Sam Williams.Photo: Alexa King
“I definitely broke and went through a really, really, really hard time,” he said, his eyes welling with tears. “I’m still climbing out of it. But it’s the ‘still climbing’ part that is the most important. That’ll just always be a big part of my story. I hope that [when I do write about it], that can be inspiring to other people, too.”
Sam Williams' Glasshouse Children.Alexa King
“In reflection, my main message of the album is that vulnerability is power,” Williams said. “I feel like that’s something that stands out — just being able to give words and energy to stuff that often stays ignored. That doesn’t help anything. I’m just being myself and thought that was the best thing to do.”
Williams has only been a songwriter for four years, but he said his dad tells him he’s the best singer in the family. In addition to his father and grandfather, Williams’s half-brother Hank III and half-sistersHilary Williamsand Holly Williams have also released music.
“I’ve always been encouraged,” he said. “I just wasn’t receptive of it when I was young. It’s easy to feel fraudulent. Even if I wrote the songs and made the whole album, there’s such a really a high bar, like, way over my head that I can try my best to step out from, but it’s still there.”
He sings about his legacy in “Can’t Fool Your Own Blood,” a song about family ties and dangerous patterns. Williams isn’t a renegade in the same notorious ways as his father and grandfather — but his articulate truth-telling makes him a different and much-needed breed of country music outlaw.
On the album’s title track, he sings:The black gate at the bottom of a long driveway/ It’s just as hard to get inside as it is to get away/ A house atop the hill/ Bright white paint/ Looks pretty as a picture but Lord knows it ain’t/ Cause its hidden bottles and wasted dollars/ And broken-hearted sons and daughters/ Do you think we’re paying/ for the sins of our fathers still?
“It’s the cornerstone of the album,” Williams said of “Glasshouse Children.” “It really accurately creates more of a landscape and a picture for the album. It’s intentional with the arrangements on it and the strings and the lyrics and rises in it.”
Dolly PartonandKeith Urbanjoin Williams on different songs. Urban plays electric guitar on “Kids,” and Parton duets with Williams on “Happy All the Time.” The song is a turn of phrase in which both singers testify that money can’t buy happiness.
If money could buy happiness, we’d be happy all the time/We’d be rich, but not like we are/We’d trade the gold for love in our hearts.
“Happy All the Time” was completed more than two years ago, and Williams struggled to keep it a secret.
“It’s crazy how great our voices sound together on it,” he said. “I have a very unique style and a raspiness. It’s just really, really cool. [Parton] just kind of stamped me on my forehead. It’s just magnificent to see an icon of everything do something like that for no reason other than because they loved the song and like the artist. It’s not what people expect.”
“Hopeless Romanticism” is a different kind of surprise. The lyrics include language that gets albums stamped with a warning label. However, he doesn’t use the word in a way that feels like profanity for shock value – instead, it reads as an expression of frustration and pain.
The song begins with:“I’m making friends with the self-medicators for first aid.“Then leads into the chorus:“Hopeless romanticism is f—ing narcissism. I need to find a meeting, learn something about love addiction.”
Williams didn’t think “Hopeless Romanticism” would ever appear on one of his albums. He appreciates it for the fresh elements he feels it brings to the collection and the doors it opens to opportunities in other areas of music.
“It’s just about creative expression,” he said. “I really look up to the way that someone likeTaylor Swifthas gone from beautiful storytelling and a really Nashville career to having complete artistic freedom and expression. I think that’s really, really dope.”
Sam Williams.Alexa King
He knows Katie would think it’s dope, too. Williams said that even when he sent her terrible music, she was lavish in her praise. While he couldn’t write a song for Katie after her death — she’s still represented on the album. Williams penned “The World: Alone” the year before she died. He thought it was about wanting to see the world and missing out on love lost. What he realized when Katie passed away is that the song was about “the premise that when you lost someone to God, they get to show [the world] to you instead.”
“The song took on a significance afterward because of how clairvoyant it was to that situation,” Williams said. “I think we all have a responsibility to live the best way we can.
“I’m going to keep going,” he continued. “That would be really important to her, so that’s really important to me, too.”
source: people.com
