Keller Williams has a fascinating musical history, having made a name for himself as a forceful one-man band the past dozen years. While Williams is a big supporter of his home state of Virginia, he holds Colorado close to his heart.
The singer-songwriter lived in Steamboat Springs from June 1995 to April 1997, a time that introduced him to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and String Cheese Incident – and reintroduced him to the woman who became his wife.
“I pretty much just lived with a bunch of people I knew from Virginia in a big house, and set out to play as much music as possible and ski and snowboard as much as possible,” Williams said recently.
In ’97, he and his wife and their dogs hit the road in support of a group he lovingly calls “the Cheese” and never returned to Colorado, at least as a resident. Now he’s celebrating the release of “Dream” with a co-headlining tour with Bob Weir. He plays Red Rocks on Tuesday, completing a circle he started more than a decade ago.
Five questions for Keller Williams:
Q: Did you record most of your new album in Virginia?
A: A good chunk of it, in Fredericksburg. But for some of the tracks I went to other artists. Like the String Cheese track, we did that in Boulder at a house studio. And I recorded the Bob Weir track at Bob’s house way outside San Francisco. The Martin Sexton one we did in Northampton, Mass. The Michael Franti overdub, some of that was recorded in the back of a tour bus in Santa Cruz between 2:15 and 2:36 a.m. one night.
Q: Such collaborative records are rarely easily recorded. How did this one go for you?
A: The tricky part wasn’t getting people to commit. Almost everyone said yes, but nobody actually gave me a date they could pull it off. In some cases, it took years to get these.
Q: Your previous record was you in the studio playing all the instruments yourself. Was it a trip to play with others?
A: This felt like the opposite direction. The cool thing was, I didn’t really have any kind of deadline. The concept was there, and I was committed to it, no matter how long it took.
Q: What’s it been like playing with the WMD’S, your band with Keith Moseley, Gibb Droll and Jeff Sipe? You took that band to Bonnaroo.
A: These are rock stars in my eyes. We did five shows total. First in front of 100 people, a local bar here in Fredericksburg, a warmup. The next four were festivals – one festival a weekend for a month. It was cool because it made me really excited.
Q: Was that a thrill for you, given your solo history?
A: I’ve always wanted to bring a band out and do the whole band thing. The solo thing started out because I was unable to afford (a band) … And then you do that for a while, and you want some change, some different artistic places to go. So many of my songs had never been played with a band, but can be transposed into a band scenario. And that breathes a whole new different life into them.
Pop music critic Ricardo Baca can be reached at 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com.
| Keller Williams
ROCK|Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison; 8 p.m. Tuesday with Bob Weir and Ratdog|$37.95-$43.50| via or 303-830-8497
