Josh Williams On — An Open Road
Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine
May 2010, Volume 44, Number 11
In the Ryman Auditorium on the night of October 1, 2009, presenter Tim Stafford opened the square, red envelope and announced Josh Williams as the IBMA guitar Player Of The Year. It was Josh’s second win in a row, and he received the award graciously, citing his mentors and influences, notably Doc Watson and Tony Rice. To be honored by your peers as Guitar Player Of The Year in a music that respects instrumental talent might be seen as the culmination of a long career, but, for Josh Williams, it’s just the beginning.
At 29, Josh has played music since he as five years old. Born in Murray and raised in Benton, Ky., his grandmother, Mary Neale Williams, taught him his first chords on a ukelele. She was a poet and entertainer at civic clubs and other events in the region and could also play guitar and mandolin. Josh’s dad, Tony Williams, taught him his first chords on the guitar. Then Hee Haw! changed everything.
When he was eight years old, sitting at home watching the TV show, he saw Mike Snider and Roni Stoneman play double banjos. Josh started yelling for his dad who was in the shower, “Come here quick!” Thinking that Josh was in trouble, his dad came out of the shower with a towel, dripping wet. Josh pointed to the television. Banjos!
Soon, Josh began taking lessons from Scottie Henson, a banjo player and teacher in western Kentucky. Josh remembers, “The first day, Scottie showed me how to hold the banjo and the basic rolls, and he taught me a song that he wrote just for beginners. I got all that down the first day and, soon after, we were working through the Foggy Mountain Banjo album.”
Josh’s parents were a big influence. “I can remember my mom singing in church,” he recalls. “My dad and her were big fans of Ian and Sylvia and sang a lot of those songs like ‘Darcy Farrow,’ ‘Old Flames,’ and ‘Summer Wages.’ Even when I was in diapers, they’d have friends over and I would crawl into the living room and listen and put my hand on the guitar. I was always around it, and my dad had a big Flatt & Scruggs record collection.”
Josh knew early on that he wanted to be a professional musician and he was mature enough, even then, to know that the more instruments he could play, the more valuable he would be to a band as a sideman. He taught himself to play mandolin and resonator guitar, and began playing more and more guitar. He quickly became a regular on the contest circuit (along with friends such as Cody Kilby), his dad driving him to the contests and festivals.
At the age of ten, Josh recorded an album Tall Pickin’ that featured him on a number of instruments, primarily banjo. Two cuts, “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” and “Nashville Blues,” received national airplay. Years later, when Josh was touring Scotland with Special Consensus, Scottish bluegrass promoter and banjoist John Sheldon got out his banjo and played one of Josh’s songs that he’d learned from Tall Pickin ’.
Two years after releasing his first album, Josh appeared on the Nickelodeon Network’s TV show Nick News and then, in front of an IBMA awards show audience in 1993, he performed as part of the Bluegrass Youth All-Stars, a kid supergroup organized by Pete Wernick and included Chris Thile, Michael Cleveland, Cody Kilby, and Brady Stogdill.
As a member of a similar group, Josh recorded an album for New Haven Records, Somewhere Down The Road, and worked a season of 18 shows per week at Opryland USA with the band Hyper Drive that featured Chris Thile and Chris’s dad Scott, both of whom had recently moved to Kentucky. Josh says, “Being around Chris probably helped my playing more than anything. He would play mandolin and I would play guitar, and it would make me try things I’d never tried before. We would play an instrumental version of ‘Bury Me Beneath The Willow’—in every key, then in every minor key.”
By the age of 13, Josh could play banjo, mandolin, and guitar better than most adults and was listening heavily to Earl Scruggs and J.D. Crowe. “I literally immersed myself in every record. I would sit down with the banjo and mandolin and guitar and play everything. I would come home from school and play music and go to sleep with the record playing.”
In talking about his years of learning bluegrass, Josh describes a process that’s very rare, which shows his innate ability to reach into deeper levels of the music. Josh recalls, “I remember when [Lonesome River Band’s] Old Country Town came out. I would play it all the time, even while I was asleep. One morning I woke up with it, but it sounded different. I almost didn’t recognize it. I was puzzled. But, then I realized that I knew all the parts to it. I could literally play every break on that album on all the instruments.”
Even at an early age, Josh was precocious enough to go up and introduce himself to players such as J.D. Crowe and John Hickman. J.D. Crowe & The New South were playing at Otter Creek Park outside of Louisville. During the festival, Josh ran backstage and Steve Chandler introduced him to Crowe and they struck up a friendship. “J.D. is my biggest hero in the world,” Josh says. “I was fortunate to meet him at nine or ten years old. He never treated me like a kid and that always stuck with me.”
Josh met John Hickman in a similar circumstance at the IBMA Fan Fest in 1990 in Owensboro, Ky. “When John Hickman came offstage, I introduced myself to him and when I cut my first banjo record at ten years old, we sent it to John and he gave us a nice quote for it.”
