Keller Williams began teaching himself guitar before his teens, and was playing his first paid gigs before graduating high school. Since then this Virginia native has gone on to tour for almost twenty years and produce as many records, as well as a bevy of collaborative side projects. Williams has become one of the most innovative performers of his time, experimenting with music looping in bluegrass, folk, alternative rock, reggae, jazz, funk, R&B, and any other genre that suits his fancy. He's also just a really nice guy. The Live Buzz was thrilled to have the privilege to interview Williams in anticipation of his upcoming Bloomington performance.
Live Buzz: You're about midway through the tour now. How do you feel?
Keller Williams: I play weekends so right now I'm sitting on my back porch looking out into the woods. Everything is fan-tastic. A tour to me is like on a bus or in a van and many weeks at a time. Things now are running splendidly.
LB: The Grateful Dead has obviously been one of your biggest influences. How else have they influenced you as a musician?
KW: Just in life in general. It started in my late teens. It started with the music and then I went to see a show and that just opened up a whole other world. The lifestyle of the Dead Heads; it was like a traveling family. There were thousands and thousands of people who went to every show, but only a handful of those people cared about going to the concert. I was all about the music and I very rarely went to shows without tickets. The Grateful Dead experience taught me how to travel in a certain way that's really carried over in my career. There was a whole lot of learning how to sleep in your vehicle and ways to get free breakfast. Things of that nature.
LB: Do you try and incorporate that family aspect into how you show yourself as an artist?
KW My whole world is night-and-day difference from the Grateful Dead experience. The whole music industry I'm involved in has changed. There used to be groups of folks that would come to my shows and now I think that the economy is such and the people that play what I play--it's so flooded every night that people have so many choices of things to go to. I put myself in the place of the audience member. I try to play things and create a vibe of something that I would want to see if I were in the audience. That's kind of my direction.
LB: Who else do you label as your influences?
KW: Victor Wooten, who's known for years and years with Bela Fleck: that badass, above-this-earth banjo player. I think he holds the record for having the most Grammy's of any artist. He's even won several in the classical music realm, and he's a banjo player! Victor Wooten is the only bass player on the earth who can keep up with him and understand where he's coming from. I got to open for Victor at an influential age when he was doing his solo show. He was really further along in the 'looping' aspect than I was. This was in the late 90s.
LB: Kind of when it was pioneered.
KW: There were other people doing it throughout the 80s as well. There was also Bobby McFerrin who had so many different octaves and so many different waves to his voice. Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh: that whole realm of folks. Robert Hunter was the lyrics from the Grateful Dead. The list really goes on and on into different genres and different realms. I'm getting lots of ideas and influences now from these present-day DJ's or Electronic Producers. They're really not really jockeying these discs.
LB: Do you see yourself in the future trying out any electro or house music, or are you saving that for the not-so DJ's?
KW: The electronic house music is all very evident in my show. I just go about it in a different way and I've definitely tried to do something a little more current. What I'm known for is creating live samples on stage. I think that's what I'm best at. There's lots of recent electronica dub step-type of formula that I totally understand and cherish and love to go see. The energy is just insane and I really appreciate that. However an artist--whether he's a guy with a computer or a band--can get an audience on the same level of that is positive. There have been a handful of DJ gigs I've done. It's pretty much me with two iPods and a microphone, drinking free to my own playlist. I love it man. I have a good time. As long as I can drink for free and dance.
LB: That's all that really matters when you get right down to it.
KW: I think so.
LB: Could you talk about your creative process?
KW: Songwriting has been few and far-between recently. Before I had kids I was doing three-week tours and it was like that all-year round until I had done 120-140 shows. I'm still doing 120 shows but they're all on weekends. Before, I'd be decompressing after the show and then the boredom would set in and I would get antsy, and that's where the creative process would really begin. The songs would come much more frequently. Now I've got these two crazy kids (ages four and eight). There's so much to do between Sunday afternoon and Thursday morning that there's not a whole lot of time left over for songwriting. I did get something recently that's still being formulated. It's sort of like Soka Beatz with this reggae dance hall and the beat behind it.
