INTERVIEW: Keller Williams on Grateful Grass at the Hops and Harvest Festival
09/10 @ Empire State Plaza, Albany
Photo by Emily Butler
“The band is tight, the harmonies are tight…everyone just knows where the other is going. That is the Grateful Grass that is coming to Albany.”
Albany’s annual Hops & Harvest Festival is returning to the Empire State Plaza this Wednesday, September 10th. This year's music headliner is Keller Williams’ Grateful Grass, a project that features Williams’ unique takes on both bluegrass and the music of the Grateful Dead. In anticipation of this event, we got to chat a bit about his upcoming performance, what makes him tick, and of course—The Dead.
Williams is an extremely accomplished musician, having recorded and released 30 albums as both a solo act and with others, spanning the genres of funk, bluegrass, alternative rock, and reggae. What he might be best known for however is his one-man band act, which incorporates live looping of several instruments to create layers and ultimately result in complete songs that form right before the audience's eyes. The one-man band was born from him not wanting to work a regular day job.
“The idea from the beginning was to play music for a living, hopefully with other humans, connecting on stage while playing together, building a camaraderie,” Williams shared with me. “But the solo gigs started to pay the bills, which ended up being five to six nights a week at places that weren’t necessarily music venues.
“No one was really paying attention to me, so I eventually started to not pay attention to them, and that's when the looping came about. It started as a way to entertain myself a little bit more and once I introduced the bass and moving air is when people started to dance, and that’s when tickets started to sell.”
From then on, Williams has been able to pursue his original hope of playing with other people. His countless collaborators have included members of The Grateful Dead, The String Cheese Incident (SCI), Yonder Mountain String Band (YMSB), The Traveling McCourtys, and others. He is currently playing with The Hillbenders out of the Midwest (in which he plays what he calls his “poser Mando,” a four string guitar that he plays like a mandolin) and of course, his Grateful Grass.
“Grateful Grass started when I was playing the Fillmore in Denver for a Rex Foundation, which is an umbrella organization started by the Grateful Dead,” Williams said. “I wanted to do something extra, so I called up my friends Jeff Austin [mandolin player for YMSB] and Keith Mosley [bass player for SCI] who lived in Colorado and sent them over 15 versions of Grateful Dead songs two weeks in advance. We got together the day of the show, put it together, and played it. It blossomed from there.”
Requests for Grateful Grass followed from different festivals, which entailed him looking at the festival lineup and handpicking fellow musicians to join him in collaboration for that particular performance. It eventually got to the point where he had 20 different musicians and 20 different Grateful Dead songs, flowing around whoever was available at the time of whichever festival they were to perform at. That has now morphed into a set lineup over the past couple of years. While Williams admitted to a certain excitement in putting together different lineups and getting together hours before a show, he loves what the set lineup brings and gave a glimpse of what Albany can expect on Wednesday.
“The band is tight, the harmonies are tight, and we can play all of these different arrangements, intertwinging different songs in and out from each other, incorporating different licks from other songs in the middle of jams—everyone just knows where the other is going. That is the Grateful Grass that is coming to Albany,” he said with pride.
Grateful Grass brings loose, psychedelic interpretations of Grateful Dead songs in bluegrass fashion, to which Williams quipped, “If you like traditional Bluegrass, you probably won’t like this. If you like the Grateful Dead the way the Grateful Dead does it, then you probably won’t like this. The fact that it’s a free show adds to the whole experience though, because I'm able to give 100% refunds to the people who don’t like it!”
This is in no way a reflection of William’s love of The Grateful Dead, as he said they were the soundtrack of his life from ‘86-’95, having seen them on multiple occasions. When he wants to relive what he experienced, he’ll throw on Hamilton, Ontario from March of 1990, or JFK Stadium in Philly from ‘89. It’s just in typical Keller Williams fashion, there’s no fun in doing things “normal” and that’s what makes him one of the most unique artists around.
The Albany Hops & Harvest Festival runs from 5pm-9pm with Keller Williams’ Grateful Grass hitting the Main Stage at 7:45pm. The other acts performing are Southern Maine based trio, Old Hat Stringband, who bring their brand of folk and bluegrass to the Main Stage at 5:30pm, and the Ontario, Canada-based four piece bluegrass group, The Slocan Ramblers, who will be performing on the B-Stage at 6:30pm.
For more information, visit https://empirestateplaza.ny.gov/hops-harvest