Keller Williams will perform in Durango. Not the Realtor – the one-man band.
“You can expect dance grooves, funky grooves and hopefully a bunch of happy people bumping into each other,” the guitarist, bassist, drummer, pianist and harmonicist said from his Virginia home.
On Wednesday night at a sold-out show at Animas City Theatre, it’ll be just him, his instruments and a looping machine.
He’s not new to these parts, though. Before becoming a Telluride Bluegrass Festival regular, he was a spectator.
Williams began jamming in Colorado coffee shops shortly after moving to Steamboat Springs in 1995. Originally from Fredericksburg, Va., his parents took him there when he was a teenager, and he immediately became infatuated with the town; so later in life, he made the move. And he got what exactly he wanted: a free ski pass and six performances a week.
“In the summer of 1995, when I was 25, I decided to move out to Colorado. I didn’t really have a plan,” Williams said. With an advance ticket, he went to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and then headed to Steamboat afterward.
While there, he played any place that would have him, including one day a week in Breckenridge.
“I was playing six gigs a week during the ski season and pulling in about 400 dollars a week,” Williams said.
“I was rollin’!” he joked.
After being there for a while, he met his current wife, Emily, for the second time.
“We turned out to be from the same town and had actually met earlier in life,” he said. Now they have two kids; a 9-year-old daughter and a 5-year-old son.
Almost two decades after moving to Steamboat, at age 43, he’s made a name for himself and plays regularly in front of thousands of people.
Williams’ brand of music is unique. He’s all over the place, and it’s not easy to describe, which is probably a good thing because he doesn’t limit himself. But it’s definitely instrumental-heavy, with a mix of acoustic funk, bluegrass, rock, reggae and folk.
These days, he’s expanding his horizons. During his shows, every other song he plays “walks a fine line between acoustic and electronic,” he said.
He combines his sounds through a process called “looping,” which means he creates songs off-the-cuff while on stage, with the help of several instruments and some high-tech equipment.
Williams has also played with other musicians, such as jam-band String Cheese Incident, Bob Weir of The Grateful Dead, Béla Fleck, Victor Wooten, Michael Franti and many others.
He records on String Cheese’s record label, SCI Fidelity Records, which is an independent label based in Boulder.
A big break for Williams came in spring 1997 when String Cheese took him on tour as its opener.
“They got me out of the coffee shops and restaurants,” he said. They also collaborated on the album “Breathe,” which was released in 1999.
Since then, he’s released several albums, and now he’s headlining his own tours, including his current one, which will land in other Colorado hot spots such as Feb. 20 at Belly Up in Aspen and Feb. 21 at the Fillmore Auditorium in Denver.
He’s excited to be back on the road for the month-and-a-half long tour, which began in late January.
“It’s been awhile since I’ve been on a bus tour,” Williams said. “Get ready to rock. Get ready to party. Get ready to dance. Get ready to be freaky.”
mhayden@durangoherald.com
