The Potluck contains a rich mix of A-list area musicians.
Among them, singer and organist Steve Bassett co-wrote the Virginia state song, “Sweet Virginia Breeze.” Fellow keyboardist Daniel Clarke has toured with KD Lang, Mandy Moore, Ryan Adams and others. Drummer Dusty Ray Simmons tours with Cris Jacobs and has a deep history with Allman Brothers tribute band Skydog, the DJ Williams Projekt and other area bands. Bassist Stewart Myers also toured and recorded with local breakouts Agents of Good Roots and Jason Mraz. Guitarist Brian “Willie” Williams’ professional background was as a Certified Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) for an insurance company, but this weekend warrior is the band’s revelation.
He’s a masterful performer who has been honing his craft for years while working full time in the button-down corporate job he’s recently left behind. His virtuosic command of the soaring pentatonic electric solos played during Skydog gigs resulted in his recruitment into the band, Great Southern, taking the place of late Allman Brothers legend Dickey Betts in the dual guitar frontline with Grammy/Country Music Award nominee Lee Roy Parnell. Williams also was a standout channeling Jerry Garcia in the recent Grateful Dead tribute show, “Reckoning.” Also, he just released an eponymous album of original songs, recorded at Black River Entertainment on Nashville’s legendary Music Row with top session players.
“It was a Cinderella moment,” Williams says. “The whole studio is covered with framed gold records. Then these absolute, stone-cold studio pros walk in.”
There was Bob Britt from Dylan’s band playing guitar, Kevin McKendree who played keyboards with Delbert McClinton. Lynn Williams was just back from tour with The Wallflowers. And Steven Hinson, who has played on more number one records than he can even remember, was on pedal steel. “I had met Bob and Kevin, but none of them knew me on a creative level,” says Williams. “They have never heard my songs. But hand them a chart and they play it perfectly. It was an amazing experience, and six days later we walked out of there with a record.”
That album, “Trouble Follows Me,” has a retro feel. The cover evokes some classic Atlantic records of the late ’60s and early ’70s, with Williams and guitar on railroad tracks framed by the arches of the James River railroad bridge. The songs are mostly polished up-tempo rockers; his lyrics cutting through the sheen with sharp-edged honesty. It could have come out decades ago.
His musical language is built from a stratigraphy of genres. The earliest layer is the country music that was the exclusive soundtrack to his childhood. When he was older, he took a hard turn into the classic rock music of the Allman Brothers, Cream and Jimi Hendrix, then ’90s innovation like grunge. He went through a bluegrass period where he never touched an electric guitar. Then came the harmonic landscape of jazz, and the deep rabbit hole of soul music. “Maybe it’s ADHD,” Williams says,” but I can’t get enough of any kind of music.”
He concentrated on music during his time at Governor’s School, made a detour into mass communications at Virginia Tech, but dropped out after two years to tour with a “Southern hippie jam band” called Rubicon Crossing.
As for so many musicians, the economic gravity of convention reduced his performing dream to a side gig. The band made an album but never broke big. He got married in 2000, took a job selling insurance for a Blacksburg agency in 2002, had his first child, a son, in 2004. “We moved to Richmond to be closer to her family. I took a corporate job in insurance, put music on the backburner, and went into full-blown dad mode.” I still went out to see local bands, but I didn’t make a conscious effort to be part of the scene because between raising kids and a paying a mortgage I didn’t have the bandwidth.” He had a blog website and a YouTube channel teaching guitar, but he was not performing.
Around 2019, he says he had become totally disenchanted with the corporate world: “Short hair, wearing ties, taking clients out to dinner and talking business. I could do it, but I was not a happy person.”
As a Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU), the insurance equivalent of a CPA, running the numbers on the challenges and risks of a musical career was second nature.
“I started putting together a plan. If I can play this many gigs a year, just doing a one-man-band acoustic thing, playing covers on the country club circuit, I could not make the six figures I was making. But I could make it work.”
His wife had gotten a better paying job with the Department of Environmental Quality and was supportive. “I pulled the plug on the corporate thing and started playing every club, brewery, and sports bar in town,” he says. “I was just trying to make a buck and get my name out there.”
Williams has been at it for the past three years, slowly building a loyal fan base, giving the audience what they knew they wanted with interpretations of familiar songs. He slipped in originals when he felt the audience would follow and started performing them at singer-songwriter showcases, connecting on a deeper level. In 2023, he joined Great Southern when founder Dickie Betts, near the end of his life, stepped back from performing. (Betts died in 2024.) Williams does not make a big deal about it. Patrons at a local brewery may not realize the guy sitting on a stool with an acoustic guitar playing “Brown Eyed Girl” or “Wagon Wheel” is also going on national tours with a band formed in 1976 by Allman Brothers co-founder/co-lead guitarist Betts when the legendary group broke up.
And when he gets to sing a few of his own songs at Potluck shows this holiday weekend, they will slide right in with the classics and originals from the other members of the local all-star band. Williams is back, but it’s like he never left.
The Potluck plays Révéler Experiences four times this weekend: on Saturday, Nov. 29 and Sunday Nov. 30 at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Tickets are $25