LB: There's a sort of discrepancy between what you're saying and your 20+ records. I think 2000 was only year that you haven't released an annual record. That's still pretty prolific.
KW: To the person who likes to listen to recorded music, then yeah. But my love for music kind of overtakes the art in the sense that there're twenty records, but they're not all my songs. There're lots of covers. The most recent was with the Traveling Curries and that was a bluegrass record.
LB: Could you talk about your experience playing with the drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart?
KW: It was like a two and a half week tour with a band called the Rhythm Devils. I think that came from one time that Jerry Garcia was playing with Bill and Mickey. He just turned over and said, "Man, you guys are the rhythm devils." It was very surreal to be on a bus with a whole bunch of guys, two of them are legitimate rock and roll icons. And then there's that whole other world of people who don't know or understand the Grateful Dead and these people mean nothing to them. It's really niche-y. Some people get it and some don't. It's a beautiful thing. To hear the stories from Bill and Mickey--especially being the Dead Head that I was--I had plenty of questions, but I tried to keep them at a minimum. Hearing the stories from those guys is something that I'll never forget. The band and music were definitely the vision of Mickey Hart. The arrangements were his ideas. He has a certain idea in mind and whether we got there--I'm not totally sure we did get there. Although now I think he's becoming satisfied and getting what he needs musically. I still keep in touch with Bill Kreutzmann and we still cross paths.
LB: When was this by the way?
KW: 2010. He did two different tours: one primarily on the west coast and one on the east coast. He used me, east coast guy on the west coast, and Tim Blue, west coast guy on the east coast. Then the next year we did a one-off with Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart. One set called Gathering of the Vibes. Man, that was really, really special. Even after rehearsal and tour, to come together with these musicians and Bill and Mickey was really special. There was no real pressure, or a certain thing that Mickey wanted to convey. It was just straight up music.
LB: When did you first start teaching yourself the guitar?
KW: I had a buddy of mine show me the Cowboy Chords one time. I took those songs and started putting them together with songs on the radio. In between the time I was eleven and sixteen which was the first time that I did my first gig for money. Back then when I was taking it really seriously I probably had, like, 30 songs or so that I could play.
LB: That's pretty good. That'll entertain an audience.
KW: It worked.
LB: You've done a lot of collaboration with other bands and performers. What do you look for in these performers and artists when you decide to work with each other?
KW: For different projects there're different ideas. There's the Dream Record and that took about three years to start and finish, but that was using my heroes and all the folks I look to for inspiration. There's also a record I've done with The Keels and that's just authentic bluegrass. I wanted to go bluegrass but maintain the tongue and cheek. They were definitely on that train with me. Different projects call for different things. Right now I've assembled an R&B Band with these amazing players from Richmond, Virginia. It's the only time that I've ever been in a band when I'm the only one who's not African American. I'm teaching these folks these songs and they're molding them into this gospel, R&B-type formula. The bluegrass formula I understand. The jazz and electronica formulas I understand, but I'm just now starting to learn this gospel/R&B. Some of these arrangements are taken straight out of church. It's getting really funky.
LB: Are you incorporating that jazz and bluegrass formula into the R&B or just sitting back and letting it go?
KW: Definitely not incorporating the bluegrass into this project. This is NOT that.
LB: You've done Amy Winehouse and Butthole Surfers for bluegrass. It sort of seems that nothing is off limits.
KW: It really isn't. And I did play with the ideas of taking a total white trash hillbilly song and taking it to my friends for them to work it up. I didn't go there. I just couldn't bring myself to go there. I had too much respect for them. I worried about them. I think it's important for the folks on stage to be enjoying themselves as well. There's a level of compromise.
LB: What's the most important lesson that you've learned in all of your time touring?
