I first crossed paths with my friend Billy McCormick—better known as Billy Sugarfix—because of music. Billy was the main singer and songwriter for Evil Wiener, a band that had been a staple of the Chapel Hill scene since the early ’90s. I must have seen Evil Wiener around 1999 or 2000, before I ever worked at the Cat’s Cradle. The bill that night was Evil Wiener and another band called Scurvy, who were basically a bunch of kids doing pirate songs. I don’t remember a ton about Evil Wiener’s set, but I do remember the feel of it—the stage lights and the constant little churn of bodies in a small room—and I remember Billy in a kind of fisherman’s cap, looking locked in and amused at the same time. Most of all, I remember him being genuinely excited about Scurvy and wanting them to play again, like he was rooting for them in a way that felt unusually sincere.
Years later, I ran into Billy at the bar Hell. It was one of those places where the light always felt dim even when it wasn’t, where voices and clinks and whatever music was coming through the speakers sort of glued themselves into one steady bar-noise. I brought up that old show, and we talked for a bit, but after that we didn’t really interact again for a long time. I also have this memory that at some point he mentioned Reed Johnson having been in Scurvy—but Billy has since told me he doesn’t remember that conversation and doesn’t think Reed was in Scurvy at all, so if that ever came up, it was just one of those confidently incorrect details that gets said in passing and then disappears into the fog.
Around 2001, I got a job selling ice cream at Mayberry Creamery on Franklin Street. The place was small and themed to death in the way only a themed place can be: Mayberry images everywhere, familiar faces like Goober and Barney Fife staring down from the walls above booths that felt like they’d been lifted out of a 1950s soda shop. The air always had that sweet, cold smell—waffle cones, sugary mix, a little bleach from whatever we’d just wiped down. It sat right next to Moshi Moshi, which was the original location of the Coney Express hot dog restaurant my father ran, so that stretch of sidewalk already felt like my territory in a weirdly personal way. It was kind of funny how many people would pop in there—more than you’d expect. I remember seeing the band Fin Fang Foom come through.
And then one day Billy literally biked by on his recumbent bicycle and stopped in. The bike itself looked like a contraption someone invented to prove a point—low to the ground, laid back, a little futuristic and a little absurd, like it shouldn’t be as fast as it was. I commented on it, and he immediately hit me with, “Do you wanna ride it?” I said hell yeah, and I rode that recumbent up and down the Franklin Street sidewalk for a minute, legs pumping out in front of me like I was piloting something instead of biking. It was right in the same area where I used to roller skate as a kid back when we had the Coney Express. That little loop on the sidewalk felt like a weird overlap of timelines: me as a kid on skates, me as an adult in an ice cream job apron, and Billy rolling in like he’d been dropped from some other version of Chapel Hill.
I’d always thought Billy was eccentric and cool, but later he told me that moment made him notice me as potentially a fellow cool guy. He said he had this little recumbent-bike “litmus test”: whenever someone commented on his weird bike, he’d offer them a ride. Most people would turn it down, so saying yes told him something. Years later, when I told him I’d written it that way, he laughed and admitted he’d completely forgotten he did that—until I reminded him—and then he was like, yep, that was totally the case.
After that we weren’t exactly friends yet, but we became common acquaintances. Around the same time I started bartending at the Cat’s Cradle, and I remember seeing Billy at a show and trying one of my little tricks to get him to hang out: I told him I should do his website. It was half networking and half genuine enthusiasm, and I probably delivered it with that bartender confidence where you pretend you’re casual even though you’re absolutely hoping the person says yes. He was totally into it, and he had me over to his place for what he called a “Bachelorito”—a bachelor burrito. The house had that lived-in musician vibe—gear around, projects in progress, the sense that any surface could become a workbench if you needed it to. The Bachelorito was delicious even though the ingredient list sounds questionable: a tortilla with chopped veggie burgers, mustard, and mayonnaise, and I don’t even remember there being cheese. We’d drink coffee, eat Bacheloritos, and talk about building the Evil Wiener website. I was honestly thrilled he was trusting me with a site for a band that was famous around town.
For the website, I pitched a style that looked like construction-paper cutouts—bold and whimsical, kind of South Park–influenced in spirit. The central image was a hot dog in a space helmet floating in space, attached to a rocket, with “Evil Wiener” at the top. It felt exactly like the kind of idea that could either crash and burn or become perfect, and Billy is an extremely yes-positive person, so he was all for it, and we built it.
Another time over at his house, Billy had just gotten GarageBand and had a MIDI keyboard, and we learned it together in that beginner way where you’re just trying to make one first song to figure out how anything works. The little clicks and bleeps and default instrument sounds made everything feel possible and ridiculous at the same time. That little experiment became “Brian’s Stupid Coffee Song.” It was goofy, but it also kicked off the feeling that Billy and I had real collaborative electricity—like we could put two half-formed ideas in the same room and somehow walk out with something that existed.
From there, we became solid friends, and I started hanging out at his place a lot. During that period I was in a relationship with Ann Murphy, but it was getting rocky, and she asked me to move out. I moved into 104 BIM Street in Carrboro. Nate Stalfa was my roommate at first, then he moved out to live with Laura Bobbis, and another guy lived there briefly and left too. The place had that rotating-door feel, like the house itself was waiting for the right configuration of people to finally settle into. I remember talking with Billy about his rent getting increased, and I suggested he move in with me. That’s when we shifted from friends to roommates, and the creative energy really started to spark.
Billy is a total firecracker of creative output—always looking for an angle to make something interesting. One of the things he started that I still highly regard is the Song a Day podcast, where the goal was to write 100 songs in 100 days. I was mostly an observer at first, because I was new to making music. I loved music and wanted to create it, but it felt intimidating. Watching Billy crank out songs with a playful attitude—turning whatever happened that day into a song—made it feel approachable, like the act of making something didn’t have to come with a big ceremony or a dramatic struggle. It helped me move toward eventually developing as a songwriter.
If you had to name my first lyrics-based song that felt like a completed work, it would probably be the “It’s Carborro” song that Billy and I produced out of that collaboration. We did plenty of other collaborations and various exploits too, but those early years really showed me how many chance crossings it can take before a real friendship finally locks into place.
Billy wasn’t just creative—he was also a crowd-pleasing impressario. At Evil Wiener shows he’d wear a marching band hat and a conductor-like tuxedo, like a white tails suit covered in red stars. Seeing him on stage playing guitar or the theremin was something else—part concert, part performance art, part comedy, but also real musicianship holding it together. He’d also throw holiday parties, like the Christmas show at the Cave, where he’d get the audience involved with film strips. He was a master showman. On top of all that, Billy is a master storyteller. He’s currently an author, working on publishing short stories and full-length novels too. Watching him tell a story in public feels like watching a master at their craft.