Brooks Williams is a stunning blues-soaked, rhythmic, and soulful guitarist. His musical vision spans continents and genres – blues, slide, swingin’ jazz, fingerstyle – and manifests itself in a hybrid of funky chords, walking bass lines, and fiery leads. With influences as diverse as John Fahey, Michael Bloomfield, and Joseph Spence, it is pleasantly difficult to pin Williams down. He’s a guitarist, a songwriter, and an interpreter.
Brooks is, as I have discovered, a man in love with the guitar and all musical styles. I do not even remember how I came to know of Brooks, but I was immediately drawn not to just his guitar but to his songwriting, a style rich in metaphor and sprinkled with spiritual allusions and downright joy -- a joy which must bubble up from the person I later met, an artist with the most winsome of personalities and evenness of attitudes. He is a pleasure to listen to, talk with, or be taught by. I've often thought that the only thing that keeps him from songwriting fame is the pure impossibility of doing everything well: he loves the guitar so much it's near impossible to love songwriting with the same intensity.
Dead Sea Cafe - Brooks Williams
When I learned that all of Brooks' albums on Green Linnet Records had fallen out of print, I was determined to do my best to resurrect them. What I settled for was licensing select tracks, chosen by Brooks, and releasing them with some newly recorded versions for an album entitled Dead Sea Cafe. I love every song on this record, from the metaphoric "Seven Sisters" to the joyful and direct "We Will Dance Someday." The album is a testimony to the fact that Brooks is a superb songwriter as well as guitarist.
Download and listen to Brooks' "Wanderer's Song for a taste of what he is like here: Wanderer's Song"
Skiffle-Bop -- Brooks Williams
With Skiffle-Bop, Brooks showed once again that he could write songs as good or better than those in his Green Linnet catalog. Though Brooks signed with the respected indie label Signature Sounds for this release, Silent Planet was able to release it in the Christian market. I can't say that it was well-received, not because it wasn't good but simply because the Christian market by its nature requires songs with overt statements of Christian belief, and while Brooks has such beliefs he rarely wears them on his sleeve, preferring songs more subtle and mysterious. The cover photo, with what appear to be two dead or somulant dogs, probably did not help either. But I like it.
Listen to my favorite cut, "Love Came Down," here: "Love Came Down"
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