladder, you’re fine. That kind of zombie.
EN: We had Segway cops in college, and so all you had to do was walk up some stairs and they couldn’t get you.
TL: They didn’t get off the Segway?!
EN: No, ‘cos then someone would steal it.
SW: How’s the world gonna end?
SM: I like Ben’s idea, the manageable zombies.
SW: But it doesn’t sound like that’s gonna end the world.
EN: I think we’re gonna commune with AI, and technology’s gonna become infused that we’re gonna become the singularity, and we’ll just exist completely enlightened. Biology will no longer matter, and we’re gonna exist on a higher dimensional plane, and that’s where we will be.
SW: We’re gonna be floating voices or brains? Just energy?
EN: We’re not gonna be able to understand the concept of it. That’s my belief. I think technology’s gonna win out. We’re not gonna die…
SM: Astroid.
TL: Catastrophic destruction but in many different ways. The ocean, pandemic, storms, yeah, everything.
SM: Probably the most logical.
AK: I got my money on the movie “Idiocracy” becoming reality and we starve because we’re watering our plants with Brawndo.
EN: You guys know about Crocs and “Idiocracy”?
AK: Oh yeah. Pick a shoe that’s absolutely ridiculous.
EN: It was dumb and cheap and so they had everybody wear Crocs.
AK: And they’re like, “What if they become popular someday?” [Laughs] “They’ll never become popular. No one will ever wear them.”
SW: Let the record show: Two people here are wearing Crocs.
AK: We were playing with the name Croc Rock for the band.
TL: Really?! We could’ve been Croc Rock?
EN: Tommy was wearing Crocs with crampons the other day — super-sport mode.
TL: Oh yeah, put some spikes on my Crocs.
SW: That doesn’t sound like “Idiocracy;” it sounds like evolution.
AK: We’re on our way.
SW: Does anyone sleepwalk or talk?
EN: I do sleepwalk, but generally it’s when I’m at home. If I’m in a new place, it doesn’t really happen. If you guys ever see me walking around… [laughs] Normally, I’ll just get up and kind of stand there, look at stuff.
SW: Looking at stuff? Are your eyes open?
EN: Yeah. I’ve had sleeping partners in the past be like, “Why did you get up at three in the morning and just stand there?”
SW: You were astral projecting.
EN: Yeah, I was projecting.
Follow us on Instagram @sourceweekly and @billyandtheboxkid to see some behind-the-scenes videos from our conversation, captured by Hylwa Media, to hear the band talking more about finding inspiration and community in Bend.
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This article appears in The Source Weekly March 13, 2025.
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