If you went to this week’s Thursday at the Square concert knowing nothing about its headliner, Keller Williams, just watching his roadie would have been interesting enough.
On several stands around the stage, resting at different heights, he placed two electric guitars (of both the six- and 12-string varieties), two acoustic guitars and a bass. Instead of the expected drum kit and keys to accompany the axes, there was a jungle of pedals; a drum machine propped on a hi-hat stand; and a hefty, supercomputer-looking module.
There seemed to be no rhyme and reason to it all — until Williams began his set, walking up the steps on the left of the stage, all by his lonesome. As he ripped into the first song of the night, the reality would have hit you like a ton of bricks: This dude does it all.
A gifted guitarist with an inspired spontaneous streak, Williams builds his songs up from the roots right on stage, via a high-tech system of samplers and other musical gadgets. The instrumental cut that kicked off the show began with a slinky, harmonic and hammer-on-laden groove, which Williams looped. Then he laid a simple bass line underneath, and looped that.
After sauntering over to the drum machine, he pasted a beat together and looped it. Another acoustic riff ensued, filtered through a wah-wah pedal. Williams then dug into his pocket and pulled out a juice harp, which he also looped. Finally, he jumped onto the electric guitar, run through some kind of patch that made it sound like a marimba. And with one tap of his foot on his floor module, this delightfully intricate cacophony cut out on the downbeat.
This set the tone for the rest of the evening, which found Williams hopping around from instrument to instrument.
It’s so much fun to watch the guy create, you could almost forgive him if the music wasn’t very good. Luckily, that’s not the case. While Williams’ songs aren’t as original as the way he puts them together, they’re an undeniably pleasing stew of playful melodies and explosive playing. The guy practically destroys the guitar every time he picks it up. On songs such as “Rainy Day,” a cut from his latest album, “Dream,” his combination of tangled low-register licks and chunky power chords is both a pleasing and challenging listen.
Even so, after about an hour, all his songs started to sound the same. But at that moment, as if Williams could feel himself getting stale, he pulled out the high point of the night: an extended, devilishly creative mash-up of the Grateful Dead song “Scarlet Begonias” and Ani DiFranco’s “Freakshow.” As he busted out the chorus of the latter (in three-part harmony with himself), “You need a lot of love and compliance,” it was all too clear that the audience was getting both in spades.
Appeared in the August 10, 2007, edition of The Buffalo News.