Keller Williams

Keller Williams has built a career on his uncanny ability to captivate a packed house-all by himself. He's been called a "one-man band." A "solo cult-hero." "Music's mad-scientist." All of which are clever labels for what seems to be an essential truth: On stage, Keller Williams works alone.

For over 100 shows a year, Williams has proven himself to be a master of improvisational performance art. In his one-man show, he pads barefoot from guitar to bass to percussion stations, using looping effects-and enough instruments to stock a strip-mall music store-to layer sound atop sound until the stage swirls with a full-blown composition.

While Keller has made liberal use of technology throughout his career, he knows that musicianship is ultimately a human undertaking. With a seemingly unquenchable thirst for all genres of music - bluegrass, jazz, and-who'd-a-thunk-it-hard rock - occasionally Williams puts unyielding faith in a backing band. Whether performing with solo or with Grateful Grass, Keller, Moseley, Droll and Sipe or Grunge Grass (just a few of his "band" projects), Keller Williams knows best how to please a music hungry crowd.

Keller Williams Band from Fredericksburg, Virginia is a National Act and is perfect to headline or support your festival, concert, college party, or other events! For booking Keller WIlliams, call Music Garden today at 800-689-BAND(2263) or email by clicking the more information tab on this page.

BIO

By Forrest Reda

Keller Williams by C. Taylor Crothers
The one-man-jam-band, K-Dub, a dancing man, the Freek, a one-man band for the digital age, Jam-Man, a guitar virtuoso, an irreverent musi-comedian. Keller Williams has been called many things over his career, but lazy is not one of them. Playing multiple instruments on stage at every show, Keller is continually on a mission to create a new tapestry of sound, looping himself into a sonic frenzy and writing his set list on the fly. It’s a lot of work to pull off every night, but somehow Keller manages, and the music world is a better place because of it.
In the beginning it was just a man and his guitar. Keller honed his chops in his native Virginia playing restaurant gigs that no one else wanted. A popular aspect of Keller’s live show, the relentless segues from song to song, originated in these early days, simply from wanting to avoid the uncomfortable silence between songs when it was just Keller and a few bartenders.


Keller Williams
Keller played in bands during his college years but wanted to use the money he made to tour not to record albums, which is what the bands invariably wanted to do. So, he set out on his own as a solo artist. After a few years on the coffeehouse circuit in Virginia, Keller relocated to Colorado. He wanted to get to the West Coast, but on the way he stopped to check out the Telluride Bluegrass festival, and playing in Colorado’s ski towns meant he could get lift tickets in exchange for playing music.
“As a teenager starting to play gigs, the West Coast was my goal. I just wanted to be able to play the West Coast somehow. When I started the only way to do that would be to get a record deal and be backed by some label to be able to go on tour. Then, the Internet came along, and then the tape trading thing helped me get my music over there without any kind of record deal.”

In Colorado, Keller was introduced to a ski town circuit jam band with a funny name, The String Cheese Incident. Impressed with their ability to jump from genre to genre, he went to as many shows as he could, eventually befriending the band due to their shared musical sensibilities. Keller’s ability to entertain an audience was duly noted, and when SCI expanded its touring radius outside of Colorado, Keller was invited along for the ride.


Keller Williams :: Bonnaroo ’03 by Dave Vann
The energy that Keller radiates into the audience at his shows is infectious, but his everyman persona attracts fans as much as his musical choices. When he first emerged onto the national stage in 1997 he seemed like just another dude from the lawn at a Dead show, able to lead a campfire in song with his trusty acoustic guitar and encyclopedic knowledge of lyrics.
Little did we realize that Keller had found the Pick of Destiny towards the end of the Grateful Dead’s run, probably at Deer Creek, which allowed him to become a guitar virtuoso with a unique sound that could fill theaters from coast to coast. An avid self-learner, Keller taught himself how to play guitar and loop his music in the live setting, in real-time. The problem was Keller was doing it in the most problematic way possible, utilizing hand cues to communicate with his soundman to control the desired loops. In 1998, Victor Wooten showed Keller how to use the Lexicon Jam Man to create and control loops, and Keller found the missing link – live phrase sampling. He has amazed audiences ever since with his apparent ability to control an ever expanding array of instruments onstage.
The scope of this project was such that it took three years from conception to reality, during which time Keller cranked out a concert DVD (Sight) a live album (Stage), and a bluegrass album with The Keels called Grass.

The busy touring lives of all the musicians involved, including Keller, at times made for some interesting recording sessions. Michael Franti recorded his rap section for the reggae-tinged “Ninja of Love” in the back of a tour bus. Keller says that the song was made up with Franti in mind. “What I wanted to do was try to write a song based on the hip-hop mentality. He’s definitely not solely a hip-hop artist. He’s all about the reggae and the funk and staying positive. I was trying to dive into a combination of reggae and the confidence of hip-hop [culture]. Rappers are always talking about themselves and Michael doesn’t really go there and say how cool he is. That’s kind of where I was going with ‘Ninja,’ trying to really magnify confidence. I don’t really have that kind of confidence. It was kind of like digging out words to get that sort of mentality, without coming across as conceited or pompous.”


Keller Williams
Humor is always present in Keller’s music and allows him to get away with the schoolboy sexual humor that crops up in his work like the suggestive “Restraint” that recalls ALO‘s “Girl I Wanna Lay You Down” in its playfully flirtatious lyrics. It’s the purest kind of a love song, written for his wife, and it shows the range of Keller’s music. One minute Keller is a funny guy with a guitar, the next he’s some kind of mad scientist genius type who can control sounds with his hands, at least while using his prized Theremin.
Like his music, Keller’s career path is utterly unique. While most bands splinter into assorted solo projects, the one-man-jam-band may soon form a band.

“I am definitely looking at band possibilities right now,” Keller says. “I kind of exhausted all my ideas on this record, as far as collaborations go, but there are always things that I’d like to do, like jump into an established band. We have one festival booked in Illinois in the summer called Summer Camp. A couple other festivals are still kinda teetering on possibilities. I’ve got a lineup kinda picked out. I’ve got some rehearsal dates, but I want to wait until it’s a real definite before I start name-dropping.”