Originally hailing from South Carolina, singer/songwriter/guitarist Willie Williams has a truly inspiring story. After all, how many folks would voluntarily abandon a successful 9-5 career to pursue the arts? “Leaving the corporate world in my early 40s to play music full time was probably the craziest thing I could’ve done,” chuckles Williams from his home in Richmond, VA. Growing up on a steady diet of country, blues, R&B and rock music, Williams was on the rise as a promising young artist in the late 90s. But he gave it all up to start a family and a “straight” career, a decision he says he does not regret. “My family is the light of my life, and the business skills I learned in the insurance world were invaluable.” While that was true, the monotonous corporate life is no place for creative souls, and by 2021 Williams had had enough. “I knew I had to get out or I was gonna wind up institutionalized,” he says in a warm Southern baritone, only half joking. “I think it was all supposed to happen this way.”
Maybe so, but the “it” Williams is talking about has not come easy. Playing nearly a thousand gigs in the last few years was the exact crash course Williams needed. “I had a lot of down time during the pandemic and it gave me the opportunity to form a plan. I knew I was late to the dance and I had a lot of catching up to do.” Leveraging some old Nashville friendships, Willie soon landed a high profile gig with legendary Texas guitar slinger, Lee Roy Parnell, and later, Dickey Betts’ side project, Great Southern. But it was on hundreds of regional solo gigs where Williams truly honed his craft. “Playing solo is the ultimate proving ground,” he says. “You either sink or swim, and to be successful doing it takes lots of repetition. It’s the most intimate connection an artist can have with their audience.”
Somewhere in between all those gigs, time on the road, and being a family man, Williams found time to start writing again. “My songwriting had been on hold for years, but once I rededicated my life to music, [songs] started falling out of the sky again.” It wasn’t long before Williams teamed up with venerable Richmond based producer and engineer, Stewart Myers (Agents of Good Roots, Jason Mraz, 49 Winchester), who helped him smooth out some of the rough edges. “I think it was my idea to go to Nashville, but it wouldn’t have happened without Stewart’s guidance,” says Williams of his recent trip to Music City to make a full length LP. “I’ll never forget standing in [Ronnie Milsap’s fabled studio on Music Row] thinking ‘Dolly Parton and George Jones have made records here, I better bring the heat.’” And bring it he did. With a backing band consisting of Nashville A-listers, all friends from his recent gigs with Parnell, Williams tracked an entire LP in just four days, a testament to his unrelenting positive attitude. “I knew we would have to kick ass to get it all done,” Williams says of the ten original songs, in which he deftly tackles addiction, social injustice, love and loss, among other topics. “It was an incredible experience to make a record in that setting, with those cats. It still feels like a dream,” says Williams of his time in Nashville.
But what to call his music? Citing Delbert McClinton as a primary influence, Williams says, “I wanted to make a record like Delbert would have. I mean, who says you can’t have country, rock, soul and blues all on the same album?” And that is exactly what Williams did. A careful listen to the master tapes reveals flashes of Bill Withers here, Little Feat there, with healthy doses of Memphis, Macon and Tulsa thrown in for good measure. But make no mistake: Willie Williams is the common thread that holds all this music together. And as his dear friend and boss Lee Roy Parnell likes to say, “Willie Williams is a force to be reckoned with.” Indeed.
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