Keller Williams

KELLER WILLIAMS

One-man bands are usually novelty acts, but Keller Williams is not the typical one-man band. Keller's quirky, humorous lyrics and rapid guitar lines make his live performances dazzling. His stage setup includes a plethora of acoustic guitars in various tunings, an electric bass and guitar, percussion instruments, a theramin, a raised drum kit that he plays with his hands, a midi-vibraphone, and you can hear them all at the same time. Through his live looping of instruments, he can appear to be a 15-piece band with backup singers, or just one man and a guitar. He is his own genre of music and classifies his sound as 'funk folk' and 'dance acoustic techno.'

With a large catalogue of original songs and hundreds of covers in his repertoire, including songs by Coldplay, Nellie, Martin Sexton, and Ozzie Osborne, Keller has become a large draw in clubs and theatres everywhere. He has sold-out a show as far away as Japan, played for 10,000 people in front of the U.S. Capitol, and embarked on his first European tour in November.

Playback recently spoke with Keller Williams about his newest album, Home, his songwriting process, and his live show.

Playback: Take me through how you write a song.

Keller Williams: Sometimes it comes from mindlessly doodling on the guitar, and just staring off into the distance, mixing and matching different chords, then all of a sudden there's a musical hook. Mostly the words come first in the form of the lyrical hook. Sometimes that comes from a tidbit of conversations with my friends. Other times it's just real life situations that happen.

I never really sit down and try to write. The majority of my writing comes in the time off the road. After a couple of weeks the boredom kicks in and that is when the creativeness starts to happen.

I've also been really getting into instrumental music, but it's definitely not my strongpoint. The instrumental music I've been getting into is mostly other people's instrumental music. Instrumentally, I've been getting into a lot of Fela Kuti, the Godfather of Afro beat. Also, Michael Hedges and Leo Kottke are just huge influences on me as far as guitar goes. Sometimes I feel like nothing hurts a song more than lyrics.

Your last album Laugh(besides the remix album, Dance) included a song called "God is My Palm Pilot," which shows your humor. Laugh seems like a very fitting title for your music.

My music is representative of my life. If I was depressed and angry and in pain, I'm sure it would come through in my music, but I'm not any of those things. I can totally respect the dark, angry music that's flooding commercial radio. I couldn't really write a dark negative angry song right now without having it be a joke.

I'm trying to make myself laugh, really. I put myself in the place of the audience member too and what they would want. I think it's my personality coming through as it only can, I guess. I try not to take it too seriously.

Can you give any insight how your songwriting has evolved? Do you have any advice for others?

I've never really changed anything. Life is good, as opposed to five years ago when we were doing 200 shows a year and breaking even. I'm very comfortable where it is right now doing these mid-sized clubs and theaters. Once you go a little bit higher into the bigger theaters or the bigger rooms, then the prices of these rooms go up and it takes more and more money to put on these shows. Therefore, there's more and more pressure to fill the seats.

I think that it's a bad idea, if you're trying to write songs for the radio, for a label, or for someone else to like. I think you should definitely be true to yourself.

You say that you're a music lover first, a musician second, and a songwriter third.

Basically that says it all. From '89 to '95, I would work in some menial temporary job, save as much money as I could, then go see ten Grateful Dead shows. I just loved being a part of the whole live music atmosphere. I love covering other people's music. I love that a lot more than saying I'm a songwriter/artist.

Your newest album Home, is your eighth album, but your first album where you are completely solo. How did it feel?

It felt great and comfortable. The finished product is obviously not as flashy as say, Laugh or Breathe. When I listen to Home, it is pretty much 100 percent representative of my own music. I had a firm grasp of the songs and the arrangements since I had been performing them for over a year live. I've always done that backwards in the sense of playing it live and then recording it.

In your live show, you perform using a Lexicon Jam Man that allows you to loop any number of instruments. There would be really no telling how many musicians are on stage without looking. Can you explain how you build a song onstage?

There is the delay unit, which goes into my soundboard, which goes into each channel of my soundboard, meaning I can loop anything on stage. I hit the foot pedal, I sing something or play something, and at the right time I hit the same button, and it repeats what I just played. That's the initial loop. I can layer a guitar line, a bass line and a vocal percussion line on top of that, then I could solo or scat over the top. Another button is hit to completely stop it. It's a very basic process that anyone can do, but it just takes a lot of practice and timing.

Do you still consider this your "loop phase"?

Yeah. It's just too much fun. The live album called Loop is mostly just guitar and bass. Now as each year goes more instruments keep getting added to the stage. The loop phase is still in grand effect. There is always that thought of adding a really good drummer and bass player. But there's also the regression idea of going back to one guitar and one vocal mic.

What is in store for the future?

I have a whole album and a half worth of new original material. My next idea is to have a different band on each song. I'd love to do a whole bluegrass record, a kids' record, an album of covers, and another remix dance album. There are years of recorded material ideas that I have.

For more information on Keller Williams, go to kellerwilliams.net

BY JON BAHR (Words and Photographs)