Keller Williams’ brain works the way I expect kitchen appliances to work in about 300 years. You might put kelp in there and a wedding cake might come out the other end. The tiniest shred of musical ideation will be permutated infinitely and transplanted in a number of realms before coming to rest. There are many sophisticated musicians capable of this kind of thing, but usually in a bloodless intellectual way that is somehow impressive but ultimately boring. Not for Keller. There’s a sense of death-defying adventure in his music. If there were a big sign on his guitar that said “DON’T HIT THE RED BUTTON” he would hit the red button.
Many four-piece bands cannot come close to erecting the towers of sound he cranks out in live performances. Trapping loops and jamming against them in layer after layer he somehow manages to combine the mix into a truly authoritative sound.
If you haven’t been to one of the shows you probably assume people are there to gape at the prodigious nature of the performance. In fact, as unusual and amazing as the delivery of the music is, the sound coming out of the speakers is a an invocation of amusement and partying. Though he is literally turning himself inside out to get this music out without accomplices, the sensation of the music is funky and fun.
Keller’s new life disk “Stage” is awash with a sense of jollity and playfulness. It obvious that he wants to derive the fullest amount of recreation possible from these performances. It is equally clear that the audiences feel the same way.
TVP: In your new live double CD “Stage”, the first disk is the West Coast gigs and the second is East Coast. Was I projecting or does it seem that the second disk is more expressive and the first is more technical?
KW: That’s the way the energies of the two coasts seem to work. The energy of the East Coast is more of a party vibe and out west it’s more of a sit-back and listen/pay attention kind of energy, though there’s a lot of similarity between both coasts.
TVP: I’ve been noticing that an entire genre of One Man Band has evolved over the last few years. If you go to an Open Mic show you can usually find one or two who demonstrate the ability to get lost in a sea of loops. You really pile the loops on and you never seem to get lost.
KW: I have a little theatre training and a background in drama. It has happened, a lot in fact, but I’ve gotten very good at covering it up. People who see me a lot can probably tell. The longer I’ve been doing this, the less it happens. . The machine can mess up and keep recording, so I end up with a Millie Vanilie scenario. That gets frustrating but dealing with that kind of thing strengthens you up for anything that can happen. When you’re doing something like this it is like walking a tightrope. There’s very little room for mistakes, but sometimes mistakes can be turned into Jazz!
TVP: The only other person who’s really succeeding at elevating this kind of thing to an art form is Howie Day. His approach is more like he’s collaborating with himself. Whereas, you conspire with or even against yourself- you ever see a band where every musician is trying to blow each .other off the stage?
KW: Yeah?
TVP: It’s like you’re trying to do that to yourself.
KW: There are never any rules. I can do anything I want. Technology is so cool these days that I if I don’t like what I’m doing I hit the ‘suck’ button and that layer is gone. I can lay a really cool improv and bring that to the front.
TVP: It strikes me that you are the kind of person who never runs out of ideas
KW: I like to stay busy thinking about what I’m doing and I always try to put myself in the place of the audience. If I go and see someone several times I would hope that they would incorporate different ideas. So I try to keep it fresh for the people who keep coming back.
TVP: I’m thinking about the effort level; nine out of ten musicians are banging their heads against the wall trying to come up with any idea. You seem to bee the kind of person who has to weed through a plethora of concepts to find the right one.
KW: There’s no shortage of ideas. Maybe it’s just my thinking process and how I go about thinking about things in a different way. There’s a comfort level to sticking with one idea if it works. There’s a selfish element to what I do. I learned a long time ago that you can’t please everyone all the time. So I have to focus on pleasing myself, at least on stage.
TVP: I think that’s communicated to the audience, if you’re having a sincerely good time up there.
KW: Its very self indulgent.
TVP: Do you think that having been a festival go-er has drawn you to a unique way of understanding your audience?
KW: I think so. It is all about your own way of thinking. People have different opinions about everything. I always try to put the music loving side of me up there- what would I want to hear if I was in the audience? I’ve been to enough shows and enough festivals that I have I pretty good idea of what I would want to see if I was in the audience.
TVP: You’re playing some really elaborate stuff, and no one is accusing you of playing Jazz.
KW: The real Jazz guys know I’m a poser, and the people who don’t know what Jazz is- well that speaks for itself. I love Jazz and I love to imitate it. I don’t actually think I’m playing Jazz.
TVP: I’d say that you play with idioms but you don’t buy them lock, stock and barrel.
KW: What do you mean?
TVP: You might play some Jazz but you wouldn’t be saying to yourself “I’m a Jazz man.”- that sort of non-verbal way that Jazz people have of letting the world know that they’re Jazz people.
KW: Yes.
TVP: It’s the ‘serious’ index in Jazz. There’s a balancing act going on. You’re playing serious music, but you’re not playing it seriously.
KW: I’m accepted in some circles as an entertainer. People like all kinds of music, just like me. I hope that the come for my interpretations of various genres.
TVP: If you work in a context where people aren’t required to take you with absolute seriousness, they have more fun and you have the latitude to so anything you want.
KW: Absolutely true.
TVP: Now on to the ‘anything you want’- is there anything that would not consider using as a musical instrument?
KW: I don’t think I’ve ever succeeded at using a violin, or a reed instrument. The reeds are really tough, the saxophone, the clarinet, flutes. The violin is something I can’t seem to comprehend.
