William Conrad Yeager,  born September 6, 1957, in Miami, Florida, U.S., is a musician, singer, songwriter, and independent filmmaker. ager is self taught, playing most instruments by ear. His 2 feature films that he produced, “Jimmy’s Story” 2001 and “A Perfect Song” 2003, have won several awards. Yeager casted, directed, acted, and composed all the musical scores for his films. He has played guitar with artists as diverse as Inner Circle, Wild Cherry, and Ira Sullivan, recorded with Jaco Pastorius and was discovered by Grammy Award Winner Bruce Hornsby in 1992. Yeager’s musical styles defy description. His songs are categorized as Surf Jazz, Gypsy Cubanno, and Japanese Folk Jazz.

 

Music

Yeager grew up watching his father Ray Yeager perform on stage and television. Ray Yeager had a brief overnight success story when he was discovered by Owen Bradley, who worked with Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley. Billy would pick up his father’s homemade guitar made from a dresser drawer at age 6 and teach himself to play. His early influences were Carlos Santana, Led Zeppelin, and John McLaughin.  Yeager dropped out of school in the 8^th grade and left home to travel in disco bands throughout the 1970s’. He recorded his first album in 1983 under his own label, several of these songs won awards for songwriting contests. In 1985 he recorded his second album at Circle Sound, Inner Circle’s private studio. The album was titled “ Be My Valentine” and Yeager performed all the instruments.

 

1980’s

Yeager began submitting music, tapes and his record albums, to the record companies in 1976. In 1987 he traveled by bus to Hollywood and New York to walk the streets and knock on doors, but returned home again to rejection letters.

Yeager isolated himself for a period of 4 years from 1988 until 1992 taking a part time job, which allowed him to write music everyday, and recorded over 600 songs at that time. By 1990 he had acquired 100’s of rejection letters and 14 years of frustration trying to invent and re-invent himself.

 

1990’s

In 1992 Yeager’s luck would change when he gave a cassatte tape of his music to a road manager at a Bruce Hornsby concert. Bruce called him from the road and told him how he liked his music and was willing to support it. Bruce’s  manager got a development deal from Capitol Records so that Billy could record his songs more professionally and send them to the labels that Bruce had relationships with. Until that time Billy had been recording all of his music on a 4 -track cassette recorder bouncing all the tracks (8 to 16) into 4 tracks.

 

1996

Yeager would be rejected for another 4 years even though other well known musicians would become  involved and lent support. After reflecting on the many years of rejection, one night Billy was watching the television movie “ Tootsie” with Dustin Hoffman.

He watched how Dustin Hoffman played a character who couldn’t get a job as an actor, until he re-created himself and became a woman and then got an audition and landed an acting job on a  television show. This inspired Yeager to utilize all of his talents including the uncanny ability to sound like many famous people, including Jimi Hendrix.

 

1997

The “ Hoax” was born.

Yeager began to work out  a brilliant plan, one that would get him discovered like Dustin Hoffman’s character. Yeager spent 1 full year creating a very convoluted story, playing 3 characters, Jimi Hendrix’s long lost son, Mark Smith his manager, and an attorney. Yeager dyed his skin black, and forged all the necessary documents and birth certificates. He also studied and offically became a graphologist and certified all the documents. He sent these documents to the press including information about “The lost Bolero tapes” that Jimi was working on before he died, and had left behind and given to Jimmy Story’s  mother, Sunshine (It was actually Yeager who recorded these songs to sound like Jimi).

Yeager created a complex story of conspiracy and murder of Jimi Hendrix.

“Sunshine” never told her son who his real father was, fearing for their lives.

The press ran with the story. He was written about world wide in magazines and news papers. He even made live appearances as Jimi Hendrix’s long lost son. He was featured on South Floridas evening news as a Breaking News Story “Son of Hendrix alive and well and living in South Florida.”

 

1998

The Hoax Revealed.

Yeager’s plan went bust. The hoax unfolded and many were confused about what Yeager had done and why. But Yeager was a step ahead of the game. Billy had been filming his entire life with video cameras for over 23 years. He kept them in his car, took them to restaurants, filming himself recording, struggling, getting rejected, as family and friends, were bewildered at his optimism and bulldog determination.

What others didn’t know was that Yeager had planned it all along, to make a bio- documentary film that he would call “Jimmy’s Story”, the story of Yeager’s life.

 

1999

For the next 2 years Yeager began exstensive research about the Independent film movement and about film festivals. He sent his raw footage to filmmaker Kevin Smith who then suggested Yeager to send it to John Pierson, famed independent film guru, who had sold many well known successful films. John looked at the footage and agreed to do a story about the making of the film itself on his television show

“Split Screen”. Dan Myrick,  creators and directors of The Blair With Project also became involved and edited their own version in 1999. The film was rejected at The Sundacne Film Festival in 1999 and 2000 even though Yeager kept filming his story for another 3 years until his father passed away, who is one of the film’s main characters. The film won 4 awards at The Dahlonega International Film Festival for best feature, best documentary, best first film, and best directorial.

It also won Best Documentary at The Palm Beach Film Festival.

 

2000

Yeager began production on the film “A Perfect Song”, about a man obsessed with finding the perfect melody in nature so he can compose a supernatural song, one that will heal the world. He wrote, produced, directed, composed all the musical score, and made the film without a single dime. He also casted the film, trained his actors, found the locations, lighted the sets, and stepped in front of the camera for the first time as an actor. Yeager finished the film against all odds. 

 

2003

Jesus of Malibu

Yeager posted a casting notice for the role of Mindy in his next film called “Jesus of Malibu”. The posting required an elaborate and exhausting training regimine including fasting, sun gazing, weight training, and studying over 40 books about Edgar Cayce, The Human Brain, Tesla’s electro magnetic current theoires, Plato, Aristotle and many others.  On Valentines Day night in 2005 Yeager finally received what he was looking for, a reply from a very passionate woman like himself, her name was Anais. The 2 of them wrote letters everday and were married when she arrived 3 months later. The couple has been studying, traveling, learning to sail, and preparing for the film for over 4 years. They are currently traveling the United States filming, which will take until 2010, when they will begin the journey to Guatemala to meet with the Mayan elders.

The film “Jesus of Malibu” is a trilogy that will take 5 years to film; the first part will be released in 11/11/11 according to Sacred Geometric numbers and the planetary alignments.