Keller Williams is an American singer, songwriter and musician who combines elements of bluegrass,

folk Folk or Folks may refer to: Sociology *Nation *People * Folklore ** Folk art ** Folk dance ** Folk hero ** Folk music *** Folk metal *** Folk punk *** Folk rock ** Folk religion * Folk taxonomy Arts, entertainment, and media * Folk Plus or Fo ...

alternative rock Alternative rock, or alt-rock, is a category of rock music that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1970s and became widely popular in the 1990s. "Alternative" refers to the genre's distinction from mainstream or commerci ...

reggae Reggae () is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1960s. The term also denotes the modern popular music of Jamaica and its diaspora. A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, " Do the Reggay" was the first popular song to use ...

, electronica/dance,

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...

, funk, along with other assorted genres. He is often described as a 'one-man jam-band' due to his frequent use of live phrase looping with multiple instruments.Keller Williams, Guitarist And One-Man Jam Band
, by Jim Fusilli,

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

, February 22, 2006. Keller Williams was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia on February 4, 1970, and began playing the guitar in his early teens. He later matriculated to Virginia Wesleyan College in

Virginia Beach Virginia Beach is an independent city located on the southeastern coast of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. The population was 459,470 at the 2020 census. Although mostly suburban in character, it is the most populous city ...

where he received his degree in theater. After college, he moved to Colorado to advance his music career and expand his repertoire.

Touring

Though primarily a solo artist, Williams has toured with

Yonder Mountain String Band The Yonder Mountain String Band is an American progressive bluegrass group from Nederland, Colorado. Composed of Dave Johnston, Ben Kaufmann, Adam Aijala, and Nick Piccininni, the band has released five studio albums and several live recordings ...

The String Cheese Incident The String Cheese Incident (SCI) is an American jam band from Crested Butte and Telluride, Colorado, formed in 1993. The band is composed of Michael Kang (acoustic/electric mandolin, electric guitar, and violin), Michael Travis (drums and percus ...

Umphrey's McGee Umphrey's McGee is an American jam band originally from South Bend, Indiana. The band experiments with many musical styles, including rock, metal, funk, jazz, blues, reggae, electronic, bluegrass, country, and folk. They have toured regularl ...

and

Ratdog RatDog is an American rock band. The group began in 1995 as a side project for Grateful Dead guitarist and singer Bob Weir. After the Dead disbanded later that year, RatDog became Weir's primary band. They performed some Grateful Dead songs, a mix ...

, and has frequently performed at The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, the AllGood Music Festival, Summer Camp Music Festival, The Rothbury Festival, the Elysian Fields Music Festival, and Jam Cruise. Williams has an audio taping policy of his performances, and for non-commercial trading of the recordings, but use of video or flash photography, or any recordings for profit are prohibited.

Keller Williams Incident

''Keller Williams Incident'' is a collaborative performance between Williams and

. They have performed together, and Williams' 1999 album '' Breathe'' was released collaboratively under the name Keller Williams Incident. Williams and SCI began collaborating after Williams saw the band perform in Colorado, offering to play with them in exchange for free ski passes.

Keller Williams with Moseley, Droll and Sipe

Williams also frequently performs with a backing band as "Keller Williams with Moseley Droll and Sipe". Formed in 2007 as the WMDs, they first played at the

Bonnaroo The Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival is an American annual four-day music festival developed and founded by Superfly Presents and AC Entertainment. Since its first year in 2002, it has been held at what is now Great Stage Park on a farm in M ...

music festival. The group consists of Williams on rhythm guitar,

Jeff Sipe Jeff Sipe (born January 31, 1959), also known as Apt. Q258, is an American drummer. He is a rock and jazz fusion drummer but is proficient in other styles. He is a founding member of Aquarium Rescue Unit with Bruce Hampton. He was a member of Lef ...

on drums,

Keith Moseley Keith Moseley (born February 5, 1965) is an American musician and songwriter, who plays bass guitar among other instruments for The String Cheese Incident, a jamband from Boulder, Colorado, of which he is a founding member. He has written and p ...

on bass, and

Gibb Droll ''Gibb Droll'' is an American guitarist known for his blues-infused rock. He is the founder of the Gibb Droll Band, but more recently has played with the group Keller Williams with Moseley, Droll and Sipe (formerly the WMDs). He is currently a mem ...

on lead guitar. They changed their name to the WMDs in 2008.

