One-man jam
band Keller
Williams reveals
the trick to
avoiding pesky
loop drift, and
tells how playing
with the String
Cheese Incident
inspired him to
dive headlong
into bass on his
new reggae-
trio album.
BY JOE CHARUPAKORN
Back in the early ’90s, Keller Williams got tired of fading
into the background as the bar-flies at his weekly gigs focused on
inhaling every last 25-cent, happy-hour wing and half-price pitcher
of Rolling Rock. It’s not easy
being a solo acoustic artist when
the crowd treats you as nothing
more than a human jukebox. The
volume and spectacle of a full
band might have helped get audiences to take more notice, but
it would have also meant losing
money at each gig. So, Williams
decided to begin his one-man-band looping explorations. That
changed everything. “Then people
started paying attention,” says the
Fredericksburg-Virginia native.
Soon the crowd was dancing to
his loop-a-licious grooves and
Williams began garnering major
buzz in the music scene.
