Song of the Day 1/11: Billy Pilgrim, “Insomniac”

Folk-rock duo Billy Pilgrim formed in Atlanta in the early ’90s, when R.E.M. was breaking indie music into the mainstream. Because both Kristian Bush and Andrew Hyra wrote songs, played guitars and shared lead vocals, music critics dubbed them the Indigo Boys (it helped that Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls sang background vocals on their eponymous 1994 debut album), disregarding the fact that their rootsy Americana didn’t sound much like the Indigos’ folk. The album got good but not glowing reviews, and its singles, “Insomniac” among them, didn’t chart.

Though they lined up some impressive guest artists on their second album, it didn’t sell either, and their record label dropped them. They released albums independently for a few years but stopped working together – they never formally broke up – by 2000. Bush went on to greater fame with the country duo Sugarland; Hyra, the older brother of actress Meg Ryan, left the industry for several years, working as a carpenter before resuming a solo career.

“Insomniac,” though, lived on because it became popular with a niche audience – college a cappella groups, another big ’90s trend. As the New York Times chronicled Wednesday, John Craig Fennell was a grad student singing with the Virginia Gentlemen at UVa. when a friend at a summer job in 1994 passed him the Billy Pilgrim cassette. “You hear those first few squeezebox notes … it was immediately compelling,” said Fennell, who went on to arrange the tune for his a cappella group.

At the time, American campuses teemed with such groups, who recorded and passed around their performances. Most groups concentrated on instrument-free versions of popular hits; perhaps “Insomniac” became so popular because it’s a rare exception. There are dozens of YouTube videos by different groups, almost all using Fennell’s arrangement. Here’s a version by Straight No Chaser, a professional a cappella group who started as undergrads at Indiana University.

As Sugarland’s star has faded, Bush and Hyra have occasionally worked together again, especially during the pandemic. They recorded the song live for Paste magazine in 2020, and though they don’t make any royalties from the song, Bush said it’s their most requested in concert.