Music is family business for Billy Raffoul

Billy Raffoul had some athletic ambitions as a youngster.

But music was probably inevitable.

The 22-year-old singer, songwriter and guitarist is the son of Jody Raffoul, an artist from Leamington, Ont., who mined his career in the Detroit area during the 00s, most notably winning a competition to open for Bon Jovi during 2006 at the Palace of Auburn Hills. The younger Raffoul was “away from” music and “kind of into other things, but as a teenager he found his way into the “family business.”

“My father made it easy,” explains Raffoul, who now splits time between Leamington and Nashville. He has a deal with Interscope Records and has released two songs, “Driver” and “Dark Four Door,” with an album planned for 2018. “It wasn’t like I had to sit my folks down and say, ‘Hey guys, I want to do (music). They understood and encouraged me.”

Raffoul’s break, in fact, came via his father, who he accompanied to a demo taping session with Marlon Young, guitarist and songwriter in Kid Rock’s Twisted Brown Trucker Band. Young wound up using both Raffouls to sing on the track, and a week later they were in Nashville meeting with a manager who felt Raffoul had potential.

“My music is like a melting pot of a bunch of different (stuff),” Raffoul says. “Obviously I get all of my father’s influence just by growing up and listening to him. What he was doing was very classic rock and very singer-songwriter at the same time. That’s what I wanted to do, mixing that together with some old soul singers I love.

“There’s nothing I’m not influenced by,” he adds with a laugh. “That’s a terrible answer, but it really is a mix of everything for me.”

Raffoul hopes his future song releases, and eventual album, will display that gamut. For now he’s trying to dribble out songs and gradually move himself into the spotlight. “These two songs show different sides of me, and I think we’ll put out another single before year’s end that’s somewhere between those two,” he says. “I’m just trying to build my story and let people hear the music. It’s a business where you have to be patient, and I am.