TVP: if you expect anything like instant gratification, then the violin is out of the picture.
KW: Maybe a one stringed violin.
TVP: Ever since I started listening to you I’ll see something like a bamboo saxophone on the Internet and think ‘Gee, I wonder if Keller Williams knows about it.”
KW: I recently got into the theramin- that’s a fun instrument. I first came across it in the Beach Boys’ song “Good Vibrations” and I’ve seen them in documentaries. Phish broke one out a couple years ago. The more I use it the closer I get to being in key. It’s a very visual instrument and a lot of people don’t understand it- that is fun to watch.
TVP: When you write, do you use the same body of skills you use when you’re jamming?
KW: When I write it’s a little more mental than when I’m jamming. A jam session comes in with a little bit of structure when I set up the loop. The improvisation comes when I’m soloing over the loop. When I’m writing there’s more of a direction to go, certainly at least with the lyrics. You have a meaning, tell some kind of story, sum it up. Then I have characters, conflict. A jam has a little structure in the beginning and then improv.
TVP: You always start with a lyric when you’re writing?
KW: That’s normally what inspires me to come up with a song, kind of a hook chorus. I might put that to a melody without even picking up a guitar. Other times the song might be entirely written on the guitar, from mindlessly doodling. When there’s words involved usually the words come first.
TVP: When you play a cover live you Kellerize it. When you take your own studio material on the road do you create a Kellerization of a Kellerization?
KW: A lot of my songs get road tested before they get recorded. When I go to the studio I have a pretty good idea of how that song is going to be laid out on tape. A cover song I kind of absorb and my own little things go into it without my even trying.
TVP: It strikes me that you were very dedicated to the Dead at a point in your history. There’s a whole new generation of people who are doing the same things. It has become a tradition. Did you ever feel that you would become part of that process?
KW: It’s always been all about the music. I got into the scene and the community and making friends and going to shows. Then the shows stopped. They’re different now. It’s definitely not the same without Jerry. It’s not better or worse, it’s just different. But when Jerry died I just stayed with the music but the scene was basically over.
This was a time when my career started picking up. I started out as the ’ambiance’ guy in the corner in places where there wasn’t even a cover charge and I slowly started opening shows and performing in shows where people actually bought tickets. My career was picking up right about when Jerry died, which was a huge hit to everyone on the scene.
I have a couple of Dead lyric books and I can just go through page by page and play the songs, I love the songs so much.
TVP: I had thought at the time that a lot of people were being diverted from creating in their own right by being in Dead cover bands, but then al this incredibly diverse music started coming out of that.
KW: The Grateful Dead opened up a lot of peoples eyes in a lot of different ways. Whether it be the jumping around from genre to genre or just improvisation that took place. A whole method and way that they went about life touring.
TVP: You have a huge devoted following. That’s a phenomenon that usually happens to bands rather than solo performers. Listening to Stage I can see why. You had to be literally turning yourself inside out to be producing that much sound live.
KW: Well, thanks.
TVP: Who would you consider to be your influences?
KW: The main influences would be Michael Hedges, Jerry Garcia, and Bobby
McFarin, Victor Wooten , Michael Hedges being and inspiration as a solo artist who took it as far as he could go. Victor Wooten is enormous on the bass, before the technology, but I picked up on his looping ideas, Bobby McFarin as a vocal master, and Jerry, who’s soul and the energy he put into his singing, his certain specific noodly style that he would lead with just rings out in my head. If you put all that together you’ve got where I’m coming from.
TVP: Every instrument you use you also use as a percussive instrument.
KW: There’s something going on with me hitting any instrument to create a percussive quality.
TVP: You ever look out and see a few thousand people looking back and wonder what you’re going to do next?
KW: Oh yeah. I used to thrive off of not performing with a set list. I was ver proud of that for a very long time. The more I go back to the same cities the more I want to make sure I’m doing something new, so I pay more attention to what I played the time before with that particular set list. I’ll run that through the request list on my web site and try to make sure I have a unique show.
TVP: Can you tell me about Keller’s Cellar?
KW: It’s a self-indulgent narrated mix tape that goes on for an hour. The stations it plays on are mostly college stations and secondary markets. . I’m not dealing with commercial radio where I’d have to plug in ad windows every seven minutes. I get to work with stations where there’s creative control instead of massive central programming from some computer somewhere. It’s called “Keller’s Cellar Somewhat Rule-less Radio.” It’s all music from my own collection. I’m recording it in a recording studio and not a radio station. Since I’ve started the show a year ago I get lots of CD’s in the mail, which is really cool. I listen to every disk that comes to me.
TVP: What do you see happening in the next few years?
KW: I can only hope and wish that it continues to go the way it is now. I’m very comfortable at this stage now playing 1,000 and 1,500 seaters. Its’ large enough to have a certain kind of energy, but small enough to feel somewhat intimate. Once you go higher the rooms get bigger and the sound gets lost. Bigger than that and I’d need a lot more staff and sound equipment and the show becomes very expensive. Life’s too short for that kind of stress. If it does goes bigger, I could accept it. It could realistically get smaller. I’d gladly drop back into the smaller rooms. I don’t really have a backup plan, nor do I want one.
TVP: Anything else that you want to talk about?
KW: The best way to understand what I’m talking about is to come to a show. It’s very difficult to read about it. If you come check it out you’ll get a good idea of what it’s all about.