Keller and The Keels

"Keller & The Keels" is a bluegrass project consisting of Williams and the husband and wife combo of Larry Keel and Jenny Keel. The trio released ''Grass'' in 2006, a collection of both original and cover songs. They released ''Thief,'' an album of cover songs, in May 2010. A new album, "Pick", with The Travelin McCoury's, was released in July 2012.The most recent Keller and The Keels album is ''Speed'', which was released in 2019. It features a Larry Keel song, a Keller song, and several covers.

Instruments

A self-taught musician, Williams usually performs with a variety of instruments connected to a Boss Loop Station RC-300 phrase looper pedal, which allow him to play a riff once on an instrument, record, and repeat it. He also uses a Gibson Echoplex Digital Pro looping unit for that effect. He often then records and loops an accompanying instrument. This allows him to play unaccompanied on stage, helping him to recreate the sound of a full band. He also uses a wide variety of effects, including an envelope filter expression pedal, wah pedal, a Line 6 tap delay, a Roland GR-55 guitar synth, a Line 6 M13 Stompbox Modeler Guitar Multi Effects Pedal, and a Talk Box. His main guitars used are a Martin HD-28 and D-35, an Alvarez/ Joe Veillette MTB baritone, a Gibson Chet Atkins SST Acoustic Electric Guitar with synth pickup routed to a Roland synth processor, a Fender Precision bass, a Becker Acoustic Retro, an Avante baritone acoustic guitar, a Rick Turner baritone 12-string, a Tacoma Thunderhawk, an early 1950s tempo and a Gordon Anderson custom 8-string. In addition, Williams incorporates a variety of acoustic and electric percussion instruments into his live sets, most notably a Roland Handsonic HDP-15 drum machine and a

Korg , founded as Keio Electronic Laboratories, is a Japanese multinational corporation that manufactures electronic musical instruments, audio processors and guitar pedals, recording equipment, and electronic tuners. Under the Vox brand name, th ...

Wavedrum. He also frequently performs on piano, a

theremin The theremin (; originally known as the ætherphone/etherphone, thereminophone or termenvox/thereminvox) is an electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact by the performer (who is known as a thereminist). It is named afte ...

, a

Kaossilator, a Macbook, and a set of Boomwhackers percussion tubes.

Other projects

Williams is the host of the radio show Keller's Cellar. In 2009, Williams started the "Once a Week Freek" on his website, where every week he released a new song from his album "Odd". Upon release of every song on the album, he released the entire album in one download. Due to the success of this idea, Williams chose to keep the "Once a Week Freek" project going and released a new song/video or two each week. These tracks consisted of live performances of previously recorded songs, unreleased covers of other bands' songs, or just different renditions of his own recorded music. Williams played as a member of the

Rhythm Devils The Rhythm Devils is a band led by former Grateful Dead drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart. Grateful Dead The Rhythm Devils had their origins as an informal but frequent fixture in the Grateful Dead concert repertoire starting in the mid-t ...

with Grateful Dead drummers

Bill Kreutzmann William Kreutzmann Jr. ( ; born May 7, 1946) is an American drummer and founding member of the rock band Grateful Dead. He played with the band for its entire thirty-year career, usually alongside fellow drummer Mickey Hart, and has continued to ...

and Mickey Hart at the Gathering of the Vibes festival in 2010. Williams then appeared with the Rhythm Devils in nine July shows on their summer tour. Kdubalicious is a project involving Keller Williams on bass/guitar, Jay Starling on dobro/keyboards, and Mark D on drums. Kdubalicious is Reggae/ Dub/ Funk. Keller's project Kdubalicious formed in late 2010, and the group continues to play occasional shows. There was a unique winter concert held on a turf field in Fredericksburg, VA featuring Kdubalicous with Larry Keel, Jenny Keel, and John Starling in December 2010.