While at Marshall County High School, Josh was filling in with Special Consensus a couple of times a month, but he knew exactly what he was going to do after graduating. “I graduated on a Friday in May and that Monday, I went to work with Special C, and we did a week in Silver Dollar City.” Josh spent five years on the road with the band, followed by four years of touring with Rhonda Vincent & The Rage. Those nine years gave Josh a solid grounding in the bluegrass world of touring and performing.
Josh remarks about Greg Cahill, “Greg’s one of my favorite people in the whole world. He showed me how you run a band. There is no giving up, no quitting because you don’t feel like it’s working. You just buckle down and work harder. Greg always made us a good living. He is a true professional.” Josh didn’t become the Special Consensus lead singer until about two years into his stint. But, as usual, once he began singing, Josh delved into the deeper levels and quickly became one of the most powerful lead singers in bluegrass. His singing heroes are Tony Rice, Keith Whitley, and Dan Tyminski. A breakthrough for him came, though, while at IBMA’s World Of Bluegrass one year as he was listening to songwriter Craig Market perform. Josh was amazed by his soulfulness and asked Market how he sang like that. Josh described it: “Ron Stewart was playing guitar and Craig had his eyes closed and was just singing the dog out of these songs. I asked him, ‘How do you do that?,’ and he said, ‘You just get inside the song and turn it inside out and make that song about you.’ I thought, ‘That’s genius.’”
Another good piece of advice Josh received early on was from Alan Munde, who taught Josh about “enunciating” on the banjo, making every phrase distinct and clear. “I learned at a young age from Alan, if you ‘mumble’ on your instrument, people don’t understand. So, I started putting that in my playing. That is a goal of mine—to be clear.” And that distinctness and clarity is what has put Josh head and shoulders above other guitar players of his generation. He also always plays directly to the song and while he can put in hot licks as well as anyone, he prefers to hear the guitar sing in order to draw out the most emotional response from the song.
In December 2003, Rhonda Vincent called Josh and asked if he’d be interested in trying out on guitar. She offered him the job and he spent the next four years in her band on the road. Josh says, “Rhonda is so devoted to what she does. She’ll be on the road when others are no longer there. I love her to death and miss all of them greatly.”
Then, in 2007, Josh decided to lead his own band and debuted at the Station Inn in Nashville in February of 2008. “The band now are really close friends of mine,” says Josh. “It just felt right to start the band. Jim Roe [booking agent] is a great friend. I’m just lucky to have surrounded myself with great people.” The current band consists of Jason McKendree on banjo, Randy Barnes on bass, Greg Blaylock on resonator guitar, and Chase Johner on mandolin. It’s a tight ensemble, all good friends, but even if and when there are changes of personnel, Josh has learned how to keep a band going and how to piece together the right players.
Josh’s first two solo albums on Pinecastle Records met with critical success: Now That You’re Gone (2001), Lonesome Highway (2004), and now he’s completed his third album, Down Home, just released. “I feel great about it,” he says. “I think it’s the best thing I’ve done. Pinecastle believed in me and let me produce it. It’s exactly what I wanted to do.” Songs on the album include a few that he used to perform with Rhonda (but never recorded), and some old songs that he used to do with Special Consensus on live shows. He’s also gathered a lot of those people who he’s played with over the past ten years, including Tony Rice, Rhonda Vincent, Jamie Dailey, Darrin Vincent, Kenny Ingram, Mickey Harris, Greg Cahill, Stuart Duncan, and others. And, he expands his sound a bit with Doug Jemigan on steel guitar. Josh adds, “I’m a traditionalist at heart. I love Flatt & Scruggs, but at the same time I like a lot of old country music. Bluegrass is country, so why not incorporate a little of that old country sound into bluegrass again?”
A sparkling DVD of guitar work also appeared in 2007, produced by Dan Miller
of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine. Titled Guitarmageddon: Live At the Station Inn—Josh Williams, Andy Falco & Chris Eldridge, the DVD captures a great evening of guitar work by three young turks, each with their own style, but playing with and off of each other with great respect for the music and each other in the live setting of the Station Inn.
Not yet thirty years old, Josh Williams has already spent a third of his life on the road playing bluegrass. But he’s approaching this next phase of his music career with humility and the knowledge that there’s a lot of work to do to get gigs and build a band and a career. He’s had great mentors throughout his life; his parents, Greg Cahill, and Rhonda Vincent. It’s hard to think of another person in this new generation of bluegrass artists who has seen more of the breadth and depth of bluegrass. And there’s a lot more music to come.
“It’s still an open road and anything can happen,” he feels. “I’m just trying to do my thing and ride the wave while it’s going. I’m not in it for the publicity or the money. I just truly love what I do.”
