Billy Ironcrane

A lifelong explorer of life's experiences and unending surprises, Billy Ironcrane was raised in inner city Philadelphia during the 1950's and 60's. There he partook in the revolutionary currents of change, protest, activism, and idealism which characterized the era. While a teen, he spent summers on the Jersey coast hawking newspapers, tossing burgers and exploring places like Atlantic City where he encountered flea circuses, Gene Krupa hanging between sets at the Steel Pier, petrified mermaids and the fabulously wealthy promenading the boardwalk at night flashing mink stoles, diamonds, tuxes and studded canes. Atlantic City dubbed itself, “The World’s Playground.” All the stuff of dreams as he returned to Mrs. J’s boarding house where he slept for ten bucks a week, sharing space with his grandfather, Polish immigrants working the summer trade, and the ever present legion of cats.

He departed the inner city still in his teens, and pushed blindly into the unknown never to return. To be static and do nothing would have been terminal, as in fact it proved to be for many of his mates. In the decades following, he pursued new awarenesses, swam exotic currents, wandered remote tropical forests, became a soldier, ambled southwest deserts at night, slept through thunderstorms alongside petrified forests, trekked the Rockies, mastered the martial arts, jogged with blacktail deer in hills surrounding Monterey, explored Zen, motorcycled the California coast, scaled Pfeiffer Rock, freelanced, traversed the Cascades, slept beneath ancient redwoods in remote Los Padres, raised a family, bridged the corporate jungle, then hung a shingle and lived on wits and ingenuity until the muse of the 60's again tapped his shoulder, ordering, "Time to shift gears, Billy."

His stories re-visit ancient times, extracting from their myths and legends new reckonings and insights into a modern world where many of the same challenges seem to have become our norm.

His journey to self actualize is chronicled at www.ironcrane.com. His commitment to roots music and preserving threads of tradition can be found at www.bluemuse.org.