{"id":8909,"date":"2013-02-06T16:39:15","date_gmt":"2013-02-06T23:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=8909"},"modified":"2013-02-06T16:40:47","modified_gmt":"2013-02-06T23:40:47","slug":"holly-williams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2013\/02\/holly-williams\/","title":{"rendered":"HOLLY WILLIAMS"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"HOLLY WILLIAMS<\/h1>\n

Back on the highway and serving notice that she\u2019s here to stay \u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\n

It can be tough to live up to\u00a0family legacies\u2014and Holly Williams carries one monster pedigree. Her grandfather was legendary Hank Williams. Her father, Hank Williams Jr., is also a country giant, and her half-brother, cow punkster Hank III, has broken his own barriers. Is the long shadow of such success intimidating?<\/p>\n

\u201cIf anything, it\u2019s been kind of a challenge,\u201d she says. \u201cThere will always be people who say, \u2018Of course you\u2019re a singer. Yawn.\u2019 With the first record, I got comments like, \u2018She\u2019s just another famous person\u2019s daughter.\u2019 So you just have to keep proving yourself over and over, letting people know you\u2019re not just doing this because your dad and grandfather did it. I\u2019m different. I\u2019m not wearing a cowboy hat and going to country radio. People might compare me to<\/p>\n

my grandfather, but no one can really<\/p>\n

live up to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

As her new album\u2019s title The Highway<\/em> suggests, this Williams is keenly adept at plotting her own path, and is happy to stake her name on individual achievement. She\u2019s recorded three albums, owns and operates a high-end Nashville clothing boutique called H. Audrey, maintains a food and lifestyle blog, theafternoonoff.com, and<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

oversees her own label, Georgiana Records. \u201cI try to balance it all,\u201d says Williams, 31. \u201cBut at the end of the day, my touring and my music life reign over everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new album\u2014which Williams produced with Charlie Peacock\u2014is a star-studded affair featuring contributions from Jackson Browne, Jakob Dylan, Gwyneth Paltrow and Dierks Bentley. \u201cI\u2019ve gotten to work with my heroes,\u201d she beams. \u201cWe sent a song to Jackson Browne\u2019s management, and I thought, \u2018He\u2019s never going to reply.\u2019 And he wrote back saying, \u2018I think she\u2019s a great songwriter; I\u2019m available Tuesday.\u2019 To have someone like him say, \u2018I support you\u2019\u2014that to me is what it\u2019s all about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Williams\u2019 songs came quickly\u2014she wrote or co-wrote all 11 tracks\u2014the recording itself was often difficult. \u201cI was trying to get it just right without having it sound too polished. It was a stressful few weeks,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I like to call it \u2018exciting stress.\u2019 In the big picture, I\u2019m glad to have control. I\u2019m so much more involved on a day-to-day basis than I was with a major label because there isn\u2019t that disconnect, and I love that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams\u2019 career trajectory hasn\u2019t been easy. In March 2006, following the release\u00a0of her first album, 2004\u2019s The Ones We Never Knew<\/em>, she was involved in a near-fatal car crash that severely injured her arm, and forced her sister to undergo a series of 26 surgeries. \u201cAfter the accident, I didn\u2019t know if I\u2019d ever be able to play again,\u201d she says. \u201cBut after a near-death experience like that, it makes you want to live every day to the fullest. It sounds clich\u00e9 but it\u2019s so true. So I took a break for a while, got married [to musician Chris Coleman], spent time at the store and reassessed. I thought I\u2019d adapt to the family mode, but the highway came calling again. I can never get away from that live performance because I love telling stories through my music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite Williams\u2019 previous success she feels her new record is helping her make a career statement. \u201cIt\u2019s funny\u2014I\u2019ve had two albums, I\u2019ve been touring forever, I\u2019ve had critical acclaim, but yet I feel like this is my first album in a way,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m reintroducing myself and telling people that it\u2019s real this time. I\u2019m not going to take another four-year hiatus. In fact, I have part of the next record written already. I\u2019m a traveling singer-songwriter, and the music will keep coming.\u201d<\/p>\n

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


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

HOLLY WILLIAMS Back on the highway and serving notice that she\u2019s here to stay \u00a0\u00a0 It can be tough to live up to\u00a0family legacies\u2014and Holly Williams carries one monster pedigree. Her grandfather was legendary Hank Williams. Her father, Hank Williams Jr., is also a country giant, and her half-brother, cow punkster Hank III, has broken […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[5985,5885],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8909"}],"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=8909"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8914,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8909\/revisions\/8914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}