KW: Think about the people that support you. You have to think about them. You have to think about what they want. I've been very fortunate to be somewhat self-indulgent and go in different directions. Sometimes people come along with me and sometimes they don't. I think it's important to take care of those people that come to those shows and are expecting a certain thing. It's important to keep that certain thing intact. I keep my solo-looping thing intact, but I'll add on that: maybe do a set of that, and then a set of a side project. Hopefully I've been able to keep the core fans happy who have supported me. Without them I'd be nothing. They're almost like shareholders.
LB: Is it true that you play your shows barefoot?
KW: Yeah. It started out as a total comfort thing--of being comfortable on stage. No matter where I was I'd feel the same because there's a constant. Once I started incorporating electronics my toes started becoming more important. Some of the gear I'm using has small buttons that I have to pinpoint with my big toe, and if I had shoes I could step on two of the buttons at once. It could be drastically bad.
LB: Full body experience.
KW: But it became less of a fashion statement and more of a necessity to be more precise with my button pressing.
LB: Do you have any other performance rituals?
KW: There are all kinds of things. There's a routine as far as loading in and changing strings. I don't hang upside-down and mediate.
LB: Do you have a most enjoyable performance experience?
KW: There are definitely many venues that are just an honor to play. But the sit-down listening rooms seem to be going on the wayside, at least in my world. What I call the NPR crowd, the older crowd; they tend to sit down and listen. It's fun to watch the interaction between the old school and the new school.
Sometimes there's a serious lack of respect in the new school vibe and I'm unable to play those places because that's not what the new school wants. I go and play and it's like a cocktail party. But places like Telluride Bluegrass Festival--that's an amazing place to play. Red Rocks is another amphitheater. The Egg in Albany is a really special performance hall.
LB: Doesn't the cocktail atmosphere accommodate for the 'high energy' that you were talking about?
KW: Absolutely. The high energy is super-important and it's what I've become more accustomed to. With that same idea there's been an incredibly high energy in a sit-down silent audience as well, with people hanging on your every breath and word and getting it. There's a certain element of high energy that comes with that. It's more intense. The energy is being emitted without standing up and dancing around and shouting out and throwing beer all over the stage.
LB: Have your kids expressed interest in becoming musicians yet?
KW: We're not pushing it. We've started them with piano lessons at Yamaha. I went to the same class when I was a kid and it's an interesting thing. My daughter is eight now and saying, "Daddy didn't have to learn to read music," so it's tricky to try and talk her into playing music. My son has really amazing vocal pitch. He's really in-tune. It's kind of startling, almost. But he's four and he's all over the place, and you can't really say, "why don't you sit down and sing us a song?" He has to come up with it himself.
LB: When all of the stars align.
KW: I put out a kid's record a couple of years ago too.
LB: Yeah! I listened to that.
KW: Oh. Sorry. A lot of those songs were made up before I had kids, and my girl started talking at 10 months, so I was playing this music and by the time she was four she knew a lot of these songs. They didn't even come out until a couple years later. I was putting finishing touches on this record and I brought her into the studio on this couch, and she sang along with all of these songs. We used a bunch of that. You can hear her everywhere on it. (Indistinguishable small girl squeaks from the receiver--Keller is temporarily lost) Sorry about that. But it looks like I might have to do the second kid's record now. You can't have one on one album and not do another.
LB: You should probably tell the Keller Williams Real Estate Agency to change its name.
KW: When it was just starting out people were pulling up the signs and bringing them to the shows. I don't even think I had a record yet. I got a letter from Keller Williams Reality to please ask my fans to stop pulling up signs. And of course there's bootleg parody t-shirts. My favorite is the "Keller Williams Real-ity." My mom is still adamant about having me play a company picnic or something.
LB: Sounds like good advertising actually.
KW: Yeah we could go with that.
LB: What kind of advice would you give to the future, struggling artists out there?
KW: Have a backup plan--some source of income. That way, you can approach your live shows for the love of it and not in the hope of making money. Once you put your eggs in the music basket it's just going to be a world of disappointment. If you have a source of income and don't have to look to music for it then you can have fun with it. Play the type of music that you want to play.
Keller Williams will be playing the Bluebird on Thursday, October 25, 9:00 PM
Post/Interview by Brandon Cook