Discography

Albums

*'' Freek'' (1994) *'' Buzz'' (1995) *''

Spun ''Spun'' is a 2002 American black comedy crime drama film directed by Jonas Åkerlund from an original screenplay by William De Los Santos and Creighton Vero, based on three days of De Los Santos's life in the Eugene, Oregon, drug subculture. The ...

'' (1999) *'' Breathe'' (1999) – ''(with

as Keller Williams Incident)'' *'' Loop'' (''live'') (2001) *''

Laugh Laughter is a pleasant physical reaction and emotion consisting usually of rhythmical, often audible contractions of the diaphragm and other parts of the respiratory system. It is a response to certain external or internal stimuli. Laughter ...

'' (2002) *'' Dance'' (2003) *'' Home'' (2003) *''

Stage Stage or stages may refer to: Acting * Stage (theatre), a space for the performance of theatrical productions * Theatre, a branch of the performing arts, often referred to as "the stage" * ''The Stage'', a weekly British theatre newspaper * Sta ...

'' (''double live'') (2004) *''

Grass Poaceae () or Gramineae () is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos and the grasses of natural grassland and species cultivated in lawns a ...

'' (2006) – ''(with Larry and Jenny Keel as Keller & The Keels)'' *''

Dream A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around 5 to 20 minutes, althou ...

'' (2007) *'' 12'' (2007) *'' Rex'' (''digital download'') (2008) – ''(with

Jeff Austin Jeff Austin (April 25, 1974 – June 24, 2019) was an American mandolinist and singer best known for being a founding member of the Yonder Mountain String Band. Biography Although Austin was born in Arlington Heights, Illinois, United S ...

and

as Grateful Grass)'' *''

Odd Odd means unpaired, occasional, strange or unusual, or a person who is viewed as eccentric. Odd may also refer to: Acronym * ODD (Text Encoding Initiative) ("One Document Does it all"), an abstracted literate-programming format for describing X ...

'' (2009) *''

Thief Theft is the act of taking another person's property or services without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it. The word ''theft'' is also used as a synonym or informal shorthand term for some ...

'' (2010) – ''(with The Keels as Keller & The Keels)'' *'' Kids'' (2010) (Children's Album) *'' Bass'' (2011) *''Pick'' (2012), with The Travelin' McCourys *''Keys'' (2013), (Album of Grateful Dead covers played on Piano) *'' Funk'' (2013), with More Than a Little *''

Dos DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

'' (2014) – ''(with

and

as Grateful Grass)'' *'' Vape'' (2015) *'' Raw'' (2017) * '' Sans'' (2018) * '' Add'' (2019) * ''

Speed In everyday use and in kinematics, the speed (commonly referred to as ''v'') of an object is the magnitude Magnitude may refer to: Mathematics *Euclidean vector, a quantity defined by both its magnitude and its direction *Magnitude (ma ...

'' (2019) (with Larry and Jenny Keel as Keller & the Keels) *''Cell'' (2020), (with Erothyme) *''Grit'' (2022)

Compilations

*''High Times Presents Rip This Joint'' – Various Artists (2001)

Guest appearances

*''Hellhound Blues'' -

Pretty Gritty Pretty may refer to: *Beauty, the quality of being pleasing, especially to look at **Physical attractiveness, of a person's physical features Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Pretty'' (advertisement), a 2006 television advertisement for Nike ...

(2012) *''The J. Case Show'' – Julian Casellas (2010) *''Seeds'' – Martin Sexton (2007) *''Chateau Benares'' – Sanjay Mishra (2006) *''Collision'' – DJ Harry (2004) *'' On The Road: 04-14-02 Ann Arbor, MI'' –

(2002) *'' On The Road: 04-13-02 Chicago, IL'' – The String Cheese Incident (2002) *'' Solar Igniter'' – Modereko (2001)

Videos

Sight Visual perception is the ability to interpret the surrounding environment through photopic vision (daytime vision), color vision, scotopic vision (night vision), and mesopic vision (twilight vision), using light in the visible spectrum reflecte ...

(2005, DVD)

References

External links

* *
Mike St. Thomas, "Keller Calling: An Interview with the King of Energy", Outside Bozeman
{{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, Keller 1970 births Jam bands Living people People from Fredericksburg, Virginia Guitarists from Virginia Virginia Wesleyan University alumni 21st-century American guitarists