Evidently, people refuse to accept that a person’s name is, in fact, Biloxi, and they would be right. I didn’t start life out as Biloxi. In much the same way that Kovacz became Rorschach in The Watchmen, I became him.
I was named after my dad’s best friend, probably one of the nicest people you will ever meet. I never really liked the name that much, but when you are named for someone that kick-ass, you don’t complain. I didn’t have many nicknames growing up. Mostly just baseball nicknames like T-bone. There was this brief span during my middle school years when my brother and uncle insisted on calling me Soy Boy because they tricked me into eating a soy burger and I said it was good, but that’s another story for another day. Somewhere towards the end of high school, I developed a personality. I attribute it mainly to getting drug through the mud by a certain cheerleader on a weekly basis. (Piece of advice, whenever you think you’re better than a cheerleader, you’re probably wrong. Evidently, an outsized ego is just another tool in their skill-set.)
Anyway, I started hanging out with a different group of people my senior year of high school. One of the guys in our group had this gawdy gold necklace that said “Vegas” on it. He wore it all the time and people took to calling him Willy Vegas. One day, after he and I had done something particularly legendary, somebody referred us Willy Vegas and Biloxi. I never quite understood why, I guess it was because Biloxi, like Las Vegas, was a big town for casinos. It doesn’t really matter, I liked it, so I ran with it. A lot of my family is from the Mississippi gulf coast so it’s got some meaning, plus we go down that way a good bit. You know, the whole personal touch.
When I got to college, some of my high school classmates came with me, as did the name Biloxi. It wasn’t really used a whole lot until I started playing in the greatest band you’ve never heard of, Idle Yeti. When you play in a kick-ass rock band, you need a kick-ass name. Since the band was called Idle Yeti, everybody sort of adopted a name based on that. There was Bob Yeti on guitars, Cooper Yeti on guitars and vocals, Dallas ‘Sasquatch’ Spires on Drums and dog bones, then me, Biloxxxi Yeti on bass. (notice how I added in 3 X’s for effect?) We had road cases for all our gear and we spray painted our bands’ name and individual names on the cases so they were easy to identify if stolen. So, everytime I was on stage, the audience would see “Biloxxxi Yeti” in huge letters painted on my bass rig and Bob would always manage to say something about me driving in from Biloxi at every show. That helped the name stick.
Performing on stage is kind of like the internet, you can be whoever you want to be. I’ve always been charismatic and I understood this well. I built a Rock n Roll persona for the stage and it ended up becoming me in real life. I had long hair, I discarded my shyness, I wore the Rock n Roll clothes, basically I became what I always thought I was inside. I was the living, breathing embodiment of Rock n Roll. I thought I was the absolute cock of the walk. I was just about finished with college at this point, the band was rollin and I was working as a bartender, meeting a thousand new people a week, and I told everyone of them my name was Biloxxxi. And they believed it.
College wound down and the band broke up, and suddenly it was time for me to enter the real world. There was a problem though, I really liked who I was. I was the same nice guy I’d always been, but I didn’t like being a clean cut yuppie in the workforce. That wasn’t for me. I’d watched my friends compromise their lives away. I wasn’t going to do that. Dammit I’m Biloxxxi and I’ll do whatever the hell I please! That became my attitude. I was practical, but I knew what I wanted and I’ll get there.
For years I’ve wanted a tattoo of the Michelin Man playing a Flying V guitar on my back, but tattoos are becoming increasingly cliche’. Even cool ones. I wanted to do something different, so I took it upon myself to change my middle name to Biloxi. Hence, Biloxi Von Lutz. Practical yet intriguing, and it still leaves my first name as a tribute to my parents and all those who know me as that. I don’t introduce myself as Biloxi quite so much anymore, I tend to ease people into it. When someone meets you after you walk off stage, they expect you to be a little bit ridiculous. It goes with the territory. But when you’re pounding PBRs while the girls are sipping Cosmos, a little couth goes a long way. A little older, a little wiser, twice as crazy.
Thanks for fulfilling my blog request, Biloxxxi! Now, you are no longer a mystery. Too bad you weren’t there for the Christina/Jessica/Stacey drama Fri. night involving a psycho, because it would have made for an amazing Biloxi blog. I’ll have to tell you about it during our next encounter!
-Christina