{"id":5862,"date":"2012-04-27T17:36:58","date_gmt":"2012-04-28T00:36:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=5862"},"modified":"2012-04-27T17:40:02","modified_gmt":"2012-04-28T00:40:02","slug":"michael-williams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2012\/04\/michael-williams\/","title":{"rendered":"MICHAEL WILLIAMS"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"MICHAEL WILLIAMS<\/strong><\/h1>\n
\n

Neither Hendrix nor his heritage keeps this guitar hero from reaching beyond the blues \u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"Michael Williams is well aware that he seems unusually cheery for a man who claims the blues as a birthright. \u201cAt first, I just wanted to be a guitar player,\u201d he explains. \u201cI never wanted to be a singer or a songwriter. But I found myself being pigeonholed and strictly defined as a blues player. That wasn\u2019t intriguing to me. I wanted to be able to display more aspects of what I do other than the blues.\u201d Contributing to Williams\u2019 buoyancy at the moment is the fact that he\u2019s currently tending to his two small children at home in Los Angeles. \u201cI try to keep my music toned down so as not to disturb the neighbors,\u201d he notes with a chuckle. \u201cSometimes we\u2019ve had a couple of complaints that it\u2019s too loud. I\u2019m thinking of moving out to the hills so I don\u2019t\u00a0have to worry anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Truth be told, L.A. is one of two places Williams calls home. The other is Seattle, where he migrated over a decade ago to pursue his career and find his muse. \u201cI headed off to Seattle to free myself from narrow typecasting and open up my perspective to larger possibilities,\u201d he says. The fact that Seattle was the hometown of Williams\u2019 hero, Jimi Hendrix, didn\u2019t hurt.<\/p>\n

After connecting with Hendrix\u2019s most trusted studio collaborator, producer and engineer Eddie Kramer, the formula for Williams\u2019 new Fire Red<\/em> album was complete. \u201cWe sent him a couple of tracks and he liked them,\u201d Williams says. \u201cNext thing we knew, we were in the studio recording this album with him. It was like we were wish-listed off our feet. Eddie is an amazing guy\u2014he\u2019s the ear of a rock \u2019n\u2019 roll god.\u201d<\/p>\n

For his part, Williams has an impeccable blues pedigree. His father was guitarist Larry \u201cJunior Medlow\u201d Williams, an indelible part of the Texas music circuit throughout the \u201970s and \u201980s\u2014although the younger Williams grew up surfing on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. \u201cYou can say part of the reason I sing the blues is because I no longer live there,\u201d he acknowledges with a laugh. Williams\u2019 debut, 2008\u2019s\u00a0King of the Dead<\/em>, was a no-holds-barred blues album. But for Fire Red<\/em>, he and his Michael Williams Band\u2014including keyboardist Ryan Shea Smith, bassist Gerald \u201cTugboat\u201d Turner II and drummer Darin Watkins\u2014opted to incorporate elements including rock and R&B, and even record a track (\u201cEntre Tus Ojos\u201d) in\u00a0Spanish. \u201cAll music comes from a root, and blues is the root that we all were spawned from,\u201d Williams figures. \u201cSo I try to explore different sounds while still focusing on where it all came from.\u201d<\/p>\n

Consequently, Williams\u2019 approach has evolved over time. \u201cI was drawn to the blues initially because I had so many emotions to release,\u201d he says. \u201cAt first playing the blues felt like an outlet to get things off my chest, a way to empty my trash from time to time.\u201d Nevertheless, he felt limited sticking to just one style. \u201cGrowing up as a child of a blues musician exposed me to the pitfalls of pursuing that very narrow approach,\u201d he says. \u201cPlus, there wasn\u2019t much money in that scene. My dad had to play four gigs a day to make ends meet. I also observed poor career decisions that were made on my father\u2019s behalf and poor decisions that he himself made. I knew if I wanted to do something with my career, it had to be bigger than the blues.\u201d Just another reason Williams keeps his goals broad and his mind open. \u201cI hope it comes across that I\u2019m not just a blues artist,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s\u00a0my mission statement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Lee Zimmerman<\/strong><\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MICHAEL WILLIAMS Neither Hendrix nor his heritage keeps this guitar hero from reaching beyond the blues \u00a0 \u00a0 Michael Williams is well aware that he seems unusually cheery for a man who claims the blues as a birthright. \u201cAt first, I just wanted to be a guitar player,\u201d he explains. \u201cI never wanted to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[3521,3522,3185,3523,3520],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5862"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5862"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5870,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5862\/revisions\/5870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}